Especially in the Yellow Pages space, Telmetrics’ name has been synonymous with pay per call and call tracking as it has brought these solutions to this industry for more than 20 years. BIA/Kelsey views these products along with call analytics as tightly related and important to the local media industry. We’re closely watching the pay-per-call space and, as such, will be releasing a forecast on the topic in the near future.

Today, while traditional media remains a solid part of its business, nearly three-quarters of Telmetrics’ 3 million-plus lines are now used by digital search companies for tracking online and mobile calls. Let me do the math for you…that’s more than 2 million lines (from just one player) focused on online and mobile.

That shift to mobile, not surprisingly, has skyrocketed in recent years. In fact, according to BIA/Kelsey, mobile local searches will surpass desktop local searches by 2016. One of the clear takeaways from our conversations with Dinan was, as he calls it, a shift from search to “find,” especially on a mobile device. He makes an interesting distinction here and perhaps we need to rethink our own “search” terminology in future forecasts.

Per Dinan’s thinking, search engines have provided a great search opportunity, but Yellow Pages and vertical media, for instance, have always been much more targeted on the “find.” The need to “find,” especially for time-strapped mobile users amplifies this point. Or, another way to put it, mobile users seek a targeted I-need-to-buy-something-now approach. And to his point, as usage grows on mobile devices, the “find” will be increasingly more important to businesses that want to be found.

“What people used to think is that they’d go search online and click and save the phone number […to a local business],” said Dinan. “That hasn’t happened. It’s no longer about searching because on a mobile device they can go to an app to find what they need. “

This search vs. find proposition comes into play with regard to cost per call. To draw from the presentation given by Mary Boysman of Aspen Dental earlier at the LSA conference, she said vendors are always looking for a way to lower her cost per call. Paraphrasing Boysman, she said she’s not interested in a lower cost per call. She’ll pay more for quality calls.

Dinan obviously concurs with Boysman on this point and notes that the sales conversations needs to be about ROI, inferring that the opportunity for directory publishers is to take its advertisers and put them on mobile platforms (wherever that may be) so they can be found when a buyer is looking for what they need. Dinan makes a good point as phone calls have long been the currency that directory publishers have hung their hat on and it’s the same currency in mobile.

“It’s not about lower cost per lead. It’s about leads in the funnel that will convert,” said Dinan.

Regarding the quality of calls, Telmetrics is currently blocking 35 percent to 40 percent of all inbound calls daily due to telemarketer activity.

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In the latest development last week, daily deal site LivingSocial acquired Onosys. LivingSocial, of course, has transitioned away from its Instant Deals platform to online ordering through the “Takeout & Delivery” area of its site. Onosys works with more than 75 restaurant chains and in 2011 said it was on target to process $90 million in online to-go orders in 2011. Among Onosys’ partners are those in the areas of business of point of sale solutions; payment processors; loyalty and giftcard providers; and hosting and security. According to Dow Jones, LivingSocial bought Onosys for roughly $6.5 million in stock, but did not disclose any additional payments in the form of cash.

For clients of BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces continuous advisory service run by Peter Krasilovsky, check out Peter’s recent report, “Online Food Ordering: The Category and Its Competitors.” Clients can log in here.

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McDonald cited some industry specific statistics, in particular that there were 7.4 billion print Yellow Pages references in 2011. While that does reflect a pretty steep decline from the height of PYP references over the years, the contact and purchase rates remain compelling. Sixty-two percent of those references resulted in the user contacting the business, and 76 percent of those individuals made a purchase after that contact. Additionally, McDonald noted in 2011 in the industry there were more than 266,000 metered call lines that handled 45 million phone calls.

Norton continued to share some additional research tidbits, which will be expanded upon tomorrow during a research panel run by Natalie Wuchenich, research director at LSA. Of the nuggets of data he shared included a data point compiled by LSA research partner Burke about past month reach showing that 66 percent of users used Internet search engines, 52 percent used print or online Yellow Pages, and 32 percent used newspapers.

Norton noted some of the strengths of the association, including strong public policy efforts that are currently under way across the U.S. Public policy efforts have ramped up significantly in recent years given opt-out and related legislation efforts. Efforts that the public policy team continues to work on include the industry opt-out database, yellowpagesoptout.com, which helps 170 publishers manage their efforts and to date has handled 2.8 million opt-out requests. Additionally, the team monitors environmental efforts and has released its most recent sustainability report. Moreover, the team has worked on a new website to draw attention to helping local SMBs, localpaysoff.com, and it hired a national spokesman, the former mayor of Denver, Wellington Webb.

The association sees opportunity for itself in the industry in terms of providing more research and analytics, sales tools such as accreditation programs, best practices, and seeking partnerships with other media associations.

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Merrill Brown, principal of MMB Media, joined ILM East conference architect Peter Krasilovsky on stage this morning to talk about the transition of hyperlocal and hypervertical sites from unprofitable hobby sites for civic and mom-and-pop organizations to one that is being taken seriously from a revenue strategy point of view by local media companies that are beginning to monetize the space. Thus, Brown said, “we’re getting to a point where investors are getting excited by local again.”

Brown has advised a variety of companies moving into this space and believes this area of local is at an important junction where newspapers and entrepreneurs realize that scale and networks are crucial. This network approach is being employed by two other companies, and their leaders joined Brown and Krasilovsky on stage to talk about their businesses.

Zohar Yardeni, CEO of Main Street Connect, spoke about his network of 52 community sites in three states. Main Street Connect has raised $14 million to date and operates under a fairly simple premise: local news will survive. Yardeni commented that the decision to enter a particular community isn’t necessarily based on affluent demographics. Often it is based on how advertisers value contiguous geographies, and the company is currently working with a variety of local and regional advertisers.

Josh Fenton, cofounder and CEO of GoLocal, looks at attractive markets as being midsize markets with features such as sport teams and state capitals. For instance, they’ve had success in a central Massachusetts region (Worcester), which is technically in the Boston DMA, but home to roughly 1.2 million people. Fenton offers a variety of advertiser tools; one that has been particularly successful is video.

Yardeni and Fenton commented that the CPMs they’re seeing in the hyperlocal space have surprised them. They were expecting CPMs of $1 or $2, but have seen them in the $10 range.

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BIA/Kelsey Program Director Mike Boland ran yet another data packed and insightful mobile forum that attendees have come to love and expect at each BIA/Kelsey conference. With a power-packed lineup of speakers, Boland and the panelists covered the waterfront of topics including mobile ad targeting; mobile deals, payment and loyalty; and mobile product development.

Boland kicked off the panel noting BIA/Kelsey’s recently released 2011-2016 mobile local forecast in which mobile local searches will eclipse desktop local searches in 2016 with 113 billion searches. Meanwhile, mobile local ad revenues will hit $5 billion in that same year. What’s driving the mobile local growth? Boland reported three key reasons: increased usage; advertiser evolution; and premium ad rates that might be tied to Facebook sponsored stories, gaming and the like. Paths to how mobile local leaders will monetize local include campaign management, deals, landing pages, pay per call and paid search.

Speakers Walt Doyle, CEO of Where, and John Valentine, VP East Coast of SCVNGR/LevelUp, talked about their respective views on mobile payments. Doyle said referring to eBay’s acquisition of Where: “It’s been a big year. As a company, it’s been a six-year overnight success.”

Now a part of the PayPal unit of eBay, Where has more than 70 million users. Doyle noted about the acquisition that a key strength of Where was walking people into physical locations, but building a payment tool was a “mountain that we weren’t going to climb.” That led to a conversation with PayPal about how they could work together. Doyle reported that Where became the demand generation engine for PayPal to move payments into the physical world. This past year has been a process of building this technology out and now works with large retailers like Home Depot, Petco and Best Buy and small retailers alike.

Today, users can pay three different ways. For instance at Home Depot, users can continue to use a typical screen environment and identify themselves by typing in their phone number; they can use a Where/PayPal magnetic strip card; or they can tap and pay with their phone.

LevelUp also has a mobile payment technology that exists in nine U.S. cities including Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Atlanta where it was more than 100,000 users and 1,400 merchants participating. Right now, said John Valentine, VP – East Coast for SCVNGR/LevelUp, “everyone is trying to get in this space. It’s a land grab.”

Valentine said that LevelUp’s approach has been simple — create a loyalty program to get people to use it. Another key practice that LevelUp has used is feet on the street outside retail locations to talk to shoppers about using the system and offering them an incentive. What will the mobile payment ecosystem look like in the next couple of years? According to Valentine there will be some consolidation and five major platforms will remain.

Rounding out the mobile forum were Doug McDonald of goMobi and Darren Waddell of Reply. McDonald talked about goMobi’s (part of dotMobi) approach as a reseller of mobile websites. Waddell spoke of the new mobile application targeted at the home improvement category that Reply will be rolling out under the MerchantCircle brand. Adding on to the current merchant-focused app where merchants can control their Web presence, create deals, respond to reviews and other actions, new functionality will include a lead store with related functionality.

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Specifically for Dex, which works with more than 400,000 advertisers, Sharman talked about three challenges for the media company, includes evolving the culture of Dex. He mentioned that there will likely be turnover of about two-thirds of current staff, inclusive of the sales force. The sales force, as he descibed it, is transitioning from an order taker to solution provider. Another challenge is managing the fact that print is going down while not allowing print to pull down digital. Finally, he spoke about Dex’ debt and the fact that similar companies must manage their balance sheets.

Dex has continued to evolve its product set, making some pretty significant additions in the past year with more new adds coming in 2012. In particular, Dex is in the midst of rolling out SEO, display, social and mobile leads. Sharman is particularly excited about the prospects of social. Partnering is the path that Dex has decided to take, offering solutions from the likes fo Google, Jingle Networks, Yelp, Local Corp., xAD and others.

With the changes in the organization and product set, Dex has experienced sizable growth in its digital bookings since 4Q 2010 — from a 1 percent decline in Q4 2010 to a 37 percent increase in digital bookings in 3Q 2011 over the same quarter in 2010.

Lastly, Sharman commented on seeing “good” margins on the digital business and also noted that Dex is moving pretty heavily in the tele-sales approach in 2012. Outside sales reps are now using iPads for order taking and client communications.

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In 2004 91 percent of Golden Pages’ revenues were from print products and just 9 percent were from digital. Fast forward to 2010 and, through its vertical and digital transformation, revenues have shifted to 70 percent digital and 30 percent from print. Golden Pages identified five consumer needs — reliability, necessity, specialty, affordability and emotional involvement — and created verticals.

The transformation in strategy includes rich content built on its Internet Yellow Pages to deliver a great consumer experience. Lempert offered the example of Zap, Golden Pages’ local shopping and comparison site, which lets consumers shop and then make informed decisions based on local business information and inventory of where to buy the products. Golden Pages took the Zap model and “zapped” its Yellow Pages into verticals.

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Only 1.25 percent of the 240 million websites online are mobile friendly. That statistic kicked off the DMS ’11 Mobile Tools for SMBs panel. Provided by DudaMobile, the company’s CEO and cofounder, Itai Sadan, looks at the statistic and sees a huge opportunity in building mobile websites.

In particular, he sees opportunity in converting clicks to calls. DudaMobile presented data from a survey with SMBs to understand what categories have particularly high rates of click-to-call conversions. When searched on a mobile device, SMB pizzerias experienced a 32 percent average click-to-call rate. Other top categories with high conversion rates were transportation, auto repair and home repair — all with click-to-call rates north of 20 percent.

What’s driving the call to action? Sadan believes it’s about having a call to action prominently on the top of a mobile website — making a click to call easy to find and providing a simple interface. Co-panelist Krishna Pillai, founder and COO of Convergent Mobile, agreed, but took it a step further in saying that driving a call to action is also providing a compelling offer (i.e., coupon) that entices a consumer to take action.

Annette Tonti, CEO of MoFuse, also commented on the move toward mobile websites for SMBs and said she sees three phases right now. Phase one, which she believes is coming to a close, is the thought by SMBs that they do not need a mobile website. The second phase is the understanding by SMBs that they need a mobile website, but they want it to be theirs, meaning a design that is just for them. Tonti feels like Phase 2 is just in the beginning stage, and then Phase 3, down the road, will be SMBs figuring out how to “power up” their sites to the next level.

Tonti continued that traffic is everything, it’s “the currency.” “The No. 1 reason people leave us is because they’re not sure they’re getting the traffic they need,” Tonti said.

Pillai also chimed in about overall marketing. Convergent Mobile, for instance, provides a branded decal to every customer that offers a way for them to promote their SMS short code that users can text to US411. He noted that incorporating the mobile positioning needs to be combined with other current marketing channels. In other words, just as SMBs promote their website, email and the like, they also need to be promoting their mobile presence whether that be a short code or a mobile website.

The post DMS ’11: Only 1.25% of Websites Are Mobile Friendly appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In particular, AT&T underestimated call duration guidelines that led to customer-service issues. In other words, some customers were upset that they were being charged for calls that they did not think had any value. Secondly, and adding gas to the customer-service issue fire, was related to the number of non-relevant or “nuisance” calls.

Read reported that two of the changes AT&T made to better manage the expectations of its advertisers was to implement a better call management tool and also updating its program to offer a fixed fee plan in addition to its original pay-per-call plan. The fixed fee option was launched in April 2011. Additionally, AT&T has looked at this as an outcome-based selling initiative, which is more focused on selling the outcome than on traditional selling of features and benefits.

Right now the clients involved in pay-per-call are primarily print customers — around 65 percent to 70 percent. At this point, AT&T is seeing an approximate 50-50 breakdown between calls generated from organic traffic and distribution partner calls.

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Milo’s goal is to work with businesses to bring their product inventory online. Abraham reports that roughly 40 percent of SMBs have websites and 70 percent of those businesses have inventory in their stores (i.e., product-based retail). Milo wants to get access to that inventory to provide a rich experience for both the consumer seeking a product as well as the SMB. Milo goes down to the SKU level to get as granular as possible.

Will this same model work for service-based business? “Absolutely,” said Bosemy. He feels it’s about applying the same principles as in the product space, which includes making ads more relevant and interesting. PaperG works with many media providers, typically those with a sales force, to help automate local ad creation, sales and management.

Responding to a question from Marshall about whether the panelists considered their companies in competition with Google, the most interesting feedback came from Courtney, who said, “If you’re not on a collision course with Google, you’re probably not in a very interesting space.”

Courtney continued that JWire, a location-based interactive media channel, doesn’t necessarily know that Google is on the same course but would welcome the competition and feel it had been well positioned to succeed.

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