The newest issue of Local Media Journal, which publishes tomorrow, includes a feature on the trend toward more ratings and reviews in online Yellow Pages. The traditional concern with letting users write reviews is that negative reviews can be at…
The New York Times' Bob Tedeschi wrote an article on Monday (which has been sitting on my desktop, among others, waiting to be read) about online coupons. It said much of what we already know about coupons but also provided…
With growing interest in online video and the lack of available inventory, advertisers are scrambling to find new outlets for their online advertising dollars. According to a recent Advertising Age article: "It's certainly not lack of interest from advertisers, who…
Greg Sterling points out an interesting company called SpotScout (having "spot" in a company name is becoming something of a trademark for companies with interesting models, i.e., Spot Runner ). The start-up is taking local search to a brand-new area:…
Canada's Yellow Pages Group announced today that it has acquired Aliant ActiMedia, a small directory publisher in the Maritime provinces. YPG held a minority position in the publisher, though the telecom Bell Aliant owned 87 percent of the publishing operation.…
At the 3GSM Conference this week, Motorola and Nokia fired significant shots at wireless carriers by launching new hardware and navigation systems that they will sell directly to consumers. They will offer GPS-based navigation systems with local search, mapping and…
The rumors were true. Last month we wrote about the possibility of Google buying in-game ad placement firm AdScape to broaden its reach in cross-platform advertising. The company has announced that it purchased AdScape for $23 million. Like Microsoft's acquisition…
In a recent Colorado Springs Gazette article, Dex Media announced a rather significant page-count growth in its Colorado Springs directory. While many question the viability of print Yellow Pages, particularly in a tech-savvy market like Colorado Springs, achieving page-count growth…
Following up on the previous introductory post on Monster Worldwide's partnership with The New York Times, there is a lot more that can be said about the deal and the quickly changing newspaper environment it both represents and contributes to.…
Canpages, the energized Hicks Muse-owned rival to YPG, has rolled out revised versions of its print Yellow Pages along with a unified brand and a dramatic new Web site, which officially launches at the end of next week. The new…
AP reports (via WSJ Online) that The New York Times Co. and Monster.com are partnering to sell recruitment ads. This will bring the Monster brand to 19 of the publisher's sites (including NYTimes.com and Boston.com). There is little information given,…
Australian online directory HotFrog launched yesterday in the U.K. The site brings the buzzcloud concept to directory listings (see how this is used by social search engines such as Eurekster's Swicki and Yahoo!'s My Web). This is very fitting to…
In the past, we've talked about the effect smartphone use has on mobile local search adoption. Many third-party mobile local search applications such as Earthcomber only work on smartphones. Similarly, designing a robust and compelling enough mobile search platform is…
YellowPages.com has taken the plunge and is offering user-generated business reviews on its national IYP. Here is the release for more details. While YPC is not the first IYP to offer user-generated reviews, its decision does provide more evidence of…
Following up on yesterday's mobile news roundup, we had the chance to catch up with AdStar CEO Leslie Bernhard and others during a call yesterday afternoon. The company earlier in the day had announced a partnership with Nokia to integrate…
Local is very, very hot right now. There are so many things going on, not only with Google and Yahoo!, but also with all the hundreds of companies feasting in their wake via direct and vertical and niche channels; in…
The 3GSM World Congress is going on this week in Barcelona, and we've already seen a handful of important announcements that relate to mobile local search. Yahoo! announced a display ad platform for mobile devices that will involve banner…
Local name sites, whether they are geo-domain (city name) sites or local verticals, have been the low-class players of Internet advertising. People stumble on them, they see ads and maybe click on them, and have no reason to ever come…
The newspaper consortium ("the amigos") that teamed up with Yahoo! for Hot Jobs is planning to invade used autos next, according to a post by newspaper insider Ken Doctor. If it pans out, such an alliance would probably signal that…
Tellme Networks hasn't exactly lived up to its 1999 vision of becoming the "Yahoo! of voice portals." Using the portal has been a clunky experience, and ad revenues have never really developed. But Tellme has stuck it out by providing…
