In the run-up to Facebook's ballyhooed IPO, BIA/Kelsey has released Wave III of its U.S. Social Media Advertising Forecast, which reveals overall market acceleration in 2012 and 2013, and steady growth in locally targeted social spend. From 2011 to 2016,…
Verizon's new Visual 411 app is designed to provide a more integrative user experience across mobile, FiOS TV and desktop devices. A common platform supports all three media. In addition, the free app lets users search local businesses and provides…
Explaining the basics of local and social marketing to clients and prospects is a tough task for companies, which might come off as patronizing. Why not give them a book? A couple of years ago, Yodle CEO Court Cunningham wrote…
Google made up 66.5 percent of the U.S. market share in explicit core search in April, a 0.1 percentage point rise from the previous month, according to comScore's qSearch analysis. Microsoft came in second at 15.4 percent and Yahoo rounded…
Groupon Rewards -- "the easiest rewards program in the world" -- rolled out nationally this week after tests in 36 markets that began in October. The product is Groupon’s answer to the emerging “transaction marketing” space that many believe will…
With more than 1 million registered users and 87 million company profiles, Manta has established itself as a hub where small businesses can be found…and find each other. Now, having raised a fresh round of $44 million in funding from…
AT&T has finalized the sale of 53 percent of its Yellow Pages operation to the private equity firm Cerberus Capital, which has launched YP Holdings LLC. The new company will be led by newly appointed CEO David Krantz, who had…
Nielsen reported yesterday that ad spending on national cable networks has caught up to where their broadcast network brethren now stand. That's a big acknowledgement that the investments in programming and promotion that have been made by the content providers…
The local event calendars are filling up. A new event we’ll be attending is The Street Fight Summit West, which is June 5 at Bently Reserve in San Francisco, a classy location. Street Fight head Laura Rich tells us the…
In our Investing in Radio Market Report, we reported that local radio stations saw a 15 percent increase to $439 million for total online revenues. Local radio stations are making significant strides to bolster their online activities, and it is…
via CNN If anybody wonders whether the considerable “legs” of Facebook justify a valuation now set for $83 billion, have a listen to a terrific BIA/Kelsey webinar on Facebook’s IPO, featuring Trada CEO Niel Robertson Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom and…
We've been working around the clock to get the speaker roster pinned down for our MLM San Francisco show coming up on June 27. It's starting to really materialize with speakers from Google, Yelp, PayPal and shopkick (full list below).…
Simply Good's Loop mobile coupon platform is designed to help local merchants reward customers, handle customer service issues and support ambassadors who influence others to patronize local businesses. The concept is an on-the-spot bounce-back coupon where a waiter could offer…
EXAI is a white-label solution for SMBs based in Israel with global resellers, that offers hosting, domain purchasing and website development. I caught up with CEO Gal Moran, who expressed one of the major challenges in selling website services to…
NBC Universal announced the launch of the Universal Games Network (UGN), a new platform that integrates NBCU's gaming efforts across its television networks and online properties this week. UGN is a white-label solution that will aggregate NBCU's most popular online,…
I'll be blogging live from Boston's Techstars demo day. There's lots of energy and excitement in the room as twelve new statrt-ups get their chance to present their business case and successes to win over investors. Early companies of interest…
Just over a year after being acquired by eBay and folded into its PayPal division, Where Ads has further sealed the deal with its name plate change to PayPal Media Network. This represents more than just a name change though.…
Recently, BIA/Kelsey had the opportunity to spend time with Bill Dinan, president of Telmetrics, including a one-on-one Q&A session at the Local Search Association conference on April 24. During the Q&A session and subsequent conversations we spoke about mobile, sales…
You can learn a lot about failure from a guy who lost 11 jobs in 12 months. Richard Keith Latman, an entrepreneur who also started 11 companies over a 20-year period, documents his stumbles in The Good Fail. I interviewed…
