What’s Snapchat’s Local Play?
Snap continues to make moves in local commerce. Historic steps include geo-filters, while more recent activity includes Local Lenses and business listings in Snap Map. These features are notable on their own, but they get more interesting when you view them together and extrapolate to Snap’s local road map.
For example, Snap has more 13-34-year-olds active than any other channel, including Facebook and Instagram. This essentially means Snap can offer SMBs incremental and non-duplicated reach to an attractive audience.
Snapchat’s “Promote Local Place”: The Deeper Dive
Snapchat’s 200 million users can now use Snap Map to find businesses in addition to finding friends. These two activities can go hand in hand if friends are discovered nearby on the map when users are planning local adventures.
But what matters most for local is that Snap will now let businesses promote themselves in the map interface, adding a key option for local advertising. This will happen on a self-serve basis for both SMBs and multi-location brands.
5 Privacy-Focused Mapping Solutions
Mainstream navigation apps like Google Maps and Waze seem to dominate the marketplace, but consumers who are interested in maintaining as much online privacy as possible have options to choose from, too.
Innovative mapping and navigation companies are launching new platforms with user privacy in mind. Framing themselves as the “private” alternative to general use navigation apps, these platforms collect minimal personal data from users and often work without tracking user locations.
Here are five examples of privacy-focused mapping platforms.
Google Integrates Food Delivery into Search, Maps, Assistant
More or less following the model of Reserve with Google, which has seamlessly integrated the process of reserving a table at a nearby restaurant into SERPs, Google is now integrating food delivery into search, Maps, and Assistant, keeping consumers on Google properties for the entire journey as they make transactions via third-party couriers.
At I/O, Google Offers a New Vision for Local Search
The notion of “helping you get things done,” emphasized by Sundar Pichai in his I/O keynote, provides a through-line for many of the event’s announcements. It struck me watching the presentations how thoroughly Google has become a consumer electronics company, a marketer of devices where search is more a central feature than a standalone product. Google, in other words, has become thoroughly dedicated to marketing its famous search capabilities in the context of devices that help you perform daily tasks. In the process, it is transforming local search and how we relate to the world with electronic devices.
Lead Gen Spam: Bad for the Consumer, Bad for Business, and Bad for the Local Ecosystem
Blumenthal to Mihm, on lead gen spam: The real issue for me is that Google Maps is really like a public utility, and Google is not doing enough to protect the consumers of that product. There is significant harm in the deception of the consumer, the blocking out of legitimate businesses, and the possibility that the consumer public will lose trust in the whole, creaky house of cards.
Heard on the Street, Episode 10: Apple, Amazon, and Localized Brand Marketing
How are multi-location businesses shifting their local ad spend? What do Apple’s latest mapping moves mean for local search? And what’s Amazon’s master plan for advertising and commerce? These are a few of the topics we bat around in an analyst roundtable for the latest episode of the Heard on the Street podcast.
Dstillery Launches Data Visualization Tool Dscover Maps, Fueled by Quality Audience Profiles
On Monday, applied data science company Dstillery of New York City launched its Dscover Maps product, which allows advertisers to get a big-picture view of audience data by geography. Dstillery throws out data points that aren’t useful to them—about 60 to 75% of data—leaving only quality information.
Will Apple Help Assemble the ‘Internet of Places’?
The AR cloud is the missing piece in the vision we all have for how AR should work. It’s the spatial map of the world that will let AR devices understand their surroundings. Taking this into account, the news that Apple is collecting its own data for Apple Maps may have implications for AR.
Why 2016 Will Be a Big Year for iOS 9
Apple has established a new standard for conducting “nearby” searches, thanks to an enhancement to the Apple Spotlight search functionality. This moves the consumer down the path to purchase in a few significant ways, including proactive local search content and results that change by time of day.
Street Fight Daily: In-N-Out Burger Sues DoorDash, Uber Partners with TomTom
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… In-N-Out Burger Sues DoorDash for Delivering Its Food Without Permission (Recode)… Uber Signs Digital Mapping Deal with TomTom (New York Times)… Angie’s List Shares Surge After Company Rejects IAC Offer (USA Today)…
Street Fight Daily: Yahoo Signs a Search Deal with Google, MapQuest Launches Brand Refresh
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… Yahoo Has Signed a Deal with Google to Provide Search Ads (Business Insider)… MapQuest Wants You to Love It Again (The Next Web)… Google Discloses More Search Data to Woo Retailers (Wall Street Journal)…
5 Tools for Targeting Customers Based On Their Historic Locations
Where consumers have been is just as important as where they’re going. Being able to track the historical — and in some cases, even future — locations of a consumer makes it possible for retailers and brands to strategically target mobile ads to the places where they know their customers are likely to be. Here are five tools that businesses can use to target customers based on where they’ve been…
Street Fight Daily: YP Buys Sense Networks, Taskrabbit Delivers Cold Medicine
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology.… YP, a Mobile Search Firm, Buys Sense Networks (New York Times)… Walgreens Taps TaskRabbit to Deliver Cold Medicine to Shut-Ins (Mashable)… Facebook WiFi Comes to Some Netgear Routers, Allowing Small Businesses to Offer Free WiFi access (The Next Web)…
Street Fight Daily: Apple Moves iOS Into Car, Yelp Revamps Nearby
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Apple Announces ‘iOS in the Car,’ Offers Access to Maps, Messages, and More (Verge)… Just like Foursquare, Yelp Now Recommending Nearby Places (CNet)… Mobile Companies Crave Maps That Live and Breath With Data (New York Times)…
Street Fight Daily: Locu Launches Dashboard, eBay Pushes Into Services
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology.… Locu’s Menu Dashboard Is a Rare Win for Developers and Merchants (PandoDaily)… EBay Is Now Selling Live Services, Launches Secretguru As A Beta Pilot In The UK (TechCrucnh)… Toyota Unveils Super-Compact Car With Location-Based Ads (PMashable)…
Channels Are the New Citations
Enter Phase Three. As my column’s title suggests, I would argue that the old concept of citation building has largely lost its relevance, and that thinking of the local network as a system of channels — parallel, somewhat independent sources of consumer traffic — is a more appropriate paradigm for where we are now.
In all, there are approximately 10 independent sites and site categories that together make up the primary channels where any business should be well represented in order to be competitive.