E-commerce Archives

Click-to-Call Ads: $4 Billion in 2014 — How Much Is Local?

Tweet Today Marchex released a report on click-to-call ads and keyword attribution. As part of the report the company estimated that, based on its understanding of the market, internal SEM data and publicly released Google call volumes, marketers spent roughly $4 billion on mobile search using call extensions on Google and Bing (mostly Google). In […]

Report: Amazon to Buy Some of Radio Shack’s Stores for Offline Retail

Tweet It appears that Radio Shack is going out of business. Sprint is reportedly buying some of its stores; but more interestingly, according to Bloomberg, Amazon is thinking about buying some of the Radio Shack outlets as well: Amazon.com Inc., aiming to bolster its brick-and-mortar operations, has discussed acquiring some RadioShack Corp. locations after the […]

Two Major ‘Local Metatrends’ of 2014

Tweet There have been a lot of year-end roundups and predictions posts over the past two weeks. I participated in a couple of those for ReachLocal and StreetFight. I specifically declined to do that here. Now however I want to offer an abbreviated year in review post. Looking forward to 2015, there are lots of interesting things happening […]

Death to the Click: Google ‘Store Visits’ Watershed Moment for Ad Measurement

Tweet Google isn’t the first company to start measuring offline store visits. Facebook has done it; so has xAd, NinthDecimal, PlaceIQ, Placed and others. Indeed, those in the mobile ad space have been doing it for some time. Yet Google’s introduction today of a new “Store Visits” metric is a watershed moment. As I say in […]

Cyber Monday’s $2 Billion in Perspective

Tweet ComScore is out with data trumpeting the single biggest day in US e-commerce history. This year, according to the measurement firm, Cyber Monday sales were just over $2 billion — a new single day record. There are conflicting numbers from various sources about whether there was positive or negative growth this year for the big holiday weekend. […]

Right Time and Place for Curbside

Tweet Curbside a new mobile shopping app has formally launched with almost $10 million in funding. Jaron Waldman is CEO. He was the head of the “Geo Team” at Apple following the acquisition of his mapping startup Placebase. Simply put, Curbside taps into the “buy online, pick up in-store” infrastructure of major retailers such as […]

ReachLocal Co-Founders Back in SERVIZ with New Marketplace

Tweet ReachLocal co-founders Zorik Gordon and Michael Kline have formally launched SERVIZ. The successor to ReachLocal’s ClubLocal, which was spun out when the two left the company, they call SERVIZ “an on-demand home services company.” I might use the more descriptive term “end-to-end marketplace.” Regardless of the precise terminology, SERVIZ joins a segment of companies […]

YP Dives Deeper into Transactions with GrubHub Food Delivery Deal

Tweet YP has gotten more deeply into transactions with the addition of food-ordering and delivery service GrubHub. The new capability will be available on YP.com and the YP mobile app. It complements hotel and restaurant booking already enabled in the YP app, and it’s another third party relationship intended to enhance the content and functionality […]

More than Half of Top 25 Google AdWords Spenders Sell Mostly Offline

Tweet AdAge published a list, based on multiple sources, of Google’s top 25 AdWords advertisers in 2013. Together they spent $1.34 billion on paid search in the US according to the analysis. There’s no breakdown of how much of this is mobile. Amazon is the single largest spender. However, what’s interesting is that roughly half or slightly […]

Will Square ‘Inevitably’ Creep into SMB Marketing Services?

Tweet One of the several co-sponsors of yesterday’s Facebook Fit event was Square. I had a very interesting conversation with the company about its just-announced Caviar acquisition and its expanding product portfolio. For the time being at least Caviar seems to be just about restaurants. There’s been considerable adoption of Square Stand (Register) in the […]

About Greg

Greg Sterling is VP of Strategy & Insights for the LSA. His research is focused on the impact of digital media on offline consumer purchase behavior.

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