The great location marketing roll-up is in full swing. In recent months, we’ve seen a flurry of merger/acquisition activity from location marketing vendors (including mine) across North America. Significant M&A activity has ranged from Snapchat’s acquisition of Placed to Gannett/ReachLocal acquiring SweetIQ. The location marketing roll-up is more than a story of vendors increasing scale….
Square is buying website creator Weebly. Weebly has free and paid website products. The transaction is valued at $365 million, comprised of a mix of cash and Square stock. Square said in its press release that it will now be able to offer “one cohesive solution to start or grow an omnichannel business”: Today, it…
Yesterday, The Infatuation, a restaurant discovery platform, announced it is set to purchase the popular restaurant review platform, Zagat, from Google. This acquisition will broaden The Infatuation’s profile and add to its vast network of restaurant reviews and guides and will introduce Zagat data to its “highly engaged, millennial audience.” From a search perspective, restaurants are…
The local marketing space has seen several “deals” in the past few weeks spanning everything from acquisitions to partnerships to tech integrations. These deals are broad in scope that seek to support many areas of the local space including SMB websites, call tracking, keyword optimization and more. Here are summaries from the various partnerships: Mono…
GoDaddy is set to acquire social media marketing company Main Street Hub for $125 million. Main Street Hub, which focuses on marketing automation, CRM, social media, and reputation management, helps GoDaddy broaden its already vast cloud platform. The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of 2018. Current Main Street Hub co-CEOs and…
Legal directory Avvo, which was founded in 2006 as a kind of “Yelp for lawyers,” has been acquired for an undisclosed amount by Internet Brands, which is itself owned by private equity. The company will now be part of the holding company’s “legal vertical,” which includes Lawyers.com, Martindale-Hubbell and Nolo.com. Avvo raised well over $100 million of…
As local media and marketing companies seek to offer a full-stack of marketing services to SMBs, mergers, acquisitions and overall consolidation continues around the industry. Earlier this week Web.com announced the acquisition of Acquisio for an undisclosed sum. Yesterday, SMB solution provider UpCurve, powered by ThriveHive which is the digital arm of GateHouse Media, has…
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, roughly 16 million people in the US work in retail in one capacity or another. As retailers close more stores a growing number of these jobs are at risk. And while the second quarter brought good news to some retailers in the beleaguered sector, the closing of Amazon’s acquisition of Whole Foods should add more…
Snap Inc., the company behind the popular messaging app Snapchat, has experienced its share of turbulence since going public in March 2017. The company’s journey hit a particularly low point this week when its stock fell below the IPO price of $17 per share. But if Snap’s recent moves are any indication, the company has…
From news and commentary to stats and studies, we cover a variety of topics here on LSA Insider. Based on article views, shares and comments, here are the top ten most popular posts from Q2 2017: 1. 8 Changes to Google My Business: What You Need to Know (June 8, 2017) Joy Hawkins, a Google My…
