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Online restaurant ordering and discovery giants GrubHub and Seamless have agreed to merge their operations, creating a single company. Chicago-based GrubHub currently serves more than 20,000 food ordering establishments in 500 cities, while New York-based Seamless serves more than 12,000 food ordering establishments in 400 U.S. cities plus London.
GrubHub CEO Matt Maloney, …

I recently had the chance to sit down with Kendall Fargo, CEO and founder of Rewarder. Some of you may remember Fargo from his days leading StepUp Commerce, and early leader in what is now the growing area of real time retail inventory data (i.e. Retailigence). StepUp was acquired by Intuit in 2006.
Fargo first founded …

There are rumors swirling this morning that Facebook will acquire Waze. For those unfamiliar, Israeli based Waze is a red hot social navigation app that focuses on traffic conditions among a growing set of features.
If the rumor is true, it makes a lot of sense and is just the next footfall in Facebook’s march towards becoming a …

Though it’s been covered since its release yesterday, we wanted to give a nod to xAd’s latest Mobile-Location Insights Report for Q1, and dive into some of it’s top findings.
The report follows closely behind the Nielsen administered Path to Purchase report which xAd had a key part in, along with Telmetrics. As that study focused on user …

Last week, we made the prediction that Yelp will buy build or partner to bring Vine-like functionality to its mobile products.  This comes in the wake of Yelp’s positive Q1 earnings, and moves by Facebook and Foursquare to compete more directly.
So we’re getting lots of questions about Yelp. There’s a lot to talk about here …

Twitter’s Vine is blowing up for its ability to shoot quick and easy videos. Smartphone saturation and wireless broadband also make it an opportune time. And people are getting creative with the 6 second format.
The ease of use makes me think that we’ll soon see a blooming of vine-type video content in lots of different …

Earlier this week, Placed CEO David Shim notified me that the company’s “Insights” product would be launching today. As we wrote back in October, this is a key piece of the “big data meets local” trend to provide analytics around physical world locations.
In that respect, the best way to think about Placed Insights is comScore …

xAd and Telmetrics today continue their rapid fire series of Path-to-Purchase studies by kicking off the research’s second year.  After doing a study last year and following up with subsequent category drill downs, they launched a UK version. Those past releases can be seen in our coverage.
–Moving Further Down the Path to Purchase
–Telmetrics/xAd Mobile Local …

Will tech companies like Google, Apple, eBay/PayPal, Amazon, Microsoft, Square and Intuit move in on the role traditionally played by banks? It is a distinct possibility in the not-too-distant future, as digitized transactions, mobile payments and offers, and digital wallets usher in a debit-oriented environment that loosens traditional ties to credit cards and bank branch …

As promised in our LSA conference coverage last week, here is a deeper dive on Facebook’s positioning and possible directions in local. I covered the topic in a bit more depth in my monthly Search Engine Watch column, including more comments from Facebook director of SMBs, Dan Levy.
This gains relevance in light of Facebook’s redesign …

After writing about Facebook Director of Small Business Dan Levy’s Interview at the Local Search Association Conference yesterday, I’ve been thinking a lot more about FB’s possible directions in mobile and local (more to come on that).
For now, one thing I did was finally update the Facebook app on my iPhone5. I was looking forward to …

Ads aren’t just valued for bringing in calls and walk ins. Local businesses increasingly place value on consumers looking up maps and directions, or participating in loyalty efforts, notes SuperMedia Director of Mobile Development Chris Folmer, who was speaking on a panel at The Local Search Association conference April 16 in Las Vegas. “There are …

To cap off the Local Search Association Conference, Facebook Director of Small Business Dan Levy fielded questions from Greg Sterling on the past, present and future of Facebook’s SMB marketing activity. In short, FB hasn’t actively done much, but lots can be expected.
So far the volume Facebook has reached among SMBs isn’t too shabby. Citing brand …

Solocal Group CEO Jean-Pierre Remy offered directory publishers a vision for print to digital transformation built on a strong focus on building content, vertical segmentation and a relentless focus on execution. Remy was the keynote speaker at the Local Search Association annual meeting in Las Vegas.
Remy has been at the helm at Solocal (formerly PagesJaunes) …

This afternoon at the Local Search Association Conference in Las Vegas, a panel of mobile ad companies batted around ideas and examples of where they’re seeing efficacy. The panel, moderated by Greg Sterling, included:
Tim Garcia, Vice President, Business Development, Moasis
Dan Hight, Vice President of Strategic Partnerships, xAd
Tae Kim, Head of Channel Partnerships (Multi-Segment), …

Today at the Local Search Association conference, Bob Sanders, President and COO, AXIOM Sales Force Development, zeroed in on some strategies for sales organizations to deal with quickly changing marketplaces.
As was discussed in this morning’s SMB session, it’s a challenging environment to sell local media and advertising. The size of that long tail market has …

To kick off the Local Search Association conference in Las Vegas, we saw lots of data on where SMBs are in the current environment of media transformation, and what it means for providers of local advertising.
Greg Sterling, Senior Analyst, Opus Research
Neal Polachek, Advisor, vSplash
According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, there are 27 …

Following our preview of Telmetrics and xAd’s “Path to Purchase,” UK edition, the data are out today. This is the latest in the ongoing data series that tracks consumer behavior throughout the purchase funnel. There are lots of interesting findings here and in past releases:
–Telmetrics/xAd Mobile Local Data, Take 3: Restaurants
–Telmetrics and xAd Release Second …

We’ve been watching a growing trend in Local Media where advertising providers are facing the SMB “fragmentation” challenge by finding clever back door ways into their wallets.
This isn’t necessarily new but it’s taking on new forms, and finding more fertile ground in today’s mobile environment. One way it’s happening is by offering other services that …

Mobile analytics provider Flurry announced today that it will launch its own real time bidding (RTB) mobile ad exchange known as the Flurry Marketplace.
The new exchange will be integrated with its supply-side platform AppSpot, and reach more than 300 million monthly uniques. Advertisers can bid on billions of impressions per month, segmented by app, app …