Consumers increasingly use the Web to search for services. But it is tough to complete the loop and actually order service. In many cases, businesses are either unresponsive to phone calls and e-mails, or their information is inaccurate. All this…
After Hellman & Friedman's well-publicized return on DoubleClick when it sold its stake in the company to Google in April, there seems to be an uptick in the interest among private equity firms in online investments. The latest is NexTag,…
In case you missed them, here is a compilation of blog posts from this week from TKG's Interactive Local Media program. Click below to read each post in full. More Data in Favor of Online Research, Offline Shopping II Research just…
Summary Research just released from Hitwise and WebCollage shows that shoppers are more likely to shop in stores and visit Web sites of retailers that provide comprehensive product information, including inventory data. This is a growing trend in the local…
Summary Online-only Yellow Pages site YP.com announced this morning that it will buy online classified site LiveDeal in a stock transaction estimated to be worth about $12 million. The deal will bring together directory content and classifieds in one online…
Zvents, the localized, personalized online event calendar, says it is driving a lot of page views and traffic to its newspaper partners. The growing list of partners now includes The Orange County Register and other Freedom newspapers; several MediaNews Group…
Summary EBay announced today that it will begin working with radio ad start-up Bid4Spots. The deal will bring Bid4Spots' auction-based radio ad sales capability to eBay's Media Marketplace. This represents a growing direction for eBay to broker ads to cable…
Online video stood out a great deal as a theme and business opportunity at this year's Drilling Down on Local conference in March. Spot Runner's Nick Grouf keynoted, while other speaking slots were given to TurnHere and IYPs that expressed…
Summary New legal search destination Avvo launched today to join the likes of FindLaw and LexisNexis Martindale-Hubbell. Like these destinations, it offers users search tools to find lawyers in different categories and locales. Legal search will be a growing area…
The San Jose Mercury News reported yesterday that IAC is a few weeks away from opening its new venture arm in Silicon Valley called Primal Ventures. The focus will be investments that are more strategic than financially driven in order to…
Summary The new Yellowpages.com beta is available for users to access and play around with. Lots of features are still unavailable, but you can get a general idea of what the new site will offer. The look and feel has…
My former colleagues at Borrell Associates have carved out a unique role in the local online advertising space with their annual survey of local media revenues. This year is the survey’s fifth, and was conducted with 2,885 properties in the…
WashingtonPost.com has soft-launched “Local Explorer,” which allows users to map crime, home sales and school information by ZIP code. It is a great model for “mapped journalism.” The tag line for Local Explorer says it allows you to explore “Police and…
In case you missed it, here is a compilation of blog posts from last week from TKG's Interactive Local Media program. Click below to read each post in full. The Kelsey Take: Newspapers by the Numbers Earlier this week, the…
As expected, Google today announced the acquisition of hot (no pun intended) RSS feed management company FeedBurner. See last week's post for the drivers and implications of this deal.
Directories 2.0 was the subject of this year’s annual European Association of Directory Publishers conference on Managing Directories. In 1996, EADP was the first directory trade association to recognize the importance of electronic directories and hold a conference focused specifically…
Summary Earlier this week, the NAA released its Q1 figures for the financial performance of the newspaper industry. The numbers tell the same old story: Print ad revenues are down, while online revenues saw double-digit percentage growth (although still a…
Eniro AB announced it had acquired 100 percent of the Danish directory company Krak from the Krak Foundation. This deal ends months of speculation as to who would purchase Krak after its announcement last summer that it was open to offers.…
Yellowpages.com recently announced it would increase the number of its sales offices from two to 16, staffing each office with both field and telesales reps. While the move is a statement to the industry that Yellowpages.com plans to dominate local…
Summary Jingle Networks' free DA service 1-800-FREE411 has discontinued live operators in some locations. Operator expenses in these markets have significantly cut into margins as the overall cost of providing these calls isn't being offset by the advertising volumes. Free…
