Perry Evans has a great post today on the opportunity and threat Yellow Pages publishers face from the verticalization of local search. We thank him for acknowledging TKG's role in highlighting the emergence of vertical search at our Drilling Down on…
The final day of The Kelsey Group's Drilling Down on Local conference featured a keynote by Merrill Brown of MMB Media. Brown is an industry guru with a history of developing groundbreaking media strategies and operations. Among other things, he…
Elizabeth Gage of PCM International posted a well thought out blog on the challenges small and medium-sized businesses face when purchasing search engine marketing campaigns, either on their own or through Yellow Page publishers. After reading her thoughts on the…
Two consumer advocacy groups plan to file an FTC complaint about mobile marketing and its emerging practices. The advocacy group Digital Democracy filed its complaint in conjunction with U.S. Public Interest Research Group. According to an article in MediaPost, Jeff Chester, founder…
Online video production company Spot Runner announced today that it has received $51 million from Legg Mason, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), Grupo Televisa, and Groupe Arnault/LVMH. The company will use the funding to continue growing its capacity to…
AOL may have trouble on several fronts, but it still gets millions of users and it intends to fully leverage them at the local level, per Chris Spanos, Director of Search Verticals, who was speaking at Kelsey Seattle. “Given its…
Fox Interactive Media will launch a self service video ad tool, according to the company's stations group GM Ron Berryman. He announced the product, known as FIM AdStore, from the stage at DDL on Friday. This will be geared towards…
Google is a collaborative partner with all verticals, and generally speaking, has no interest in competing with them, per Adrian Madland, Google’s head of automotive strategic partnerships, who was speaking at Drilling Down on Local '08 (a session also covered…
Admission Corp. has sold its Spotlight Ads division to Cobalt Group, which provides services to over 40 percent of U.S. auto dealers. The company retains control over its intellectual property and Marketplaces businesses, which account for a small piece of…
If you believe at all in the “marketplace” vision of next generation commerce, it is hard to dispute that Yahoo! remains front –and- center as a verticals factory. This core strength of Yahoo!’s is especially important to note in the…
At this writing, Idearc Media's stock was trading higher (up about 28 percent at noon Eastern) after an earnings announcement that shows the company has managed its costs well enough to grow EBITDA, while its revenues continued to slide. Here…
Thanks to all who attended and participated in last week's Drilling Down on Local conference in Seattle. The show was a large success. Here is a recap of coverage from the TKG blog in case you missed any posts. You…
Yellowbook has unveiled a new television ad campaign, replacing the kinda cheesy Kung Fu ads (sorry, David Carradine, you did what you could) with a much slicker campaign that focuses on promoting use of Yellowbook's online directory (which is also sporting…
Steve Ballmer has officially walked away from what would have been the biggest tech deal ever, citing that Yahoo!'s price was too high. Coverage from the Merc.
Today at DDL, Call Genie Director of Product Evolution Gary Galinsky pegged the lineup of mobile ad formats (SMS, pre-roll audio, post-roll audio, banner, etc.) as "interruption marketing." The only way to skirt this is relevance, and like real estate,…
The first day of the Kelsey Drilling Down on Local conference included a somewhat unusual panel with four entrepreneurs in verticals. They talked about the nuts and bolts of building truly local verticals. These vertical pioneers shared their war stories…
Dan Pulcrano closed out Day 2 of Drilling Down on Local ’08 with a presentation to expose attendees to the wild west of the geo-domain space. Pulcrano, owner of numerous city sites such as Seattle.com and SanJose.com, argued that the…
During yesterday’s afternoon session focused on Auto at Drilling Down on Local ’08, the panelists nearly universally said U.S. automaker giant General Motors was the furthest along in figuring out how to leverage the Web. Mitch Golub, president of Cars.com,…
Speaking this afternoon at at The Kelsey Group's Drilling Down on Local conference in Seattle, Kurt Weinsheimer, GM for Local Marketing Services at Spot Runner, offered a simple set of rules for effectively selling to small businesses. Target the right customers. …
The winners in online real estate will be those that partner with brokers and agents to be part of their businesses, said Jamie Glenn, Trulia VP of product development, during a real estate panel at DDL. Selling clicks and leads…
