Last week Snapchat made two big moves in location. It bought location analytics company Placed for between $125 and $200 million. It also licensed Factual’s Global Places database. The Placed acquisition helps Snapchat deliver enhanced audience data and offline attribution metrics to advertisers. The Factual partnership improves the user experience of location tools on the platform….
The coming merger between IAC’s HomeAdvisor and Angie’s List may signal a new round of consolidation in the local space. Yelp’s purchases of Nowait and Turnstyle are other recent acquisitions, as sites seek to build services and bulk up to fight Google and Facebook. The IAC-Angie’s List deal also mirrors other trends (verticalization and operational…
Undoubtedly you’ve read that Wal-Mart is buying startup (and would-be Amazon killer) Jet.com for a whopping $3 billion. The strategy is simple at the highest level: buy an entity that will make Wal-Mart more competitive with Amazon online. According to various reports, e-commerce represents less than 3% of Wal-Mart’s roughly $480 billion in revenue. Wal-Mart…
Verizon is buying Yahoo for $4.83 billion in cash, which follows the telecom company’s $4.4 billion acquisition of AOL in 2015. If one had to point to a single factor behind the sale I would argue it’s the rise of Facebook and Google’s display business — Facebook in particular. Together they all but guaranteed that…
Earlier this afternoon it was announced that newspaper publisher Gannett has acquired digital marketing firm ReachLocal for $156 million. It makes sense for Gannett as the company moves more aggressively to grow digital ad revenue: Initially, ReachLocal will expand Gannett’s digital revenue by roughly 50% with its more than 16,000 customers in markets throughout North…
Please join the Local Search Association (LSA) for an exclusive webinar presentation next Friday, June 3 from 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm ET. The Local Search Association (LSA) recently acquired Ad-Builder (Recas, Creative Outlet), transforming what the not-for-profit can do for the local marketing and advertising industry. The deal helps LSA bolster its co-op advertising…
Co-op advertising is a large and underutilized source of marketing funds for local retailers and dealers, provided by brands and manufacturers to promote their products and services. Various industry estimates indicate the market is worth nearly $40 billion annually. Yet between 40% and 50% of these funds go unused every year. To help the local…
In the event you didn’t already know, Yahoo is for sale. Despite its revenue-growth challenges, which will be on display today as the company releases Q1 earnings, Yahoo remains one of the internet’s major “brands” and the third largest property after Google and Facebook. Yesterday was the deadline for interested potential buyers to submit their…
Late this afternoon Web.com announced it was acquiring Yodle in an all cash deal worth roughly $340 million. This comes two years after Yodle filed to go public but was not successfully able to launch its IPO. In its release, Web.com said that the combined company would have had more than $765 million in revenue…
I was in a meeting the other day when an executive at a name-brand local marketing company asserted that “very few people are making any money in the local space.” He said he knew this because he was being pitched by numerous companies to buy them. It may well be true that only a few…
