All Geotargeting Methods Are Not Created Equal
The social-mobile-local movement will most certainly drive even stronger interest in and use of geotargeting. But with all the options available, what factors dictate when marketers should use one method over another? It depends on what message they want to convey to whom and when, along with how much contact and engagement they want with the consumer…
Will ‘Breaking Promos’ Help Hyperlocals Bring New Customers to SMBs?
SMBs have been flocking to social sites like Facebook, where they can set up neat pages about their products and service. That’s fine, says Scott Karp, but “the only customers they reach are existing ones.” To solve this, his service Breaking Promos lets SMBs create pages on a social site that runs within the pages of hyperlocal news sites….
New Klout Further Breaks Down Social Influence, Still Needs to Get More Local
Klout was gracious enough to put me on the beta list for their new version and I spent the better part of Tuesday trying it out. The revision is still in beta but should go out to the entire Klout userbase shortly. My impressions were largely positive, although I still reserve judgement on the utility of Klout. Putting my hyperlocal hat on, I’d like to see impact from even more social graph inputs such as FoodSpotting, for example, and Yelp — also tagged to geography…
Study: Consumers Increasingly Will Give Personal Info for Deals
More than 80% of consumers expect companies to know their purchase history and retail experience, according to a new study from ClickFox. Additionally, more than 70% of respondents were happy to share location in exchange for giveaways, discounts, and improved service while 71.3% said it was fine if a company knew their location…
Aligning Creative and Location to Make Better Mobile Ads
The ability to break creative down to where the consumer is interacting with location is already emerging as the next big trend for mobile marketing. Hand selecting where you want your creative to reach your customer makes a lot of sense — and the more you make it common practice, the more successful your mobile marketing efforts will be…
Getting Local Online Ad Dollars to Flow Into Hyperlocal News
Hyperlocal news sites are turning up everywhere, but advertisers aren’t following them nearly as fast. “Advertisers don’t want to be around local news,” Gordon Borrell, CEO of Borrell Associates, told Street Fight. I went to several people building business models around hyperlocal news to find out how they are planning to turn the tables on Borrell’s assessment…
Why Online Marketers Are Rethinking Their Yelp Strategy
Merchants have historically been wary of Yelp reviews — and for good reason. Yelpers have tended to be snarky and more focused on humor than accuracy. But there are changes coming at the end of 2012 that are likely to make many marketing pros reevaluate their relationship to the user-generated reviews site…
The Long Tail of Local Search
Far from invisible tools that merely get you to the store or service you want, local search products actually tell a story about the needs local search companies think they are trying to fulfill, demonstrating in some cases a stark contrast between the actual habits of the local consumer and the assumptions of local apps and websites…
Why Leveraging Location Is the Key to Success in Mobile Advertising
Both smartphone and tablet users are searching for locally relevant content at an increasing rate, so much so that mobile user experience as a whole has been affected by the need for location-based information. Mobile networks have seen a massive increase in local search traffic this year, affecting mobile advertising in a big way. Yet the vast majority of mobile advertising doesn’t grasp what it means to be truly local.
Mobile Local Monetization Is Starting to Happen — For Real This Time
Facebook’s mobile Sponsored Story is already showing boosted performance over display ads. For many others, the mobile-first principle will come from location targeting, as its congruence with the use case similarly boosts performance and thus ad rates. For that and other reasons, I’ve forecast location-based ads to lead mobile ad revenues by 2016…
Location-Aware Games Are Engaging Consumers — And Marketers
One retail brand already taking advantage of Rovio’s real-world location-based gaming feature Magic Places is Barnes and Noble. Last summer the company announced that you could take your Nook Color into a physical Barnes & Noble store and use the Mighty Eagle for free to clear levels in Angry Birds. This kind of partnership can become a great method for retailers to drive additional foot traffic and sales…
Startups Compete to Connect Neighbors — But Beware the ‘Empty Room’
A number of new hyperlocal apps have popped up recently to facilitate neighbors’ conversations with one other, but I see three major hurdles to the adoption of these localized services. Local networks require critical mass, they require ringleaders, and they require neighbors who are willing to share online with people near enough to stalk them…
Daily Voice CEO: We’re ‘Far Closer’ to Profitable Than the Competition Is
Zohar Yardeni has served as CEO of the The Daily Voice — a hyperlocal news network of 52 sites in suburban New York and Connecticut and central Massachusetts formerly known as Main Street Connect — since November, 2011. Street Fight checked in with Yardeni recently to see how he and the Daily Voice were competing in their hotly contested local digital space…
With Moasis, Advertisers Can Bid on Mobile Users By Location
Moasis lays a grid over an area, and allows advertisers can pick pieces of the grid, based on location or more complex definitions like type of business, local events, or behavioral aspects. Then, the system assigns a winner. Says CEO Ryan Golden: “It’s like Google Adwords. But instead of bidding for keywords, you’re bidding for piece of land.”
Getting Location Analytics Up to Speed for the Mobile Ad Revolution
The inability to apply value to the key differentiator of mobile (location) is part of the reason why mobile CPMs are still at 20% of desktop CPMs. It’s critical that media buyers push mobile inventory sources to provide location analytics that enable them to make buying decisions based on the unique features associated with mobile…
PODCAST: This Week in Location-Based Marketing — Shopkick, Zoove
In this week’s episode, hosts Rob Woodbridge and Asif Khan discuss South Africa’s Instagram; Shopkick goes national with Macy’s; Skyhook saves batteries; and PayPal acquires Card.IO. Plus stories from Totsy, Recce, Motribe and Geopon, our resource of the week and special guest Joe Gillespie – CEO of Zoove…
With Offbeat Features, Hyperlocals Can Spark Better Engagement
Maybe hyperlocal news sites should take a look at the old Life magazine formula, and see how they could adapt it to their news mix. I’m not saying that local sites should start running pinups. But a steady diet of stories about school budget hearings and local festivals aren’t enough. Why not spice up the homepage with more local feature content — especially stories that have strong visuals…
A Site to Suss Out What a Local Neighborhood Is Actually Like
CEO Ann Montgomery created Nabewise to be an online repository for specific information about neighborhoods in cities around the country — uncovering the type of stuff a local would know, but which someone visiting for the day (perhaps to see if they wanted to move there) would never uncover…
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…