TKG Data and Analysis: A Weekly Recap

Here are the highlights from the TKG blog last week, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.

These Realtors Really Love Google’s Tools

Realtors are a vocal bunch, especially on the blogs. When something isn’t right, you really hear about it. Today, there was a bubbly post on Active Rain, an excellent real estate community site, by Missy Caulk, an Ann Arbor Realtor. She was invited to have lunch at Google’s offices in Ann Arbor after enthusing about all the company’s real estate-related products, especially Google Docs. (read more…)

New Data: Mobile Users Extend News Access to Weekend, Nights

The impact of mobile access on media is still being sorted out, but some preliminary data suggests it extends consumer research to the weekends and at night — and that news is a real driver. The first data we saw came from Cars.com. The latest data come from Verve Wireless, a provider of mobile publishing, ad and couponing solutions that serves more than 1 million mobile page views a day. (read more…)

Local Motion at SES Chicago

During a session I ran today on local search marketing at SES Chicago, Atif Rafiq, Yahoo Local’s director of strategy and business development, presented comScore data showing that local queries grew 76 percent in February (year over year). After going back and crunching some comScore numbers for overall search query volume, I found it has comparatively grown in the 20 percent range over this period. This supports the notion that local is growing in awareness. (read more…)

AutoTrader Responds to WSJ: Auto Shopping Sites Are Still Up

The Wall Street Journal has been making some bold statements in its recent coverage. A couple of weeks ago, The WSJ’s Emily Steel pronounced Yellow Pages “extinct.” This week, a new article by Steel noted the “tapering off” of ad spending on auto sites — another bold statement (although the article itself was measured and balanced). (read more…)

MapQuest Goes Into Web 2.0 Overdrive

AOL’s MapQuest has strived to remake itself for several years. But it has really been going into overdrive since June, with new management, and the launch of MapQuest Local, a map-based directory and city guide service. More recently, it has unleashed specially tailored versions for smartphones. (read more…)

Playboy Goes Local via BlackBook

Huffington Post started it, with a local site in Chicago, with promises of many more. Now Playboy is jumping into the local game as well. The news was buried in this week’s news that Christie Hefner was resigning as CEO. But during a presentation at UBS Media Week, EVP Bob Meyers said Playboy is launching a new Web site on inauguration day (Jan. 20) that will feature a city guide for local playboys. (read more…)

New Health and Wellness Site Targets Women 30+

Spas and salon advertisers are a huge focus for local sites. They’re a Top 4 selection for Citysearch, and also rank highly on Yelp and other sites. Now they are being specifically targeted by InnerRewards, a new health and wellness vertical site for women launched by Julie Elaine Brown, a veteran marketer for Johnson & Johnson’s online community sites. (read more…)

Bakersfield Californian: ‘Smaller Advertisers Clearly Our Future’

Bakersfield Californian President and CEO Richard Beene says smaller advertisers will be receiving more and more focus by the independently owned paper — something that many newspapers say, but few really do much about. In a note to employees discussing recent company layoffs, published by LA Observed, Beene says the newspaper’s New Business Development team is “focused on smaller advertisers that are clearly our future. (read more…)

Urbanspoon’s Ethan Lowry on Mobile Advertising

Urbanspoon has been one of the hottest iPhone apps of ’08. It recently was named to the top 10 most downloaded apps of the year and boasts 2.2 million downloads to date. Following some of our conversations with cofounder Ethan Lowry, he was interviewed by MobileCrunch where he shared some interesting insights on mobile marketing. These relate to the previous post as mobile marketing in general is trying to take form. (read more…)

Google Brings iPhone and G1 Targeting to AdWords

Google announced today that it will add an option to AdWords that will let advertisers specifically run search ads on iPhones and G1s. Ads have run in Google searches on these devices before because the search page formatting on these devices had spots for sponsored links. But since the launch of the newly formatted Google results page on the iPhone, the option exists to run search and display ads exclusively on these devices. This includes individual campaign management within AdWords and performance reporting that is separate from online campaigns. (read more…)