Meineke Car Care Centers, with 900 franchises, has a huge ad budget, which it has been spending on Yellow Pages, TV, coupons, SEM and the Internet. Recently, Meineke has worked to integrate local ad opportunities under one “local expert.” But…
We’re seeing three models in the new loyalty and engagement space: "punch cards" where merchants reward you based on how often you come back, "Frequent flyer" or diner points that give you a leg up on airline or hotel points…
Speaker: Will Scott, Owner, Search Influence Moderator: Michael Boland, Senior Analyst and Program Director There is a lot of talk about social media being critical to the future of small-business marketing. But how do those currently working with small-business advertisers…
Mary Boysman, VP of brand marketing and advertising, demonstrated that Aspen Dental clearly get the big picture on how to succeed with local media. Aspen Dental is the fastest growing dental practice company in the U.S. with 380 locations spread…
Local Search Association -- "Search Starts Here" Headline Address: Christian Dwyer, Senior VP and GM, MapQuest Moderator: Matt Booth, Chief Strategy Officer, ILM Program Director, BIA/Kelsey AOL's MapQuest has undergone many transformations over the years, changing owners, business models and…
Local Search Association President Neg Norton and LSA board Chairman and SuperMedia CEO Peter McDonald addressed the membership of the Local Search Starts Here conference giving a state of the industry overview. One of the messages McDonald relayed to the…
At the Local Search Association's Search Starts Here conference in Boca Raton, today's sessions kicked off with Google's view of opportunities in local. As usual lately, this tied in closely with lots of trends and themes in mobile and social.…
Business-to-consumer companies have tried to invade the business-to-business space in multiple instances, almost always with disastrous results. The logic for B2C companies is always there: move up the value chain with great big accounts that require no branding efforts. But…
In the ongoing cycle of market forecasting, we're once again at a half-year refresh for mobile local ad revenue projections. Though the "money slide" (literally) of the forecast is a revenue outlook, there are lots of background inputs to dissect.…
Ambassador Media Group filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Friday, citing debts of more than $10 million and assets of only $4 million. A Chapter 7 filing usually signifies a company's intent to liquidate. With $4 million in assets and $10…
Nearly 70 percent of consumers who watched this year's NCAA tournament did so on both a television and mobile device, according to a new study from Millennial Media and the Interactive Advertising Bureau conducted by Harris Interactive. More than 2,000…
Today we put out a press release with some of the mobile figures from our recent local media forecast. And later I'll follow up with a post that digs much deeper into some of the numbers. This is all stuff…
American Express is all over the deals and promotions space, with its Link, Like, Love campaign on Facebook; Twitter offers; and geo-based deals on Foursquare. Its Serve product also has been providing deals for AOL's Patch.com. Until now, there has…
Facebook's acquisition of mobile photo app Instagram earlier this week wasn't especially surprising (though the $1 billion price tag may have been). Mobile is a fertile, untapped channel for the social giant, but a growing risk factor the longer the…
One of the big bets in 2012 is that merchants will transition from one-time deals to loyalty efforts that keep bringing customers back. Swipely is one of the more ambitious efforts in a loosely defined space that also includes players…
While pay-per-call usage is growing across all local search media channels, Telmetrics reports today that mobile advertisers and SMB programs are the real drivers of a more than three-fold growth in adoption. The call measurement solutions provider is tracking 348 percent…
This Thursday, we'll be participating in a webcast about getting up and running on mobile. This includes both apps and mobile Web presence, as well as launching ad campaigns for greater exposure/traffic. I'll present some of our forecast data and…
AT&T has sold a 53 percent stake in its Yellow Pages business to the private equity firm Cerberus Capital for $950 million. This works out to a valuation of $1.8 billion. The deal involves both the Advertising Solutions and AT&T…
Home and trade lead sites often take a simple, category-by-category directory approach, but visual contractor rankings might make more sense, argues Jiyan Wei, cofounder of BuildZoom. Wei says his team canvassed home and trade sites such as Angie’s List, ServiceMagic,…
Google's GoMo effort just took a step forward by offering free do-it-yourself mobile website creation. GoMo, for those unfamiliar, is the search giant's program to evangelize the benefits of websites that are optimized for mobile devices. The goal is cleaner…
