The march towards a new generation of marketplaces was clearly in evidence this week in Las Vegas, as the 4th edition of Money2020 attracted a huge, 10,000+ person ecosystem of financial players that all want a piece of the new…
Pinterest has great goals for its new Buyable Pins program, which it believes will make social commerce relevant again, and mobile shopping usable. During a keynote at Cardlinx’s “Data Driven Commerce” event Sept. 22 in Bellevue, WA, Pinterest’s Head of…
Bank AmeriDeals was launched in 2012 with the most ambitious marketing effort in the card linked offer space. Since then, the promotions program has given BoA insight into spending for over 35 million accounts, and helped deepen customer and merchant…
Microsoft continues to push ahead with its card linked offer program, which has been in Beta in Washington, Arizona and Massachusetts since May. But since we last wrote about it in April, the program has been rebranded from Bing Offers…
LivingSocial – which has played Avis to Groupon’s Hertz in the prepaid space – has been in retrench mode under new CEO Gautam Thakar. Today, it announced a new Card Linked Offer (CLO) loyalty program for restaurants called Restaurants Plus.…
Will logistics and delivery provide a key strategic advantage in local commerce? That’s the hope of players like Google, Amazon, Uber, Sidecar and Postmates. As we have previously noted, each hopes to get a leg up on the economics of…
A lot of attention has been paid to "last mile" delivery, marketing and management issues for businesses. Most of it has been focused on retail solutions (i.e. Walmart, Amazon, Google and eBay). But what about last mile issues for local…
Shopping Malls get a lot of foot traffic, but other than some email and newsletter marketing, haven’t really had success parlaying their brand and their consumer loyalty to online marketing efforts. Starwood Retail Partners is seeking to change that with…
Cheap deliveries will drive impulse buys and new revenues: or at least, that's the hope of a number of new local commerce players. Uber and Sidecar -- high profile on demand leaders -- have seized on the strategic value of delivery (along…
We like vertical specialization for local marketing, and have long admired the approach of G5, the Bend, Ore- based local marketing firm that started with a focus on self-storage unit owners in 2005, and later added senior housing, multi-unit property…
A new era of big data analysis and automation has been heralded in by the rise of programmatic advertising. But what is the actual impact on local? That’s the subject of BIA/Kelsey’s new insight paper: Defining the Local Stake in…
A slew of membership-based loyalty plays such as Belly, Five Stars, SpotOn, MOGL, Spring, Perka, Thanx and others launched around 2011 to focus more on customer loyalty than new customer acquisitions. The business model: charge SMBs monthly fees; recognize customers…
Mapping is poised to be one of the next critical elements of local search, discovery and delivery. As mapping develops, its ramifications on localizing big commerce, the rise of local delivery services, and the development of the connected car loom…
We lose track of the incremental changes in our culture that digital has wrought. But shopping has really changed. The core components of shopping -- Search and discovery, promotions, prices, inventory, instore browsing, checkout, pickup and delivery, store locations and…
Scheduling software programs for SMBs have had their ups and downs since they were initially introduced in the 2008-2009 timeframe. But the emergence of cloud platforms and the use of scheduling as an anchor for loyalty and leads programs suggests…
Groupon today announced it would join the online food delivery space, acquiring Baltimore-based OrderUp, which has O&O and affiliated delivery service in 40 markets. Most of the markets are college towns, which is a strongpoint for food delivery. As Crain’s…
Chicago-based Centro, which helps provide targeted ad solutions to 13,000 publishers -- 4,000 at any given time -- says it is refocusing on providing publishers with complete Demand Side solutions that integrate first party data targeting, hyperlocal mobile tools, digital extensions…
The last player standing in the hyperlocal neighbor wars might be considered NextDoor, which has raised over $210 million from several major VCs on the basis of converting a mountain of neighborhoods and neighbors to targeted advertising dollars. We’d like…
Competition in the home services leads space has been heating up -- and so are the tensions. Just this week, Angie's List has filed suit against Amazon, contending that Amazon Home Services has been egregiously signing up for the member's-only service…
eBay’s one-time dream of anchoring its large classifieds/marketplace business with Craigslist as now officially ended. Last week, eBay accepted a cash buyout from Craigslist for its 28.4 percent stake, allowing eBay to focus on splitting off its multi-billion dollar PayPal…
