News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Yelp Sells Eat24 to GrubHub, Brands Rankled by Amazon’s Third-Party Selling
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yelp Is Selling Eat24 to GrubHub for $287.5M, and the Stock is Skyrocketing… Brands Bristle at Third-Party Selling on Amazon But Can’t Do Much to Stop It… Is Facebook’s Mobile Attribution Model Fair?…
Nashville Publisher’s Goal From Facebook Journalism Project: More Revenue
After considerable agitation from news publishers, Facebook launched a Journalism Project earlier this year “to better support publishers’ needs.” A six-month update said the Journalism Project has met with 2,500 publishers around the world to get their stories (and, no doubt, grievances) first hand and offer help with an array of Facebook products.
Street Fight Daily: Advertisers Return to YouTube, Shopify Launches Square Rival
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Months Removed from Brand Safety Boycott, YouTube Wins Over Advertisers Again… Shopify Launches New Card Reader to Compete with Square… Facebook Changes the News Feed to Reward Fast-Loading Sites…
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As Social Media Hype Wanes, Appeal of Hyperlocal Remains
While social media is here to stay, the market shares a lot more with the online advertising segment than, say, the SaaS subscription business. Social media is only as sticky as its user base and only as attractive as it is fresh. I am sure that there are real benefits to tapping a social graph for sales. But I am becoming more sure that those benefits are incremental and evolutionary, rather than a step change…
The Outsourcing of Hyperlocal Journalism Is Inevitable
My conviction in the power of collaborative “glocal” journalism has not been swayed by the Journatic debacle. Properly managed, outsourcing some newsroom functions can be incredibly cost-effective and can contribute to the quality of a publication’s editorial content. Badly executed, outsourcing can become a plague that infects a publication’s journalistic integrity.
Transaction Overview: CityGrid Acquires Felix
Yext launched Felix in 2009 as a pay-per-call local advertising service. What makes Felix unique is its patent-pending engine that uses speech recognition technology to listen to all the calls received by a local business. It then transcribes and analyzes the calls, separating those received from consumers from those received from wrong numbers, telemarketers and job seekers…
Street Fight Daily: PayPal Partners with Discover, Gannett Gets Social
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… PayPal Trumps Square’s Deal With Starbucks by Partnering With Discover (All Things D)… Gannett Has Bought Social Media Ad Company BLiNQ (TechCrunch)… Groupon’s Risk of Traveling Salesmen (Wall Street Journal)…
Facebook and the Latent Local Layer
If Facebook were to really turn its attention to local, it could do some amazing things. Imagine if all of our posts and check-ins related to local restaurants were correlated together in a meaningful way. There’s little doubt Facebook could recommend the new place down the street based on your preferences and those of others similar to you, with a high likelihood of successfully predicting what you will like…
With Felix Buy, CityGrid Focuses on Closed-Loop Transactions
“As a standalone brand under CityGrid, Felix will be able to expand its advertiser base and develop new products that help local businesses find new customers across the web and mobile devices,” said Jason Finger, CityGrid’s CEO. “Now that Felix is part of IAC, it also has the ability to more effectively syndicate its current customers across the CityGrid network.”
How Can Hyperlocal Companies Crack the Local Sales Code?
Plum District, the daily deals site for moms, is just the latest to find that building a national sales force to woo small business marketing dollars is no easy task. In fact, the difficulty remains a barrier to profitability for all kinds of SMB-focused businesses — from Angie’s List to Groupon to Patch…
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The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation