News and Analysis

Foot Traffic Analysis Shows Height of Black Friday Retail Bump

The 2017 holiday shopping season is off to a healthy start, with consumer spending on Black Friday reaching a record $5 billion. Data from ShopperTrak shows that traffic at brick-and-mortar stores decreased less than 1% from Black Friday last year, which is actually good news compared to what some analysts had been fearing.

Street Fight Daily: Shoppers Swarm to Social, Snapchat’s Redesign Goes Live

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… More Facebook and Instagram Users Discussed Last Weekend’s Shopping than Super Bowl… Snapchat Simplifies Design to Spur Use… Benchmark and Menlo Commit to Sell Shares of Uber to SoftBank…

Mobile Strategies That Retail Brands Are Using to Fuel Holiday Sales

This holiday season, retailers with physical locations are working feverishly to compete against e-commerce giants like Amazon. Technologies that capture historical, location-based data from devices have become the next great hope for these brands, even as the physical and online shopping worlds continue to merge.

Latest Posts

Groupon’s Stock Dives as Deal Margins Shrink

Groupon lost more than a quarter of its market value in after hours trading on Wednesday after the company reported diminishing margins and continued international stagnancy in Q4. The once-resurgent daily deals company saw gross billings increase 24% year-over-year in the fourth quarter, but declining margins in both its local and ecommerce business forced its gross profit down 10% from a year earlier…

With Mobile Growing, WPP Sees Opportunity to Make DOOH Smarter

The agency’s Spafax Networks has announced a new partnership that will bring PlaceIQ’s audience data to its DOOH buying process. Like PlaceIQ’s channel partners in the mobile space, Spafax can use the latitude-longitude data associated with its inventory to target media by audience segments like “middle aged moms” or “business travelers” in vendor and geography.

LocalVox Turns to SMB Seminars to Drive Leads in New Markets

New York-based LocalVox is expanding from New York and Boston to Washington D.C. The move is a small-but-significant step in the company’s grand plan to replace legacy players like ReachLocal as the marketing platform of choice for local businesses. LocalVox’s product allows small business to publish content across their own email, social, and web properties, as well as to a host of listing sites and other media properties from a single touchpoint…

Street Fight Daily: Samsung’s ‘Passbook’ App, PayPal Co-Founder’s Payments Play

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Samsung Takes a Page from Apple’s Passbook With New Wallet App (Verge)… PayPal Co-Founder Levchin Launches New Payments Startup, Affirm (AllThingsD)… Apple Patents Situational Awareness And Location Information Sharing For Mobile Devices (TechCrunch)…

Just Another Chat With a Frustrated Patch Editor

“We have had two conference calls in a row the last two weeks with the people at HQ excitedly talking about big ideas that are going to get us to profitability, but the ideas sound like bad ones, not to mention ones that they have already tried,” said this editor, a mix of frustration and exasperation in his voice. “They are getting farther away from the hyperlocal vision and really pushing generic SEO content to try and get unique visitors…”

How to Ensure That Your Geofence Is Sized Correctly

Location-based push campaigns have a lot of upside, from satisfied customers to higher ROI. But it can be a thin line that separates a successful campaign from one that leaves mobile users extremely annoyed — so really homing in on how to deliver the right geofence to optimize your campaign is crucial…

Street Fight Daily: Foursquare Expands Deals, Visa Teams with Samsung

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Foursquare Opens Up Check-In Deals to More Kinds of Plastic (AllThingsD)… Visa Teams Up With Samsung on Mobile Payments (New York Times)… With ClubLocal and New SaaS Tools, ReachLocal Wants to be the Amazon of Local services (PandoDaily)…

Voice Media Group Relaunches City Apps — Can Mobile Really Be Alt-Weeklies’ Salvation?

Voice Media Group, which acquired 11 alt-weeklies around the country back in October, is re-launching its various cities’ mobile apps, which it hopes will become go-to listings and reviews guides for their local markets. According to Tiffany Shackelford, the executive director at the Association of Alternative Newsmedia, many alt-weeklies, like VMG, are beginning to understand the importance of mobile…

5 Strategies for SMBs Using Social Gifting Apps

Translating Facebook fans and Twitter followers into actual sales is a challenge that even the largest brands are still working to overcome. To break through the clutter and get noticed, small businesses are increasingly using social gifting platforms to send gift cards and physical items to online fans. Here are five tips from the experts on what small businesses can do to ensure a high ROI on any social gifting promotions…

Street Fight Daily: Airbnb Eyeing Former Square COO, Nokia Opens ‘Here’

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Airbnb May Hire Former Square Exec Rabois as COO (Wall Street Journal)… Nokia Opens Up Here platform With an Eye to the Future (GigaOm)… Why Big Brands Fell Out of Love with Check-Ins (Digiday)…