News and Analysis
Borrell Sizes Up What’s Behind Local Ad Media Choices
We know from the numbers that local advertisers are increasingly choosing social media to place their messages. But they’re also turning out to be cautious businesspeople who like to maintain a balance in their placements among multiple media, according to a new study from Borrell Associates.
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Rides Mobile to Riches, Amazon Picks an Agency
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Registers Soaring Ad Revenue, Buttressed by Mobile… Amazon Consolidates Billion-Dollar Media-Buying Business with IPG Mediabrands… For First Time, More Holiday Shoppers Will Use Mobile Than Desktop…
Latest Posts
Pricing Engine Pools Data to Help VSBs Spend Wisely
With legacy local media companies starting to scale marketing services products, startups now have an increasingly viable channel to manage and distribute marketing products for very small businesses (VSBs). Pricing Engine has built a paid search and display manager that uses collective knowledge to help the smallest businesses effectively buy ads online…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Quantifies Its Value for SMBs, Identifying Anonymous Location
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Yelp Announces A New ‘Revenue Estimator’ For Small Businesses (TechCrunch)… Why the Collision of Big Data and Privacy Will Require a New Realpolitik (Paid Content)… How Indoor Location Could Find Its Way into Apple Services (GigaOm)…
Local Retail Won’t Disappear — Mobile Will Transform the In-Store Experience
“The changes in the next five years in retail will be more profound and transformational than the last 100 years in retail have been because largely because of mobile,” said Cyriac Roeding, CEO of Shopkick. “I don’t think people will go [to stores] because they need something. I don’t even think they’ll go because they want something. I think they’ll go because they want to feel better.”
6 Tools for Creating Performance-Based Offers
As pure-play daily deals sites struggle to remain attractive to local merchants, a new model for offers is beginning to emerge. Rather than giving blanket discounts on general merchandise — a hallmark of the original Groupon deals — brand advertisers are increasingly opting to use performance-based offers as a way to drive traffic without necessarily hurting the bottom line. Here are six tools that merchants can use to create performance-based marketing offers…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Buys WifiSLAM, NYU’s Hyperlocal Finds New Home
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Apple Acquires Indoor Location Company WifiSLAM (Wall Street Journal)… Changing Trains: The Local East Village, NYU’s hyperlocal blog, Moves from The New York Times to New York Magazine (Nieman Lab)… Local Search Service Roamz Shifts Again – Now “Local Measure,” Startup Brings Geo-Based Data To Businesses (& Gets Them To Pay) (TechCrunch)…
Restaurant Chain Looks For Location-Specific Trends in Online Reviews
Keeping up with customer reviews and social media chatter can be especially difficult for a national chain. As the director of digital marketing at Houlihan’s, a “polished casual” restaurant chain with 85 locations, Natalie Bass is responsible for making sure the company is being found online and communicating with customers through all the most popular digital channels…
PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Ping Mobile
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan discuss LinkedIn’s rumored acquisition of the Pulse News Reader. Meanwhile Posse saddles up and moves to the U.S.; the earth’s magnetic field may hold the key to indoor location; and Quri gives brands a little leverage. Plus special guest Shuli Lowy from Ping Mobile on SMS marketing…
Street Fight Daily: Local News Lost, Groupon Bundles SEO
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… American News Consumers Have Gained the World but Lost Their Backyards (Atlantic)… Groupon Offers SEO Deal to Businesses (Upstart)… Barista Problems: Why Starbucks Isn’t the Energy Shot Square Needed (PandoDaily)…
Patch: Here’s Ten Things We’re Doing RIGHT
Anyone paying attention to this column knows I’ve dedicated plenty of thought to AOL’s efforts in local, primarily via its Patch effort. Some at Patch/AOL were unhappy. Others mailed me with even more colorful complaints, or “can-you-believe-this” vignettes. So I wanted to turn the tables on myself a bit and challenge Patch to sell us on what is going right…
The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation