News and Analysis

BUST: A Hard Landing as Soft Surroundings Files for Bankruptcy

Could Revamped Loyalty Programs Save the Retail Industry?

As retailers grapple with finding ways to reinvent the real world shopping experience, some are revisiting their loyalty programs, which have gotten stale over the years. Neiman Marcus, Macy’s, and Sephora are just a few of the well-known brands trying to create added value by offering services through their loyalty programs.

Street Fight Daily: Uber Suffers Major Legal Setback, Best Buy Leads the Anti-Amazon Resistance

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Uber Suffers Major Setback as EU Court Rules It Must Be Regulated Like Taxi Companies… Best Buy versus Amazon: Holiday Edition… Improving Search and Advertising Are the Next Frontiers for Voice-Activated Devices…

Street Fight Daily: Instagram Releases New Creative Tools, Bloomberg Launches TV Service on Twitter

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Instagram Wants People and Brands to Get Creative for the Holidays… Bloomberg Launches 24/7 News Channel on Twitter… The Guardian’s David Pemsel Says Facebook Doesn’t Value Quality…

Latest Posts

As Tide Turns, Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley Responds to Critics

The technology community seems to have turned on Foursquare in recent months, with some people publicly deriding the once-adored company. Dennis Crowley, the company’s founder, responded to criticism Monday morning, asserting that Foursquare is in the process of “basically reinventing local search.”

How National Advertisers Can Market Locally Without Losing Brand Consistency

The biggest challenge large brands face when utilizing local marketing platforms is keeping their messages consistent. Sixty-four percent of brands surveyed are looking for ways to eliminate the customer confusion that can occur when different marketing messages are sent out across competing platforms, and 81% say communicating a consistent brand message is their top priority for the upcoming year. Here are five ways that brands can do just that…

The Unique Position of Hyperlocal Publishers in a Real-Time Bidding World

RTB, by definition, is a digital advertising technology that lets marketers buy and publishers sell display ads dynamically, in real time, on an impression-by-impression basis. In this rapidly evolving world, publishers become relegated to a supply of cookies for marketers to target versus an audience targetable through the association of the publisher’s content and audience profiles. Here’s what’s needed for local publishers to unlock more ad inventory value in this environment…

Street Fight Daily: Square Beefs Up Register, LivingSocial Hacked

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Square Beefs Up Its Register for Restaurants (AllThingsD)… LivingSocial Hack Exposes Data for 50 Million Customers (New York Times)… Life360, A Family Networking App With More Users Than Foursquare, Is Now Headed For Cars, Smart Home Systems (TechCrunch)…

What Hyperlocal Marketers Can Learn From Disney’s Wearable Devices

We talk a lot in the hyperlocal industry about what the future of offline marketing and commerce will look like. Mostly it would seem to involve taking the advantages of online marketing and shopping (customization, personalization, analytics, actionable CRM data, etc.) and bringing them into the real world of retail stores. Different players have been experimenting with different elements of this online-to-offline migration of technology, but the Walt Disney Company has really taken the ball and run with it…

Openings & New Hires at Amazon, AOL, WebMD, Edmunds, Swipely and more…

Ray King is an extremely clever and creative visionary in the space and as a graduate of M.I.T. majoring in computer science and later becoming the CEO of Snapnames. He is a perfectionist. His new company Top Level Design, seeks to capitalize on new “top-level” domains awaiting approval. Read about more hyperlocal execs on the move in this week’s Movers & Shakers column…

LBMA PODCAST: Tempo Founder Discusses Calendars as an OS

Welcome to This Week in Location Based Marketing. In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan talk about Nike’s use of 3D holographs to sell shoes in Amsterdam; paying by sound in Beijing; K-Mart uses check-ins to promote the world’s largest bake sale. And special guest Raj Singh, founder of Tempo talks about the calendar as the operating system.

Street Fight Daily: Twitter Tests Local Discovery, Bing Aggregates Deals (Again)

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Twitter Testing New Local Discovery Features — And It’s About Time (AllThingsD)… Microsoft Quietly Shuts Down Bing Deals, Launches Bing Offers As A Replacement (TechCrunch)… Belly Dance: Can Lightbank and Chicago’s Hot New Company Avoid Groupon’s Missteps? (PandoDaily)…

Do Community News Sites Really Need to Become ‘Digital Agencies’?

For answers, I went to Julie Brooks, CEO of eCape.com, who went into and then out of, an ambitious program of agency-like marketing services; Mike Orren, president of the new marketing service firm Speakeasy, which he co-founded with the Dallas Morning News; and Carll Tucker, CEO of Daily Voice, who is considering expansion of marketing services it offers.

Case Study: California Fitness Studio Drives Referrals With Digital Program

Ninety-two percent of consumers trust “earned media” — like word-of-mouth referrals — above other forms of paid advertising. At b2be Sports & Wellness, a high-end fitness studio in Chula Vista, California, Emmanuel Corona is looking to capitalize on this trend, partnering with Perkville to reward customers for referring their friends…