News and Analysis

‘Media-Nxt’: How Local News Can Finally Enter Its Digital 21st Century

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The newly published report “Media-Nxt” wants to help the local news industry not only to know what it should do, but also actually start doing it. Its main authors are the students of Sean Branagan. In this Q & A, he explains why new technology is so hard for the local news industry to adopt – but why it should and must take the leap.

Attribution and Measurement are Creating a Data Management Arms Race

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“When you look at the shifts taking place in the ecosystem, there’s such a focus on data for so many smart reasons from a marketer’s perspective,” says NinthDecimal CEO David Staas. “They really want to be able to better understand their customers, and one of the biggest problems is filling in that blind spot in customer intelligence.”

Street Fight Daily: Facebook in Another Metrics Scandal, Big-Boxes Partner with Amazon/Google

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… A New Phase for Street Fight… Facebook Tells Advertisers It Can Reach More Young People Than Exist… Kohl’s and Home Depot Sign On to Sell Voice Assistants In-House…

Latest Posts

Black Friday’s Local Opportunity: Taking Preprints Digital

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Publishers across the country give thanks for the fantastic single copy sales they get on Thanksgiving due to the bundle of preprint circulars that come with the paper ahead of Black Friday. But for quite some time people inside and outside of the newspaper industry have been discussing the fact that the preprint business is declining — and might go away altogether…

Google’s Local Offerings Have Gotten Too Complicated

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The extended Google+ Local rollout has been more troublesome than most. Usually when Google has experimented with social services in the past, such as Google Buzz and Google Wave, it has done so in a tangential way that does not threaten core functionality. With Google+, the gamble is to make social the center of all search activity, and yet the full realization of a social context for Google’s local search tools has yet to appear…

Case Study: Mattress Retailer Uses Targeting to Boost In-Store Sales

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At Innovative Mattress Solutions, online marketing director Brett Morris relies on display ads that work in tandem with his company’s print and television campaigns to promote holiday sales and in-store events. He uses geo-targeting to reach consumers living within a 15-mile radius of his company’s stores, and relies on different ad sets based on the demographics of the consumers he’s trying to hit…

Street Fight Daily: NYC Gets Local Discovery, Tiger Takes Stake in Groupon

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.New York City Replaces 250 Public Pay Phones with iPad-like Screens (GigaOm)… The World’s Hottest Hedge Fund Manager Thinks Groupon Stock Is A Good Deal (Forbes)… Basing Hotel Choice on Web Reviews May Be Bad Move (LA Times)…

Groupon ‘Goods’ Shows Ecommerce Isn’t an Answer to Deals Fatigue

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Part of what makes the margin for Groupon’s local commerce business so high is that the marketplace already exists. The supply networks, fulfillment methods, and customer base needed to keep a market running are already in place. Groupon was merely an accelerant — a facilitator of commerce within a given structure. Goods pushed the company into the marketplace business, and the variable risks and liabilities associated with the upkeep of a market…

7 Tools Restaurants Can Use to Post Menus Online

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Menus are among the first things that a customer looks at when trying to decide which restaurant to visit, and restaurants with outdated menus on their websites — or even worse, no menus at all — are likely to be passed over by consumers. A number of marketing platforms have stepped in with solutions that make it easier for busy restaurateurs to publish and update their menus online. Here are seven popular options…

Street Fight Daily: Advance Buys Streetwise, Could Groupon Go Bankrupt?

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.Local Content Consolidation: Advance Publications’ Bizjournals Division Buys Streetwise Media Sites (TechCrunch)… Could Groupon Go Bankrupt? (Seeking Alpha)… Glocal, Local Video News Aggregator, Launches Out Of Beta With A Bang (TechCrunch)…

Daily Deals vs. Happy Hours: The Impact of Internal Marketing Promos

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To get a sense of how happy hour compares to daily deals, Copilot Labs analyzed the point of sale data from a restaurant that has consistently run both happy hour and daily deals for more than a year and half. From April 2011 to October 2012 this business ran three deals and has had an active deal and happy hour every month…

Openings and New Hires at JiWire, UBL, Groupon, Booker, Telenav & More

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JiWire gets a new CEO in a year of big executive changes; Groupon tries for third-time’s-a-charm COO; UBL staffs up; Living Social loses an exec; and LocalResponse brings on a new vice president of technology. And that’s just what’s highlighted in industry moves from this week. Plus, openings at LocalVox, Booker, Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Telenav and more…

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Blippar, Shopkick

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In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan ask: Do we need another coupon platform? Retailmenot thinks so. Product launches by SpotBros, Pretzil and Busbud PLUS Blippar shows us augmented reality’s potential, the greatest mobile payments info graphic ever and special guest Alexis Rask from Shopkick.