TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap

Here is a quick recap of posts from the past week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.

Local Media Survival Skills in a Down Economy
S&MM online columnist Robert Grede shared some interesting insights in a recent article on how local advertisers can survive in a down economy and what local media sales reps should be communicating to their advertisers and prospects. Some of the key points Grede shared include: (read more…)

Microsoft and Google: 80+ Percent of Online Ad Placement?
Neal Polachek and I had the opportunity this morning to sit down with Mike Galgon, cheif advertising strategist for Microsoft. Galgon was brought on board as part of Microsoft’s $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive, which he cofounded in 1997. It was also MSFT’s largest acquisition to date (and double what Google paid for DoubleClick), all showing the company has either lost its mind or it sees transformative capability in the Atlas platform. Galgon’s job is obviously to argue the latter and he makes a strong case. (read more…)

Yellow Pages – It’s About Leads
It was interesting to see the Yellow Pages Association release its usage data showing print usage was stable at 13.4 billion and IYP usage had increased to 3.8 billion in 2007. While the overall usage figure is a 3 percent increase from 2006, which is encouraging, zeroing in solely on usage may be taking away from stronger measures of value. Just as online has shifted from a focus purely on clicks to a broader definition of value based on calls and leads, the Yellow Pages industry should follow this lead in marketing the medium. (read more…)

AOL Acquires Bebo
In an unexpected move, AOL has acquired social network Bebo for $850 million. A move into social networking is interesting for AOL given that portals have traditionally dropped the ball when it comes to social networks (albeit, mostly homegrown ones). It’s also an interesting development in the wake of Google’s comments that monetizing social content has proved harder than it expected (referring mostly to the MySpace contextual ad deal). (read more…)

Boston.com Teams With Google for Local Search
Last week, we wrote about The Seattle Times Co. and its new “Network search,” which is powered with FAST. This week, we are covering The Boston Globe’s Boston.com and its new “Federated” search solution, powered by Google. Federated and Network search are different names for pretty much the same thing. But even as the respective newspapers try to tackle the issues of incorporating small-business advertisers and the elements of local search, they are taking somewhat different approaches. (read more…)

Yelp Puts Funding in Play: A Conversation With Jeremy Stoppleman
To follow up on the recent post about Yelp’s funding, I was able to sit down with Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman yesterday at the company’s San Francisco headquarters. The company is moving in some interesting directions and the $15 million it just received will provide the fuel. Much of it will be put toward sales and marketing to seed review activity and bring in SMB advertisers. (read more…)

Local Distribution Deals Keep Rolling: Local.com and Idearc
Local.com and Idearc Media today renewed their relationship that distributes Superpages ads on Local.com. Superpages advertisers get premium placement on Local.com, while Local.com gets more content in its network and a rev share. This follows Local.com’s similar deal with Citysearch in December, and its integration of 2 million Yelp reviews in January. It also follows what seems to be an uptick in distribution partnerships like this lately. (read more…)

Yellow Pages Is Alive and Well!
Since so many opinions these days seem to be based on anecdotal evidence, let me add another anecdote to the mix. I am sitting in a coffee shop near where I live doing e-mail and so on. In walks a very stylish young woman, no older than 30. She gets a coffee, sits down and pulls out a Dex companion print Yellow Pages directory and begins flipping through it to make calls arranging some sort of project for her house. (read more…)

More Online Local Video: Jivox Launches
SMB-focused video ad platform Jivox launched today, along with a $2.7 million seed round led by Opus Capital. Jivox joins the hot local merchant video advertising space with a self-serve ad creation and placement engine for SMBs. This includes ad creation and reporting dashboards and the ability to customize ads from a bucket of stock footage that is specific to certain category businesses (see sample ads here). (read more…)