Report: Beacons a Slam Dunk for Sports, Recouping Over $1B in Ticket Sales

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The Q2 2016 report by Proxbook shows that since then, there’s been a 33% increase in global sensors since the beginning of the year. And according to the new report, proximity technology has enabled sports teams and their venues to reclaim ticket revenue at a time when fewer fans are going to stadiums.

flok Launches Chatbots to Bolster Customer Engagement for Local Businesses

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With chatbot technology, communications between local businesses and their customers via flok can now evolve into more complex conversations. These conversations yield better data for the business owner and more detailed information as well as a more engaging customer service experience for the consumer.

Street Culture: Birdzi Finds ‘Liberation’ in Lack of Corporate Hierarchy

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“What happens a lot of times in corporations is you find that decisions are made that can’t be questioned,” says CEO Shekar Ramen. “We don’t have any of that and we want to maintain the flat nature of our company as much as possible.”

Street Fight Daily: Google Maps to Feature Local Ads, Foursquare’s Restaurants Bot

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A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Google Maps Will Feature Local Search Ads for Businesses… PlaceIQ Releases Location Data Accuracy Study, Debuts ‘Dynamic Distancing’ Tech… Foursquare Just Quietly Released a Bot for Finding Restaurants…

Why Location Was a Dominant Theme at This Year’s Google I/O

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With clearer direction and some major updates to how mobile sensors can interact with the physical world, Google has not only taken the position that location-awareness will be a driver of mobile advancement in the years go come, they have leapfrogged Apple’s efforts in doings so.

5 Monetization Strategies for Beacon Vendors

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Building a sustainable stream of revenue has proven to be harder than building a piece of hardware that detects nearby smartphones. In order for this burgeoning vertical to flourish, beacon vendors need to find a monetization strategy that makes sense.

Unacast Looks to Monetize Its Location Data, Hires ironSource’s Cunningham as CRO

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Beacon and proximity data company Unacast announced today that Chris Cunningham, formerly the Vice President of Revenue for ironSource, is joining the company as chief revenue officer. Cunningham will help Unacast to monetize all the data it aggregates from beacons and sensors.

Gimbal CEO Says Getting Beacons Right Means Moving Beyond the Coupon

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“When people started thinking of beacons, they thought it was the place to [deliver] the coupon offer,” says Jeff Russakow, “but what we’re finding is that there is a broader and richer experience to be had through beacon deployment.”

How Retailers Can Bring Home the Beacons

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Beacons will become standard when retailers use them to identify their businesses in the same fashion they publish their address or phone number. They will also become a standard when the industry starts treating them like a standard. That will solve the chicken-and-egg problem.

PlaceIQ’s Mandeep Mason on Looking at Location from an International Perspective

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PlaceIQ’s EMEA General Manager, Mandeep Mason, discusses international expansion, why this is a good time for local marketing, and why local analytics need to be part of any overall media plan.

The Physical Web: How a New Type of Beacon Is Disrupting Proximity Marketing

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The newer Eddystone-URL is truly disruptive. This web approach, also called the Physical Web, follows the unstoppable trend toward lessening friction, and will ultimately be the dominant beacon technology. Marketers should be aware of this trend.

5 Proximity-Based Deal-Finding Apps for Retail Brands

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With distractions around every corner, savvy retailers and brands are using location-based apps to put limited-time offers in the hands of consumers who just happen to be nearby. Here are five examples of proximity-based deal-finding apps available to consumers right now.

Mobiquity Brings Beacons to the Movies — And Consumer Data to Hollywood

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Mobiquity will be installing beacons in 300 of the theater complexes with which Screenvision is partnered. The beacons are intended to help further engage consumers with the brands that are serving up pre-roll ads on the silver screen.

Report: Beacon Use Growing, Industry on Track to Deploy Nearly 400 Million by 2020

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“The number of sensors is increasing quarter by quarter,” said Unacast co-founder and CEO Thomas Walle. “A lot of companies are still in testing and trialing, but we’re moving out of that phase and into full commercial deployments.”

6 Smart Ways Retailers Can Use Heat Maps to Drive Conversions

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What do customer movements inside stores have to do with conversions? It turns out, quite a lot. Slight changes in routing can increase the traffic around promotional displays and help avoid bottlenecks. Some of the smartest retailers are installing beacons, WiFi, and other hyperlocal technologies as a way to generate heat maps that track customer flows.

How Top Marketers Are Curating the In-Store Mobile Experience

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With consumer behavior in place, and solutions making technology like beacons as simple as a media buy, mobile proximity is poised to become the fasting growing piece of mobile advertising in 2016. The brands that have tested and learned early on are in great position to scale up and reach their audiences this year.

Street Fight’s Predictions for 2016: Part One

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With 2015 drawing to a close, it’s time again to look ahead to what we can expect in the hyperlocal space in 2016. We asked Street Fight staffers and weekly columnists what they thought would be the biggest story (or stories) in local in 2016. We’ll be running their outlooks in two installments, the first today and the second tomorrow.

Rating Street Fight’s 2015 Predictions

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At the end of each year, Street Fight invites staffers, friends, and luminaries from the industry to share their predictions for what’s in store for the coming year. Today, we take a look back at some of the predictions for 2015 to see who was on target and who missed the mark.

Street Fight Hyperlocal Analyst Predictions for 2016

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With 2015 drawing to a close, it’s time again to look ahead to what we can expect in the hyperlocal space in 2016. This year, we did things a little differently. We invited our regular analyst contributors to 1) weigh in on what they felt would be a “sure thing” in the coming year, 2) offer a prediction on something that might get big (but might not happen), and 3) identify something that hyperlocal marketers and merchants really don’t need to worry about. This is the first of several predictions pieces we will feature this week.

10 Ways Retailers Can Create Awareness of In-Store Mobile Channels

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Consumers increasingly prefer to communicate with businesses through their smartphones rather than face-to-face, even while they’re shopping in-store. Retailers have reacted to this shift by investing in beacons and mobile apps. But many are finding that use of these technologies is low because consumers don’t realize they exist. To understand how merchants should go about building these relationships and creating awareness of their mobile channels, we spoke with seven industry experts.