Button, the New York-based developer of mobile deep-linking integration tools for use in local on-demand services, announced the launch of Uber integration into third-party applications. Foursquare used the tools to add a button to its location-based social sharing application to add the ability to book an Uber ride.

When Foursquare members search for a location, Button’s tool passes location and contextual information, such as the name of a restaurant in addition to the address, to Uber. The data is used to generate a location- and customer-specific Uber car ordering button which is placed in the user’s Foursquare interface. It simplifies the user experience substantially and, BIA/Kelsey believes, represents how previously isolated applications on a mobile device can be combined to create new marketing opportunities. Uber, for example, will be providing Foursquare customers a special code for a discount on their ride. Although terms were not disclosed, the Button tool also provides Foursquare an opportunity to monetize its searches for transportation-related services.

“Within mobile, consumers are largely intolerant of ads and other elements that detract from a consumer’s journey,” Button co-founder and CEO Michael Jaconi told us. “You’re seeing an emergence [of] ‘buttons’ from all the titans of industry — seeking to match intent with its fulfillment — and many of these use cases must happen across app borders. That simplicity, that design, and the value that these app connections create is what we’ve set out build at Button.”

Mobile apps are typically “sandboxed” within the mobile operating system, preventing them from sharing any data with other apps. This adds complexity to the customer’s simplest tasks when moving between app screens. For example, iOS assigns completely separate protocols to each app running on an iPhone and all communication to and from the app must be routed through the app protocol. Button essentially scripts exchanges of data between apps, using either the local device’s internal connections or acting as an Internet intermediary between the device and multiple services to deliver integration in the user interface.

“Using Button simplified the process of integrating Uber into Foursquare. With a few lines of code we were able to create a seamless experience when requesting an Uber built directly into our app, saving us time and effort,” said Foursquare SVP of product management Noah Weiss in a release.

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Button cofounder Chris Maddern will be speaking at BIA/Kelsey NOW: Rise of the Local On-Demand Economy next week in San Francisco. Join us and save $100 by using the discount code “MR100″ when registering.

The post Button Integrates Uber Into Third-party Apps appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The rhetoric in local media has changed dramatically in the past five years, particularly as mobile and big data collide. Part of that is to take the analytics we’ve grown to love on the desktop and bring them to the offline world (where most commerce happens).

Many of the local data and mobile ad attribution players we’ve been covering are leading this charge. It’s all about tracking offline behavior through myriad mobile device signals in order to determine ad attribution, or build predictive models for future behavior.

xAd is one of those players; in the recent launch of its “footprints” analytics products, it likened location data as “a new kind of digital cookie”. This clever way of characterizing location is catching on; it was also stated at our May Atlanta conference.

In my interview with the Location Based Marketing Association president Asif Kahn, we unpack this term he previously coined. That and other key topics in local (fate of Foursquare/Swarm) are included in the full video below.

Navigate the 15 minute interview through the chapter links above the video, and stay tuned for more conference video on a weekly basis. We’l continue to post as we gear up for our next show: SMB Digital Marketing in New Orleans in September.

Video Chapter Links

Is location the new cookie?
Is “indoors” where the future of location based marketing resides?
Is Facebook a sleeping giant in location based marketing?

The post Conference Video: Location is the “New Cookie” appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The rhetoric in local media has changed dramatically in the past five years, particularly as mobile and big data collide. Part of that is to take the analytics we’ve grown to love on the desktop and bring them to the offline world (where most commerce happens).

Many of the local data and mobile ad attribution players we’ve been covering are leading this charge. It’s all about tracking offline behavior through myriad mobile device signals in order to determine ad attribution, or build predictive models for future behavior.

xAd is one of those players; in the recent launch of its “footprints” analytics products, it likened location data as “a new kind of digital cookie”. This clever way of characterizing location is catching on; it was also stated at our May Atlanta conference.

In my interview with the Location Based Marketing Association president Asif Kahn, we unpack this term he previously coined. That and other key topics in local (fate of Foursquare/Swarm) are included in the full video below.

Navigate the 15 minute interview through the chapter links above the video, and stay tuned for more conference video on a weekly basis. We’l continue to post as we gear up for our next show: SMB Digital Marketing in New Orleans in September.

Video Chapter Links

Is location the new cookie?
Is “indoors” where the future of location based marketing resides?
Is Facebook a sleeping giant in location based marketing?

The post Conference Video: Location is the "New Cookie" appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

We’re now 30 days into Foursquare’s “unbundling” and launch of its new Swarm app. The move was pretty contentious, including lots of industry chatter and punditry. Asif Khan and I discussed it on stage last month at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference in Atlanta.

Where does that leave us and what is the BIA/Kelsey take on where Foursquare should or could move from here? I examined all the moving parts (as best I could in 700 words) in my monthly Street Fight column. See below for an excerpt and click through for the full column.

We’ll continue to pay close attention to this key player in location based mobile media. Let us know your take.

Foursquare’s contentious app unbundling took place exactly one month ago. Timed incidentally with this monthly column and the eve of Street Fight Summit West, it could be a good time to examine the temperature from media, analysts like me, and — most of all — users. The latter is of course the key question.

Vitals include whether or not Foursquare die-hards will migrate to Swarm. More importantly, will peeling off social and location tracking features to Swarm make Foursquare proper the more broadly applicable and mainstream-friendly local discovery engine it’s hoping to be?

The yin and yang of Foursquare and Swarm will be the key to answering these questions. Foursquare VP of Sales Rob Wilk told BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference last month that the two apps will share the same data backbone. And it will be a rich one, based on the pervasive behavioral tracking of Swarm’s intended power users.

Backing up, Foursquare has been saying for years that it wants to move away from the check-in and be known as a local discovery engine that’s fueled by all that past check-in data. I’ve always thought this to be logically flawed because what will be the source of ongoing data (local data requires a high refresh rate) if it kills the check-in?

Swarm is the answer to that question. If it’s able to scale usage, pervasive tracking will create one of the richest and constantly refreshed behavioral data sets in local (Facebook’s proximity play looms with massive volume). Then Foursquare can become the predictive engine that Dennis Crowley told me three years ago that he wanted to build.

Read more…

The post 30 Days Into the Cross-Pollination of Foursquare/Swarm appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The convergence of ‘local-local’ and ‘national-local‘ was in full swing on Day 1 of BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local: The National Impact conference yesterday in Atlanta.

AAA, Aflac, AutoTrader, Balihoo, Living Social, Fourquare, LocalVox, Two Men and a Truck, Yodle, YP were among the big names crowding the stage on Day 1. A number of key themes emerged. One is the amount of creativity being applied to the national-local challenge, which came through in the talk from Living Social’s Mitch Spolan. Another is the degree to which technology and automation are helping solve the inherent scale issues involved in national to local. This theme came through loud and clear in the “Local Imperative” Superforum and the Leading in Local Demos.

Here are some of the “aha” moments from yesterday’s sessions.

Before the Bell Insight Session: Local Search and the Keys to Discovery

This pre-conference session was probably the most SMB focused conversation of the event so far. The discussion honed in on the challenges and opportunities in local search. Some key moments:

Trevor Sumner, CEO, LocalVox talked about the confusion in the local search marketplace and how daunting it is for small-businesses. “What SMBs really want is a hug.” Meaning SMBs are overwhelmed with decisions to make about media. Make it simple for them. “Content creation is huge for national brands. Let’s bring that opportunity to local.”

Chuck Lee, VP Marketing, YP: Competition with small, local digital agencies is a big challenge for large media companies like YP. The only way to compete, in his view, is to “sacrifice margin for the lifetime value of the client.” Lee made the point the high customer acquisition costs will kill a company much faster than a high cost of customer service.

BIA/Kelsey Leadership: Why National Is Key to Local Success

BIA/Kelsey CEO Tom Buono and Managing Director Rick Ducey set the stage for the event with a thematic framework supported by data. National advertisers are increasing their spending in these local markets to target consumers in specific geographic areas. While they still spend on nationwide networks (e.g., NBC, ESPN), they are increasing their spending with local media companies such as local radio and television stations, and local online properties.

Overall BIA/Kelsey expects national advertisers to increase their spending in local markets from $50.2 billion in 2013 to 68.9 billion in 2018, growing at a 6.5 percent compounded annual growth rate.

AutoTrader founder Chip Perry joined Buono and Ducey for a conversation about the challenges of building a national-local business. A few of Chip’s insights:
— Price appropriately, find and serve the unmet needs, and make buying easier are key ingredients Perry offers for successfully disrupting an industry and scaling to success.
— Taking Autotrader.com from zero to $1.5 billion was supported by an innovative Cox Media but it also took entrepreneurial vision, willingness to be open to trying new things and commitment over time to reach goals, not short term profits.

Keynote: Rob Wilk, Foursquare

Rob Wilk runs sales at Foursquare, the check-in app, and is looking for ways to help helping national brands connect with local consumers. Last week Foursquare made the decision to move to a two-app approach, a decision that has drawn some flack for diluting its use case.

“Local is the intersection of interest and discovery,” Wilk said, explaining how its service now offers a core discovery engine, plus a separate app for social interaction (Swarm). Wilk defended this choice by saying consumer behavior strongly supports the idea of single use apps.

Mobile is Foursquare’s DNA. And as Wilk said, “Local is mobile.” This mirrors a theme BIA/Kelsey has been talking about with its clients, how advertisers are increasingly using multiple mobile channels to reach local customers, and mobile consumers are off the charts in terms of their proximity to purchase. Foursquare users are high engagement mobile users, and are 352 percent more likely to use their smartphone to find a location than the average consumer.

Keynote: Mitch Spolan, Living Social

Yahoo veteran Spolan has been at Living Social for three years, now with the job EVP Global Retain. His focus is on helping big brands use deals and Living Social’s marketing platform to reach new customer segments. Living Social is bringing a lot of creativity and innovation to helping national brands. Spolan gave a quick and energetic view of how Living Social is going well beyond deals to drive local engagement for national brands. A few highlights from Mitch’s talk:

— “Deals are very, very powerful for many brands,” but the deals themselves only represent part of the overall opportunity that brands have in working with deals companies and their millions of local customers.”

— LivingSocial positions itself as offering daily inspiration on things to do locally, travel adventures, and fabulous products, all while giving you fantastic deals and discounts.

— “The company is mostly focused on providing an “integrated experience” that tie brands to Living Social customers. For instance, Living Social provides local specific experiences as part of its brand promotion deal with Miller Coors’ Redd Apple Ale — and “Miller Coors is not selling its products on Living Social.”

The post At Leading in Local: The National Impact: Day 1 Highlights appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

During his kickoff keynote today at Leading in Local: The National Impact, Foursquare VP of Sales Rob Wilk asserted that his company sits at the intersection of interest and discovery. This has remained unchanged since its 2008 launch at SXSW he says, despite many product evolutions.

His comments come close in the wake of Foursquare’s controversial move last week to unbundle it’s flagship app into two apps. This has been argued by some to fragment its use case. It now has the core local discovery engine, and the separate social activity app for finding nearby friends.

The latter takes form in its new Swarm app while the former will be positioned for a broader mainstream audience. The thought was that some of the features now being peeled out for Swarm were holding the main app back from this broader appeal… and the growth that comes with it.

Wilk also argued that these are two inherently different use cases that should be able to develop on  their own. This echoes the recently well covered comments of Mark Zuckerberg who has similarly unbuldled the “big blue app” and has lots of orbiting apps such as Instagram, Messenger, Paper, etc.

For Foursquare, Wilk characterized these divergent use cases as suggestions and local discovery (main app); and “keeping up and meeting up” (Swarm). He even used “Where you at?” as an unofficial tagline — reminiscent Loopt’s early mantra around similar social/local ambitions.

Interestingly, despite the bifurcation of app front ends, they’ll share the same data backbone. That makes sense considering the rich data that each will uncover about location based sentiment, and the company’s longstanding data-driven DNA. That’s what all those check-ins were for.

The jury is still out on app unbundling, but the single-function paradigm of the app marketplace (“do one thing and do it well”) has proven out in lots of ways. That gains additional support from Facebook’s strategic endorsement. And it has historical significance according to Wilk.

“It will be similar to the de-portalization we saw on the web,” he said.

The post At Leading in Local: The National Impact: Foursquare Makes a Strong Case for App Unbundling appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

BIA/Kelsey, forecasting $52.9 Billion in national local spending by 2017, has unveiled its new Leading in Local: The National Impact conference, which will take place in Atlanta May 7-9.

The 2.5 Day event is expected to be the largest gathering of national brands and local marketing players that has ever taken place. Brands, franchises, multi-location stores and others will be the focus.

We’re ready with national local’s top leaders, including Weather Company Global Revenue Officer Curt Hecht; Gannett/G/O Digital SVP Mark Marinacci; Foursquare VP of Sales Rob Wilks; Living Social SVP Mitch Spolan; AutoTrader Founder Chip Perry; YP EVP & GM of Digital Markets David Lebow; ReachLocal SVP John Gould; Yodle VP Corey O’Donnell; MediaVest EVP Maribeth Papuga; and many other leading innovators.

A number of speakers will be accompanied by top brands they are working with. The list already includes marketing leaders at brands such as Scion, Two Men and a Truck, Genghis Grill, and PostNet. BIA/Kelsey is also holding The GOLOCAL Awards for brands, which will include an on stage presentation.

This isn’t your typical “local” event. It’s all new, it’s all important. And it’s all here. Register.

The post ‘National Brands, Local Marketing': BIA/Kelsey’s Spring Event is May 7-9 in Atlanta appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

BIA/Kelsey, forecasting $52.9 Billion in national local spending by 2017, has unveiled its new Leading in Local: The National Impact conference, which will take place in Atlanta May 7-9.

The 2.5 Day event is expected to be the largest gathering of national brands and local marketing players that has ever taken place. Brands, franchises, multi-location stores and others will be the focus.

We’re ready with national local’s top leaders, including Weather Company Global Revenue Officer Curt Hecht; Gannett/G/O Digital SVP Mark Marinacci; Foursquare VP of Sales Rob Wilks; Living Social SVP Mitch Spolan; AutoTrader Founder Chip Perry; YP EVP & GM of Digital Markets David Lebow; ReachLocal SVP John Gould; Yodle VP Corey O’Donnell; MediaVest EVP Maribeth Papuga; and many other leading innovators.

A number of speakers will be accompanied by top brands they are working with. The list already includes marketing leaders at brands such as Scion, Two Men and a Truck, Genghis Grill, and PostNet. BIA/Kelsey is also holding The GOLOCAL Awards for brands, which will include an on stage presentation.

This isn’t your typical “local” event. It’s all new, it’s all important. And it’s all here. Register.

The post 'National Brands, Local Marketing': BIA/Kelsey's Spring Event is May 7-9 in Atlanta appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Cohen said Foursquare has developed relationships with tens of thousands of businesses on both the national franchise side and local SMB side. It targets both equally because that’s the way consumers actually do things, he said. To date, there have been 381,576,305 check-ins in every country. The record result was 30,525 check-ins at Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s rally to restore sanity.

Cohen also noted that the company is being cautious in its strategy of publishing local business coupons. “There is a danger of coupons becoming a little bit marginalized if it is overwhelmingly about the $100 off space, or 80 percent,” he said. Those consumers are never coming back. Such a heavy discount “big front end” model like “Groupon and its 400 competitors. I’m not sure how sustainable the demand is for that.” Ultimately, it is not about cents off, but about experience and recognition, said Cohen.

The post ILM East: Foursquare Aims for SMBs (and National Marketers) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The program for ILM East, March 21-23 in Boston, is now mostly set, with a lot of action-packed sessions and speakers that represent the state of the art — and also the fast, fast, fast evolution of local from even ILM:10, which was in early December.

It is all kind of exciting. The latest news from us is that Foursquare GM Evan Cohen will keynote on Day 1 — representing a great one-two punch with Harvard’s David Weinberger, a leading thinker on social media and commerce (and co-author of “The Cluetrain Manifesto,” among other works).

Cohen, who was a leader at Bebo prior to Foursquare (and whose roots are with Jupiter Research), has been helping redefine where “check-in” media fits into the local economy. Hint: It goes well beyond games.

We are also set for our Deal-a-Day and Offers SuperForum, to which we are dedicating the ENTIRE morning of Day 3. With LivingSocial CEO Tim O’Shaughnessy kicking off the proceedings, we could call it “What do you do after you sell 1.3 million Amazon coupons in 24 hours?”

Other highlights of the session include Gilt City President Nate Richardson, who will discuss the company’s big effort in local flash sales. And we’ll have some great analysis of the deal-a-day space — complete with hardcore data — from Jim Moran of Yipit, Ken Kalb of Analog Analytics and Jonty Kelt of Group Commerce.

We’ll end the morning sessions with coupons in perspective by RedPlum/Valassis Exec Brian Costello, and some of the interesting new models that have been introduced into the marketplace by Jim Boutin of Local Thunder, James Greene of Travidia’s FindnSave platform and Victoria Ransom of Wildfire Apps.

ILM East is full of actionable content and research; you can pick and choose what’s important to you. We have our SMB panel of local advertisers (always a highlight); our “Hyper Relevant” targeting panel with key execs from Yahoo, Gannett, AOL and The Washington Post; Facebook’s Maz Sharafi on local monetization; Yext CEO Howard Lerman’s discussion of local tagging; to AT&T’s analysis of vertical opportunities; to U-Haul and Progressive Insurance’s discussion of local search. Mike Boland’s Mobile SuperForum on Day 2 is another standout section of the show.

Believe it or not, there is still more to come. See you in Boston? Register now (earlier bird pricing is ending).

The post ILM East Update: Foursquare, Deal-a-Day Forum, MORE appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.