News and Analysis
Street Fight Daily: Facebook Helps Brands on Mobile Video, Snap Gets a Boost from Big Ad Buyer
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Facebook Wants to Help Brands Tailor Their TV Ads for Mobile (AdWeek) After quietly piloting a video program with brands called PockeTVC (short for pocket television commercials) for more than a year that takes existing TV assets and fits them for mobile, Facebook […]
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Case Study: Taco Del Mar Sends Time-Specific Offers With Pirq
As the owner of eight Taco Del Mar franchises in Washington and Oregon, Jeff Masterjohn has to be careful that the promotions he runs don’t interfere with any campaigns being handled by his corporate bosses or fellow franchisees. One way that he has been able to do this is by running day-parted discounts with Pirq, a mobile deals platform that consumers use to find geo-targeted offers on their smartphones…
LBS Marketing Spotlight: Restaurants
Restaurants that want to stay ahead of the curve need to utilize their mobile apps as a source for offering programs for loyal diners. According to the National Restaurant Association’s Restaurant Industry Forecast, 57% of adult consumers are more likely to choose restaurants that offer a loyalty rewards program. Meanwhile, 40% are using smartphones to look at menus and order take-out…
Street Fight Daily: Mobile Companies Ally, Should Yahoo Buy Foursquare?
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Nokia, Samsung, Sony Mobile and Others Form In-Location Alliance, Seek to Boost Indoor Positioning Technologies (TheNextWeb)… Will Foursquare Be Marissa Mayer’s First Big Acquisition At Yahoo? (Marketing Land)… Groupon’s New Operations Czar Grasps Shaky Helm (Chicago Tribune)…
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…
Streets Ahead: Google Chat, and Instagram Reels