Headlines of layoffs and shutdowns are increasing, as is the general schadenfreude that we begin to see when the success stories of yesterday become the failures of today. The tech world got to see its fair share of this eight years…
Google announced today that it has decided to walk away from its ad partnership with Yahoo, citing that legal battles with federal antitrust regulators won't make it worthwhile to pursue. The deal would have placed Google text ads throughout Yahoo's…
Spot Runner announced that it is laying off 115 people, or less than 30 percent of its staff. It confirmed that a big chunk of the layoffs are coming from its local sales division, formerly known as Weblistic. Company officials say…
Presidential elections always represent sea changes in the use of marketing tools (including local marketing tools). The Internet is an increasingly big part of it. Mostly, it is used for raising money. This time around, it has also been exciting…
Stuart McKelvey is no longer CEO of TMP Directional Marketing, a position he had held since 1998. He is leaving the Yellow Pages ad agency founded by his father, Andrew, in 1967 to join Health Diagnostic, also founded by the…
Press releases are rich in content -- richer than most ads. Many local events, businesses and services routinely write them. But they often don’t get past the “about us” sections on their own Web sites. The releases aren’t easily found,…
Today, The Kelsey Group's second wave of the Mobile Market View consumer survey was released, supporting many of the claims we've been making here about the changing mobile environment. The biggest takeaway was that 18.9 percent of survey respondents (n=512)…
Here are the highlights from the TKG blog last week, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full. New Kid on the Block for Canada Local Search New Canadian local search destination Weblocal.ca has…
New Canadian local search destination Weblocal.ca has launched. The site is the product of a partnership between Canadian publisher Transcontinental and social/local pure play YellowBot (see profile). The site is one of Transcon's first moves into online local search. As…
Local publishers, seeing the boom in text messaging and the Web surfing capabilities of the iPhone, are taking mobile more seriously as a channel for their content and advertising. Clearly, the mobile opportunity for local publishers has now gone beyond…
TKG has a relatively new Twitter page. After going on a binge of following people this week, the ratio of following to followers is woefully out of whack. If I haven't been able to find and follow you yet, jump…
Today at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Digital Digital Marketing Conference, there was quite a bit of buzz around Blyk, a Finnish mobile phone company with an interesting hybrid model for distribution. Blyk is a free mobile operator targeting young people…
When we think of emerging local verticals, “green” is one of the most promising, as environmental concerns have pushed up the interest of consumers in having safe, healthy products that have minimal impact on the environment. MSN, Yahoo, Hearst and The Washington Post…
The Kelsey Group has learned that effective Nov. 1, AT&T Advertising & Publishing will become AT&T Advertising Solutions. But there is more to this than a cosmetic name change. AT&T has also reorganized the company and expanded its portfolio to…
Are classifieds fated, by definition, to be "dumb" all-you-can-eat listings? Or can certain categories be remade as performance-based listings a la Google that bring best matches to the top, offering higher revenue in return for a better match and conversion? That's…
I didn't realize when I declared my scientific experiment to go on an all-Hulu diet this week that the site turns 1 today. It seems like yesterday that the site launched as a joint venture between News Corp. and NBC Universal…
AT&T has announced that iPhones will be allowed free Wi-Fi access at its 17,000 nationwide hot spots. This includes Starbucks, airports, hotels and lots of other public spots. This is especially good news for first generation iPhone users who don't…
Buzz tracking software firm BuzzLogic released a report yesterday, administered by Jupiter Research, which affirms the role of blogs in influencing purchasing behavior. These data come at a key time for BuzzLogic's story, when Madison Avenue remains somewhat wary about…
Following up on the post earlier this week, Matt McGee reports that Google has added an RSS feature for Web searches. As noted, Google already offers RSS for news alerts. This extends it to Web searches, which can be set…
I'm here in San Antonio, Texas, having caught the tail end of the Association of Directory Publishers meeting, and now the Association of Directory Marketing's event. One of the many questions floating around the U.S. Yellow Pages industry is whether…
