5 Tools Local Merchants Can Use to Segment In-Store Visitors
Loyal customers are incredibly valuable to local merchants. A new class of hyperlocal platforms is helping small business owners pinpoint and engage with repeat visitors using a combination of in-store beacons, geo-location tools, and customer segmentation technology. Here are five platforms that enable merchants to track visit frequency and send highly targeted promotions to maximize sales among their most valuable customers.
5 Programmatic Ad Buying Platforms for SMBs
Programmatic buying has a reputation for being geared toward large-scale advertisers buying high volumes of impressions. But more vendors are developing programmatic solutions aimed directly at the SMB market. Here are five platforms that give smaller advertisers the ability to plan, buy, and target digital ads in real-time.
NinthDecimal Partners with TiVo to Measure TV Advertising’s Real-World Influence
In today’s digitally-focused advertising climate, overlooking TV’s influence is easy. It still accounts for the largest share of U.S. media spending, but with marketers increasingly focused on generating hard metrics-based ROI for every aspect of their campaigns, the challenge has been tying TV’s impact to real-world business results. With the launch today of a TV measurement solution in partnership with TiVo, NinthDecimal is banking on TV becoming a bigger piece of the ROI puzzle.
Sponsored Content: Home Improvement Chains Should Aim for More, Better Customer Engagement
Lowe’s and Home Depot duked it out in this month, with Home Depot roundly trouncing its competitor on key areas of local presence. Lowe’s showed in local advertising, but faces challenges elsewhere. Digital marketing company Where2GetIt crunched numbers to compare how the two are branding locally and how that is affecting local consumers…
5 Tools for Cross-Device Ad Targeting
Ad targeting was relatively straightforward back when consumers relied exclusively on their desktops to consume online content. But as the number of gadgets owned by consumers has increased over time, ad targeting has become considerably more complicated. Here are five companies that offer cross-device tracking for advertisers…
Thinknear Launches Scoring Metric for Location-Based Targeting
Location-based advertising is more popular than ever, but the mobile ecosystem is littered with inaccurate data. That’s why Thinknear, the mobile advertising wing of Telenav, has unveiled Location Score Tags, a new free tool that measures the quality of the location data used in across a campaign.
5 Revenue Diversification Strategies for Hyperlocal Publications
Revenue diversification is a hot topic within the hyperlocal community, as publishers seek out new ways to generate income without sacrificing the quality of the products they provide. Some publishers are gaining audience share by partnering with other local media, some are focusing on mobile ad strategies, and others are competing for grants as non-profit organizations. What they all have in common is an interest in finding new ways to expand beyond traditional banner ads…
How Hyperlocal Publishers Can Strengthen Relationships With Advertisers
One of the key takeaways from the Street Fight Summit in New York was that the future of local lies in partnerships. Forging relationships with local businesses is absolutely necessary for any hyperlocal publisher hoping for long-term success. The question that remains is how, exactly, publishers should go about strengthening the relationships they’ve built with small business advertisers and other organizations in their communities…
How a Big Agency Merger Could Benefit Local Ad Sellers
While I certainly believe that big data is our future, nuance at the local level is a part of accuracy when it comes to the providing of filters. This is an advantage that we have in local media, and we should not be shy about making that known to small and medium-sized businesses in the communities we serve.
Digital Pioneer David Cohn: Hyperlocals Need Passion AND Revenue
David Cohn, founder of Spot.us, a nonprofit pioneer in community-funded reporting, has been hired by the UC/Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism to help develop a sustainable business model for hyperlocals. He will run three Ford Foundation-funded, student-staffed hyperlocals in the Bay Area, with the aim of making them self-supporting. As he began his new assignment, […]
Case Study: Tracking the Success of an Online Ad
For Richard Stromberg, owner of Chicago Photography Classes, hyperlocal news sites and blogs have taken the place of traditional print publications. To track the effectiveness of his online ads, he uses printable coupons that new clients are encouraged to bring to class for discounted rates...
Case Study: Connecticut Pub Casts a Wide Net With Patch Ads
Like many entrepreneurs, Daneen Grabe, owner of Little Pub restaurant, has little time to research all the advertising platforms that are available in her town of Ridgefield, Conn. She now spends most of her marketing budget on ads in six local Patch sites, in the hopes of attracting some of the hyperlocal news network’s most plugged-in readers. Here’s why.
Case Study: Ads on Hyperlocal Blogs Reach Local Customers
As the owner of Urban Ashes, a home furnishings company in Michigan that uses salvaged wood from local yards, parks and urban areas, Paul Hickman believes strongly in supporting local businesses and causes. This carries over to the way he markets his business: Hickman regularly advertises on hyperlocal news sites like The Ann Arbor Chronicle to connect with residents who are well-educated and want to support local enterprises like his.
In Hyperlocal News, Mom-and-Pop Shops Will Win
Economies of scale do not apply in hyperlocal news. Rather than going up with scale, CPMs not only go down—they disappear. If Gap buys an ad across a network of hyperlocal sites, the CPM will likely be lower than if a local store advertises, because the Gap can buy that region from any number of sources. Conversely, the corner grocer will pay a comparatively premium CPM when they know for sure their ads show up in the right place.
Surveys All Say: Hyperlocal’s Taking Over Ad Spending. Duh.
A new survey released this week by the hyperlocal network Topix says what is increasingly clear in every new data that emerges: ad dollars are shifting to local, and of that, most are going online. The Topix survey of ad agencies found 90% said they are buying more local ads (“geographically-targeted”) than they ever have.
B-Town Blog’s Schaefer: Hyperlocal Means Being ‘On the Ground’
Scott Schaefer is the founder, publisher and editor of B-Town Blog, in Burien, Wash., which was named the best hyperlocal news Web site by the Society of Professional Journalists Pacific Northwest Chapter. B-Town Blog, one of six hyperlocal content sites operated by Schaefer’s LOL Dudez, aims to “report news from a ‘location-based’ perspective.” Schaefer recently spoke to Street Fight about how that “location-based” principle guides everything the site does.
Why Intuition Fails Us in Mobile Advertising
When mobile was in its infancy, it was appropriate to use intuition and past experience as a guide for how to run mobile ad campaigns. However, the time has come for us as an industry to evolve and begin to use data and empirical evidence to guide our mobile advertising. We need to test and validate our intuitions with unique mobile data to optimize campaign performance…