News and Analysis
‘Media-Nxt’: How Local News Can Finally Enter Its Digital 21st Century
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
“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.”
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Deals Plus Ads Equal a Bundle of Conversions
Deals companies that want to remain relevant must diversify their solution sets to include other services for local merchants. At the same time, publishers who are looking to expand digital revenues through deals and offers need to overcome some of the objections raised by merchants. We wondered what would happen if we bundled local deals with other advertising products, like display ads. The result was that publisher sales conversion rates nearly doubled…
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Settles ‘Best of’ Suit, Groupon Fights for Survival
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Village Voice, Yelp Settle ‘Best Of’ Trademark Suit (PC Mag)… Groupon Fights for Its Life as Daily Deals Fade (Reuters)… Learning From a Failed IPO (Venture Beat)…
Patch CCO Talks Election Coverage: Virtual News Teams, Trending Hashtag
The election was a big national story, but it was also an important local story — and served as yet another crucible to test how deeply hyperlocal network Patch has woven itself into the 850+ communities it serves across the country. Rachel Feddersen, Patch’s Chief Content Officer, spoke with Street Fight this week about how the network approached and executed its election coverage, and what potential lessons the event had for the rest of the news cycle.
Mobile Payments For Deals? Slim Majority Says No in Street Fight Poll
A new Street Fight poll has found that about 43% of consumers are willing to use a mobile wallet service in exchange for receiving deals from retailers. The survey of 500 U.S. consumers finds that a shade more than 17% are very willing to pay via mobile for deals, and another 26% are somewhat willing. But 11% are unlikely to pay with a smartphone, 24% say they’re uninterested, and another 22% don’t know what a mobile wallet is…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Taps DudaMobile, Groupon Tests Search
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… DudaMobile Announces SMB Mobile Sites Deal with Yahoo (Screenwerk)… Groupon Testing A Deal Search Feature In Chicago And New York (TechCrunch)… Hyperlocal Hotbed Thrives in New Jersey (NetNewsCheck)…
Groupon Bottoms Out as Billings Hit Lowest Level Since IPO
Groupon’s stock hit an all-time low in after-hours trading Thursday after the daily deals company reported lower than expected revenues in Q3, driven largely by stagnant growth in its international business. Overall gross billings, which account for all customer purchases, slid by 6% in Q3 from the previous quarter as gross billings dropped nearly 10% internationally. It’s the second consecutive quarter that Groupon saw its total billings decline…
2012 Election Points to Hyperlocal Future in Politics
Election coverage at the local level is going to grow in importance., Here’s why: The shift from air attack to the tech-enabled ground game means that, in all likelihood, the era of declining voter turnouts are over, in my opinion. With growing turnouts come a more broadly-engaged electorate not just on political matters but on local politics that constitute the true bread-and-butter issues for many towns and small cities…
xAd Expands Mobile Ad Targeting, Launches New Location, Fencing Tech
Mobile ad network xAd has released new proprietary technologies to expand location analytics and geo-fencing, helping its local and national advertisers further narrow their campaigns based on intensive geographic and behavioral data. The new products, SmartLocation and SmartFencing, are a direct reaction to what xAd sees as a lack of precise, real-time location data in the mobile advertising space…
Creating a City Guide from Scratch? Maybe if You’re a ‘Cool Kid’
Carlos Gutierrez and and Erika Leal, founding editors of thecoolkidsguide.com, are building a city-guide-cum-entertainment-site for not only big metros but also for smaller, under-served towns (at least that’s the plan). I asked Gutierrez the obvious question first: So many have come and gone; others are moving along (Patch, Yelp, Zvents, Foursquare); still others (LivingSocial, etc.) are morphing toward city guides. Why a city guide?
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