Category Archives: GeoDisruption

Mobile Alone Won’t Cut It

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E-commerce solutions which enable better consumer discovery, make shopping fun and worthwhile, and improve return on marketing investment for brands or retailers, are poised for growth.  I believe that the best solutions will take an integrated view to web and mobile, i.e., standalone mobile apps won’t cut it.  Here are some points to remember that emerge from Google’s new research study “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behavior:”

  • 67% of shopping online is done multi-screen
  • 60% of smartphone use is at home
  • 79% of tablet use is at home
  • Only 30% of shopping on a smartphone is driven by search.  Hence an opening for an new approach to preempt Google from building a dominant approach to smartphone shopping.

Click here for a 34 page pdf of the full study.

GeoStartup Placed hits the 1 Billion Mark

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Placed, a Seattle-based startup, is building one of the largest location-based databases around.

In July I noted that Placed is collecting 400 data points from 300 million locations (per CEO David Shim, as reported by Derrick Harris from GigaOM), i.e., a dataset of 120 billion elements each time it is updated.  Impressive!

Devindra Hardawar from Venturebeat reported in August 2012 that Placed recorded 1 billion data elements in 60 days, which says that Placed may have a long way to go to execute its plan.  In fact, at the current rate the Placed database would be completed by 2032.

In any event, Placed is up to something very intriguing, since it’s one of a few companies that are both “cleaning” location data (to fill out holes where GPS coordinate data is lacking) and adding a robust set of interpretative data (demographics, velocity, location characteristics, etc.) to enable marketers to have actionable intelligence.

In October 2012 the company launched Placed Panels to enable businesses to recruit their own “panels” of consumer participants to gather location data around their own unique interests.

Big Data and the Local Mobile Promise

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Local content and ad delivery continue to get smarter with more context around people, places and how they’re connected, says Michael Boland of BIA/Kelsey.

With smartphone penetration breaking the 50 percent barrier, there is an explosion in geo-data, and various alternatives are emerging to make sense of it.

One approach getting traction is to combine location data with “Big Data” on users (demographic, behaviorial, historical) and contextual data to help marketers extract more useful information.  Examples are Localeze, Sense Networks, PlaceIQ, Placed, Locu, Factual, Urban Mapping, and mobile local ad networks xAd, WHEREads, JiWire.

Read more here.  Are there other approaches possible?  A topic for another day…

October 22 update:  Mike Boland provides an update on the some of the players here.

 

Yodle Challenges the Conventional Local Sales Wisdom

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NYC-based Yodle is perfecting a telemarketing approach to small businesses across the USA.  Yodle sells digital advertising solutions to 30,000 customers and generates about $130 million in revenue.  This post from Kelsey Group explains some of CEO Court Cunnigham’s methods:

Cunningham tells us that by analyzing the metadata around the call activity (call duration, outcome, etc.) it generates for customers, as regular analysis of nearly 150 million keywords has led Yodle to a number of insights that have led Yodle to make tactical decisions that defy conventional wisdom.

One such example involves the number of times a company can contact a sales prospect unsuccessfully before “burning” the lead. Yodle has determined from statistical analysis that it is possible to contact a record (sales prospect) considerably more times (more than 2X) than conventional wisdom suggests.

Cunningham also has a lot of unconventional things to say about sales effectiveness.

“Drive, persistence and optimism are the attributes that equate to success in a sales reps, and everyone knows that,” Cunningham says. “Yet most companies don’t interview for these attributes.”

All Geotargeting Methods are Not Created Equal

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IP targeting can place a user within about 1,000 feet, but more advanced tactics are needed to get a more precise location: Cell tower location, wi-fi  triangulation, cookies, GPS, location-based proximity networks, and of course user-supplied.  This post by Rob Friedman at Streetfight surveys the options.

Local will be an increasing play for national marketers.

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I agree with Mindshare North America CEO Antony Young in this recent article for Ad Age: Major national and international marketers will invest the time and money to take advantage of multi-local marketing.  He reviews recent multi-local strategies from Walmart, L’Oreal, and Nike.

Some of his key points:

“It takes insight into local tastes, local demographics, local issues and local competitors to be relevant and win the consumer.  Organize national, act local is starting to get some traction.

The media are leading the way.  Media properties’ local targeting is increasingly offering more precision. Hyperlocal websites are providing local content and localized national advertising platforms by individual towns.

Most marketers will need a better payout to shift national dollars to local, posing a riddle for the media companies betting so much of their own money on a local strategy.  Data will have to be the compass for media sellers and buyers alike.  Mobile ad network xAd recently published data showing that locally-targeted mobile display ads deliver 5% to 8% click-through rates, compared to 0.6% for typical mobile display ads.

There’s no doubt that local will be an increasing play for national marketers. It’s what brands need to do to engage consumers and grow. However, it is going to be more challenging for marketers to execute and more costly and complex to orchestrate.”

Read Antony’s full piece here.

Can a social network be hyperlocal?

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Betakit has a good overview of the new neighborhood social networks here.  These businesses are hard to scale and require users to be open to their neighbors…not always a welcome thing.  The upside, however, is huge.  Just as facebook encouraged people to share more about themselves, the winner in this segment will figure out a way for neighbors to do the same. The early leader seems to be NextDoor, with $18.6 million from Greylock and Benchmark Capital
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Do daily deals bring new customers?

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A new study of daily deal users is out from Chadwick Martin. Are daily deals are the latest marketing gimmick and likely to peak sometime soon? Key study findings: consumers prefer daily deals that are from a known local business, preferably for a restaurant or entertainment, and for something they already enjoy.  This looks like a cannibalized sale to me. More highlights here.

Also, the New York Times reports that Merchants and Shoppers Sour on Daily Deal Sites.

 

ReachLocal Adds Retargeting for SMBs

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ReachLocal is getting nice traction with its one-stop approach for small businesses to advertise on the web.  MediaPost reports today that ReachLocal is launching a new retargeting platform to bring more advanced tactics to its small business customer.  With 2012 revenues expected to be $450 million (and adjusted EBITDA of around $20 million), ReachLocal is the leading pureplay today in local advertising.