News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: How AMP Beat Instant Articles, AI Shapes Brand Relationships
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… How Google AMP Beat Facebook Instant Articles… How Invisible AI Shapes Our Brand Relationships… Video-Streaming Service Customers Widely Pan Use of Ads…
Why Even Top Local News Sites Can’t Compete With Facebook on Ads
Facebook isn’t going away, and it shouldn’t, for local news providers. But news providers will use their own resources to engage the fraction of traffic that chooses to make its way to the narrow part of the funnel and into the subscription revenue pot.
Simpli.fi Leverages Unstructured Data to Target Auto Buyers on a Granular Level
Using a local business’s inventory management software to serve dynamic ads in real-time sounds good in theory, but the process can quickly get gummed up. In an effort to streamline that process, Simpli.fi is releasing an upper funnel dynamic creative solution that leverages unstructured data to target buyers.
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LION President: ‘Indie’ Readership, Revenues ‘Reaching New Heights’
“There’s no ‘proven model’ other than the precept that local news works when it is just that,” said LION president Dylan Smith. “Every community is different; attempting to cover every town and city by ticking a few boxes in a top-down plan is foolhardy at best, and insulting to local readers at worst – as well as being a great way to lose millions of dollars.”
Case Study: Promoting Loyalty With Outrageous Rewards
At Vino Vidi Vici, an Italian restaurant in Massena, N.Y., owner Crista Makdouli wanted to offer something extra to help her program stand out. “For 50 [purchases] you can get your name engraved on one of our tables, so you’ll have your own table,” said Makdouli. “For a million [purchases], we will deliver a free Ferrari with a large pizza.”
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Fires Back, Walmart Banks on Mobile In-Store
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Fires Back at Small Business Extortion Claims, Says It’s Not, and ‘Never has Been’, true (TheNextWeb)… Walmart Exec: Mobile Can Revive Personal Touch for Shoppers(CNet)… Square Expands into Asia With Japan Launch (AllThingsD)…
Forget ‘Showrooming’: 77% of Mobile Retail Shoppers Buy In-Store
According to a new study from xAd and Telmetrics, mobile now accounts for one third of all retail activity online with 98 million shoppers using a smartphone in their retail experience. And the vast majority of those mobile shoppers end up making purchases in-store – not on Amazon…
Why Local Media Should Build Search Products to Take on the PurePlays
In order to appear competitive, most local media companies have formed digital divisions that offer services for local businesses that are available only through deals with pure-play companies like Google, Facebook and Yahoo, which guarantees that a certain portion of the business we generate will always end up in their hands. There simply has to be a better way…
5 Mobile Marketing ‘Musts’ for SMBs
As more consumers look to their smartphones to engage with business locally, small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) need to lay out a concise mobile marketing strategy. In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Asif Khan of the Location-based Marketing Association, and YP’s David Williams discussed the trends that make mobile a must for SMBs, and highlighted a handful of first steps that local businesses can take to keep up with their smartphone-wielding customers….
Street Fight Daily: Phone Firms Sell Data, A Day in Court for Yelp
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Phone Firms Sell Data on Customers (Wall Street Journal)… Another Day in Court for Yelp (New York Times)… Hyper-Local: Not A Behavioral Disease (Medium)…
Swipely Raises $12M to Expand Push Into SMB Payment Analytics
The payments space is starting to settle down. The flow of seed funding has slowed, and a handful companies have separated from the pack, raising meaningful capital over the past year. Add Providence-based Swipely to that list. The payments processing and analytics play has raised $12 million in new funding in a series B round led by Shasta Ventures…
Waze Builds Out Traffic Maps to Add Context in Location
Andy Ellwood, the company’s senior director of business development, will be appearing on a panel at Street Fight Summit West in a couple of weeks in San Francisco to talk about how the future of mapping tech plays into hyperlocal marketing. Street Fight caught up with him recently to talk about how Waze makes money, the vitality of context, and fighting off Google…
5 Tips For Optimizing Hyperlocal Sites For Tablets
The real question for hyperlocal publishers isn’t how important tablet readers are, but how best to cater to this group. The publishing standards that work on PC browsers don’t always translate to tablet screens. Here are five strategies that hyperlocal publishers should consider when creating content for readers on tablet devices…
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AI Won’t Fix Advertising – It May Scale Its Chaotic Nature