For Every Post There Could Be Six

There is so much happening (most of it interesting) in the "space" we affectionately call "Interactive Local Media" that for every post I do there could easily be five or six more. I could do nothing all day but blog and have the hotel staff slip me bread and water at occasional intervals. So, here are a number of things that have happened that I haven’t been able to write about (not for lack of desire):

• TrueLocal.com relaunched its TrueTarget local search ad program (covered by Search Engine Journal here).

• Jambo has launched a "passive" PPCall advertiser acquisition program. Here’s the release. Advertisers automatically receive phone leads from directories/search sites with which the company has relationships (e.g., InfoSpace). The merchant gets a prompt to accept or decline the lead. If she accepts, the call is billed to her existing phone bill. Putting aside some questions about this practice, from a purely strategic standpoint it eliminates some of the sales challenges of getting people to show up and sign up for the service.
• eStara launched a deal with the newspaper Palm Beach Post called "talk to seller" where its VoIP/click-to call-system enables real-time phone communication between buyer and seller. This was what eBay had in mind in buying Skype. Expect to see more efforts, whether by phone or through IM/chat, to facilitate real-time communication between buyers and sellers (e-mail is so 2003) in local online marketplaces, whether classifieds, verticals or directories.
• Meanwhile Ingenio continues to build out a network of major agency relationships as a channel to deliver PPCall to national advertisers.
• Here’s a BusinessWeek piece on privacy and government/corporate monitoring of blogs and social networks. Privacy is a hot issue here at SES — as is click fraud. And this Ad Age piece (reg. req’d) captures a heated session yesterday in which some SEM audience members squared off against the engines on the panel.
• Mobile local search and content provider go2 put out a release reflecting 51 percent traffic growth from 2004. The most popular categories were "movies, restaurants, accommodations and other travel-related searches." In our view, mobile local search is clearly growing but not yet a mainstream application.
• According to comScore, Google’s market share grows while search volume growth slows. There were 5.48 billion searches in the U.S. market in January, compared with roughly 5 billion in December, a growth rate of 11 percent. Search volume growth has outpaced Internet growth in the past several quarters. But the market will need new high-speed users to keep its momentum and that depends on broadband conversions from dial-up or more Wi-Fi ubiquity.