News and Analysis

Why 2017 Investments Will Take Local Companies Farther With Less

Upserve CEO Angus Davis says that seed funding is the most available right now. And because the overall economy is doing fairly well, wealthy people are increasingly doing angel investments where they previously were not.

LBMA Podcast: Admobilize + Smartlink, JCDecaux and Vivo, PlaceIQ & Shinola,

This Week in Location Based Marketing is a weekly video podcast from the Location Based Marketing Association with Asif Khan and Aubriana Lopez. On the show: Leantegra, Coke + Albertsons, Nielsen Catalina, Facebook, Glympse + Microsoft Dynamics.

Street Fight Daily: WaPo Partners with Nextdoor to Cover Local, Restaurants Build Around Instagram

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… The Washington Post Partners with Nextdoor to Boost Local News Coverage… Restaurateurs Are Designing Their Establishments with Instagram in Mind… Brands Eye New Ways to Foster Innovation with Agencies..

Latest Posts

Investment Newsletter Sees Directories, Deals at ‘Critical’ Stage

The second issue of Street Fight’s monthly newsletter focused on strategy and investment in hyperlocal was released today. The current issue looks at: the upheaval in the directory business represented by the sale of AT&T Interactive to Cerberus; the risky pivot for daily deals companies toward e-commerce; the huge opportunities in data curation; and more…

Will eBay Be the Next Giant in Local?

It’s not just about where users are spatially, or what device they’re on. It’s a function of where they are in the proverbial purchase funnel — the increasingly convoluted path between offline and offline worlds that leads from awareness to purchase. “The boundaries between the physical and digital world have disappeared, says WHERE’s Walt Doyle, “and the purchase funnel has become a purchase pretzel.”

Privacy Experts: Consumer Trust Is Vital for Mobile Payments and Apps

Building relationships with consumers is all about trust — and trust is exactly what consumers lack when it comes to most mobile transactions: “Without strong user privacy controls, mobile payments may turn your cell phone into a magnet for telemarketing, spam, and online behavioral advertising,” CDT’s Harley Geiger writes…

Will Facebook’s New Offers Product Appeal to Merchants?

“Facebook will not be all things to all people, and I think local is so hard to pull off really well that just a huge reach alone won’t solve the problem. They’ll get beat by more focused local players,” said Scoutmob co-founder Michael Tavani…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Bags Glancee, Klout Going Local

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology...

What Facebook May Do With New Acquisition Glancee (ReadWriteWeb)…

In Letter to Stockholders, Groupon CEO Explains Strategy (The Next Web)…

Foursquare Gets Its Own Searchable Timeline With New History Page (TechCrunch)…

Does the ‘Debt’ in Daily Deal Transactions Inhibit Loyalty?

Even forward-thinkers who speak about “commerce,” or “local commerce,” or even “e-commerce” as the next stage in digital marketing are abstracting too quickly: the industry-sparking innovation here is the use of commerce to drive customer acquisition by bringing the point of sale to the moment of impression…

PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Kodak, Gopogo

In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan look at Kodak’s attempts to make some money in mobile, mobile ticketing with Masabi, Gopogo and Project Noah launch — and is Foursquare getting ready to make some money? All this plus a busy week in funding and special guest Alexis Zamcow from Canada Post…

Street Fight Daily: Facebook Offers for SMBs, LBS Apps Hot

A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.

Facebook’s ‘Offers’ News Feed Coupons Launch In Self-Serve Beta For Local U.S. Businesses (TechCrunch)…

Survey: Budget, Time Biggest Obstacles to Mobile Marketing for SMBs (ScreenWerk)…

Competition Among Location-Based Apps Heats Up (Crain’s New York Business)…

Should All Ad Impressions on Mobile Devices Really Count as ‘Mobile?’

For mobile advertising to reach its true potential the industry needs to start looking more closely at the nature of a mobile impression and applying more scalable and accurate ways to target users. The current one-size-fits-all approach is simply not going to work as users are increasingly cutting the cord and relying entirely on their tablets or phones…

Journatic’s ‘Darth Vader’ Takes Lightsaber to TribLocal

Brian Timpone, the founder and CEO of Journatic, is a destroyer. And that’s a good thing because community journalism needs entrepreneurs who will clean out the stubbornly resistant vestiges of 20th century “best practices.” Too much of community journalism is built on an outdated model where one reporter is the Ptolemaic center of the news-gathering universe….