Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, BIA/Kelsey's flagship show, is now set for San Francisco Dec. 10-12 and we couldn't be more excited. This year's edition hosts a totally fresh, new slate of industry leaders. The show opens with BIA/Kelsey…
Congrats to xAd for winning an MMA "Smartie" award for Enabling Technology Company of the Year. This comes right after it was recognized by Business Insider for Hottest Pre-IPO Adtech startups. xAd in many ways is carrying the flag of…
Merchants sometimes like to control their own promotions to their own list of customers, rather than waiting in line for Groupon or other deals publishers to do it for them. Yelp, for instance, is one company that has had success…
Print Yellow Pages was (just barely) on top in the General Services advertising category in 2012, generating almost $3.8 billion from this vertical. General Services is comprised of 12 different categories, including legal, accounting, janitorial, landscaping and various professional, scientific…
One theme that emerged at BIA/Kelsey’s recent SMB Digital Marketing conference was the emergence of content marketing for local merchants. This was kicked off in a session by Jed Williams and popped up a few more times.
As a retrospective on some of those themes and a look at their future implications, my Street Fight column this month unpacks it further. As a bonus, I even found a way to incorporate Twerking, speaking of trend analysis.
The column came out yesterday and an excerpt is after the jump, with the full article available here. We’ll continue to keep a close eye on this topic (but likely not Twerking).
During last week's SMB Digital Marketing conference, we ran our second Local Liftoff Awards competition. Out of a field of ten early stage companies in the local media space, attendee voting limited down to 3 finalists. Local Viewpoints LocalBrain UpRing…
Last week we held a big 3 day conference in Austin on the changing world of SMB digital marketing. It was an awesome turnout, solid speaker lineup and lots of takeaways. Check out our session-by-session blog coverage. To stay true to…
One way that big data is being applied at the local level is via Card Linked Offers that track consumer spending and target offers and promotions based on that behavior. Banks, credit card companies and payment processors have been especially…
Last week at SMB Digital Marketing, we held a wide reaching forum on the main mobile topics and areas of innovation that touch SMBs. This included Google's kickoff presentation on Enhanced Campaigns, Dex Media on packaging and selling mobile to…
Thanks very much to all the members of the BIA/Kelsey community who came to the Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing conference last week in Austin. We had quite a large crowd of about 500 people, and did some really…
CTOs are having the most interesting conversations at legacy media companies - or at least, that would be the conclusion of a stimulating dialog that took place last week at Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing between BIA/Kelsey's Charles Laughlin,…
Last week at SMB Digital Marketing, Russ Laraway, Senior Director, SMB at Twitter added to the marketplace chorus espousing the notion that Content Marketing is king. Many of Twitter's moves in this area are well known, as content marketing is…
One of the new local contenders is an old name: GoDaddy. The Phoenix-based company, which is anchored in registry services (and Super Bowl ads), has been working to leverage its SMB customer base with a series of moves, including the…
Microsoft's Raj Kapoor mapped Bing's evolving local search strategy at the SMB Digital Marketing Conference, an approach that begins with mobile, infuses social and is geared toward "consumer task completion." Kapoor first noted the ubiquity of digital channels in the…
To wrap up the content-packed SMB Digital Marketing conference, a panel of heavy hitters zeroed in on the show's pervasive theme of content marketing. Perry Evans, CEO, Closely Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa (NCI) Randy Parker, CEO, PagePart; Founder, Constant…
The strong growth and future prospects for online video for SMBs were discussed by three notable panelists involved in this area at SMB Digital Marketing. Led by moderator, Rick Ducey, Managing Director at BIA/Kelsey, these panelists covered the extraordinary growth…
Today at SMB Digital Marketing, Jeff Fagel, the new CMO of G/O Digital, Gannett's renamed local digital arm, offered a very Amazon-centric view of the local online ecosystem. Gannett has 82 daily newspapers and is the fourth-largest owner of TV…
First Data's Senior VP Dom Morea provided a set of important insights into the next generation of marketing services to small and medium businesses (SMBs) at BIA/Kelsey's 2013 SMB Digital Marketing conference, saying these may be more about "commerce" than…
Three finalists in the SMB Future Stars Local Liftoff Award Competition each gave 6-minute presentation on their start-up business then faced tough questions from two season entrepreneur judges, Shark Tank style. Now it's up to the voters. The Judges…
This afternoon at SMB Digital Marketing, Simon Greenman, CEO, Home Advisor Europe, talked about how he is shaping a key European home services vertical, and also reflected a bit on an industry he has a long association with -- the…
