After months of rumors, Amazon has entered the increasingly crowded service pro referral space with a beta test in nine markets. According to a dedicated web site for the launch, service pros will pay Amazon 20 percent for services that…
After months of rumors, Amazon has entered the increasingly crowded service pro referral space with a beta test in nine markets. According to a dedicated web site for the launch, service pros will pay Amazon 20 percent for services that…
Will card-linked offers supplement coupons and advertising for national and local merchants and services? Will financial institutions such as banks and credit card companies take advantage of their access to card data to become major players in ecommerce and media…
Angie's List, which has recently seen a deterioration in its stock as investors have lost confidence in its ability to grow its premium subscription and ad model, has announced that it has gone Mobile First. The changeover is significant because…
Angie's List, which has recently seen a deterioration in its stock as investors have lost confidence in its ability to grow its premium subscription and ad model, has announced that it has gone Mobile First. The changeover is significant because…
32 percent of mobile ad spend in the U.S. is from location targeted campaigns, according to BIA/Kelsey forecast data. But a question that keep coming up is how much of that is from SMBs, as opposed to national companies (brands,…
Big Data is becoming democratized. That was an underlying theme at our SMB Digital Marketing conference. We discussed this in an on-site analyst roundtable posted last month. To continue that discussion, we put together a highlight reel of conference Keynoters…
The end of the year usually means a few things to us: the holidays; our annual predictions; and Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, the industry's flagship event. This year's event is especially hot -- a 2 1/2 day extravaganza…
Marketing automation is a key topic in local advertising these days, as lots of tools previously reserved for large advertisers are becoming "democratized." This is parallels the down market shift happening with big data, an underlying theme at our September…
More than 15 years ago, telecom carriers seemed like the logical candidate to handle ecommerce and other third party billing. But high commissions as high as 30 percent ruled them out for handling most billing accounts, after a fast start…
Forty percent of merchants run some kind of “special” sales or promotions according to a Groupon survey of 25,000+ merchants. Half of the specials are offline, "trapped" on chalkboards and menus, noted Groupon VP of Marketplacest Dan Roarty, who was…
The emergence of geo-targeting and mobile payment and wallet technologies has meant that we talk a lot less about the future of “advertising” than “marketing.” All this was crystal clear this week at the third annual edition of Money2020 in…
Casting a wide net: that's one good way to get over mobile payments' famous "chicken and egg" adoption hump. This comes down to platform ubiquity and compatibility, according to PayPal head of Retail Operations Raja Chakravorti, whom we interviewed at…
We've made no secret about bearish attitudes toward Apple Pay; owing mostly to user acclimation and POS implementation challenges. It requires network effect to gain the scale necessary for any two-sided marketplace to work. It's a classic local chicken &…
We've made no secret about bearish attitudes toward Apple Pay; owing mostly to user acclimation and POS implementation challenges. It requires network effect to gain the scale necessary for any two-sided marketplace to work. It's a classic local chicken &…
The Point of Sales revolution that began with Square’s introduction of its iPhone fob in 2009 has continued unabated. Rising consumer expectations, increased mobile and WiFi access and more tools have made POS a strategic tool that could not have…