ShopLocal Blog

Location is one of the few constants across all consumer focused industries.  Most commerce still takes place in the physical world.  This means dealer and store locations are the hub of this fiscal activity.  However do to regional demand and taste differences, transportation costs, state regulations, etc., pricing does vary on many of these goods [...]

ShopLocal continues to track the in-store deals offered by many top retailers, and our data shows unusual levels of activity. Consumer sentiment remains cautious but improving, so the retailers are working hard to offer them exceptional value, with the weighted average number of offers up 16% year-over-year in recent months. After the post-holiday sales ended, [...]

After reading the interview with the Best Buy guy whom was responsible for launching AR a few weeks ago, I was curious to see what round #2 would bring in the way of incremental changes / improvements.  Well, the answer to that is not much. Sure, a different product is being features (a Sony Eco-HDTV [...]

Locally tailoring the content of one’s online weekly ad site is good business as it increases the relevance to the user.  To meet this need, ShopLocal built out our own localized version of a content management system (CMS) that we call the SmartAd server. Some typical use cases of the SmartAd server that retailers seems [...]

So within the last week or so, two nifty retail print ads appeared within the Chicago Tribune newspaper that promoted a reader of the print ad to go online for more information.  This type of of integrated multi-channel promotion really is becoming the norm rather than the exception. The two retailer examples that were spotted [...]

Not all sale offers are created equally.  Out of the roughly ~200 to ~300 items that are featured in most weekly ads, there are some that are more important to a retailer to promote and/or sell.  This may be driven by many factors such as: Supply issues (overstocked) Profit margins Store traffic (loss leaders) Vendor [...]

Within the Meijer SmartCircular site, the Meijer marketing team has put together a very nice intro Flash animation sequence that is centered around their campaign called “Lunchbox Essentials – Price Drop” It works well because it: Is short enough in length at around 15 seconds in total play time Only plays on the very first [...]

The family of “boys” has grown again.  By extending PaperBoy’s reach into Canada, the birth of FlyerBoy has happened.  Given the great partnership with Canwest that ShopLocal has established and maintained, this localized rich media display ad product is being introduced and sold mainly by the Canwest sales force to regional sized advertisers. FlyerBoy at [...]

So with both Wal-Mart and Best Buy trying out augmented reality (AR) within their print ads / Sunday circulars recently, no one outside of these two retailers really knew how successful the general consumer adopting was to this new way of interacting with print ads online. Until now when Best Buy went on the record [...]

Rack up another SmartSearch client.  The Home Depot launched today, both within Google and Yahoo!, a very store focused and localized SEM campaign.  Here is a live search results page that currently features a Home Depot SmartSearch ad and here is the unique dynamic landing page that the user is directed to upon click. Many [...]