eBay Interview
The Financial Times (FT.com) has published an in-depth interview with Meg Whitman that covers many topics from acquisitions to advertising models. It is worth reading in its entirety. Interview transcript: Meg Whitman, eBay
We Are Committed to the Yellow Pages
In an interview with Reuters yesterday, AT&T Yellow Pages CEO Dennis Payne predicted that revenues from its directory business will start to rise this year. He predicts that the growth will most likely come from delivering advertising on electronic platforms.…
Vivendi a PagesJaunes Suitor
Just saw this. The French media company Vivendi is studying the possibility of acquiring France's leading directory publisher, PagesJaunes. France Telecom is planning to sell off its 54 percent stake in PagesJaunes, which has been among the leading performers among…
I’ll Take Staten
U.S. independent directory publisher Ambassador Yellow Pages announced that it has entered the Staten Island, New York, market. The publisher is currently in canvas with the book, which will publish in August, just ahead of rival Yellow Book. Details on…
Yell Narrows List in Agency Search
Yell Group has long been known in the U.K. for the quality of its advertising, standing out in a category that has generally produced some interesting and funny commercials over the years. Yell is now in the position of finding…
Ads for Podcasts
Podbridge and Ingenio announced a partnership to include pay-per-call ads in podcasts. The Podbridge ad serving system is set up to bookend audio content with ads before and after content is played on the device. Historically, this advertising model has…
Backfence Goes Live in Palo Alto
Back in April, hyper-local community and user-generated content site Backfence announced the acquisition of Bayosphere, Dan Gillmor's San Francisco Bay Area-based user-generated content and blogging Web site. CEO Susan DeFife just e-mailed me to let me know the site has…
Netscape’s New Face
Netscape has had quite a history in over the past 10+ years. After igniting the Silicon Valley mid-to-late '90s tech boom by pioneering the browser, it has taken on many shapes and sizes. Now its owner, AOL, hopes to turn…
Small CMRs Not Stepping Up to Syndicated Research
A recent Kelsey Group Web poll of certified marketing representatives, the sales professionals responsible for national Yellow Pages advertising in the United States, indicates greater support for syndicated usage research among those working for larger agencies.Of the 24 CMRs representatives…
Can the Killer Local App Be Far Behind AdContext?
Online auctioneer eBay is moving aggressively to shore up its leading market position by reducing the risk of becoming too reliant on Google's dominant search share. Recently, eBay has negotiated large deals such as the integration of its PayPal unit's…
Ingenio, Local Matters and Leads.com
Mike Fordyce and his partnership team at Ingenio were busy last week finalizing several deals. The first was with Local Matters, which is integrating Ingenio's pay-per-call network into its AreaGuides.net network of Web sites. Local Matters is in the middle…
YellowPages.com and Anywho
YellowPages.com, a joint venture of AT&T and BellSouth, announced it will provide search returns for the Yellow Pages and Find A Site sections on the Anywho.com portal. Anywho.com has roughly 3.4 million users per month. Since its acquisition by the…
The Knot and The Wedding Channel
The Knot has finished courting the Wedding Channel and consummated a transaction valued at US$57.9 million in cash plus the issue of 1.15 million shares of common stock. The Wedding Channel has won several key patent lawsuits in the past…
Schibsted and Trader Classified Media
Reuters is reporting that Schibsted, Norway's largest media group, has agreed to acquire Trader Classified Media's Western European and Latin American units for 580 million euros, or US$746.7 million. "Among Trader Classified's properties are Spanish online job site InfoJobs.net and…
Report From Where 2.0
I'm at the Where 2.0 conference in San Jose all day. The conference setup is a singular track of rapid fire sessions —many of them 15 minutes in length involving a single speaker with trusty Power Point deck in hand.…
eBay and Skype
eBay announced that it would begin adding "Skype Me" buttons to certain categories of listings for a test trial period starting June 19. The trial is an early step to accomplish several goals resulting from the $2.6 billion purchase of…
More on Yell Rate Cap
Lots of press coverage out of the U.K. on the Yell rate cap preliminary ruling this week. We will offer our full take in this week's Local Media Journal, but we thought a sampling of the U.K. coverage on this…
Marin: A Case Study
I've lived in Marin County, California, for almost 20 years now. For three-quarters of the time the Pacific Bell/SBC/AT&T Yellow Pages directory was the only one available. A couple of years ago, Seig Fischer and his Valley Yellow Pages team…