Groupon has been a phenomenal success in the deal-a-day space, and we envision continued success for the segment's pioneer. But what shape will that success take? At our Marketplaces conference last March in San Diego, CEO Andrew Mason told us…
Group software seems obsolescent in the social revolution. Or is it? A few weeks ago, John Battelle’s Federated Media acquired Big Tent, the women’s group enabler with 1.3 million users. It apparently plans to target women with very specific advertising.…
Local food festivals (“Taste of Seattle,” “Taste of Hillcrest,” et al) are a great way to taste samples from many restaurants at one time. Usually, they require a single ticket, with proceeds often going to charity. A more recent phenomenon…
CityGrid Media (formerly Citysearch) will extend its paid base of 800,000 advertisers across thousands of neighborhood news pages, courtesy of a display advertising deal with Outside.in. The two companies have been quietly conducting pilot tests of custom ads in “a…
One of the big hopes for local this year is ... national. As local targeting tools get more granular, there has been an upsurge in national/local advertisers, especially as they focus on touching consumers on the local purchase level. Gannett…
(Image is of Zinio Newsstand for iPad, but you get the idea ... ) The release of the Samsung Galaxy Tab will give the iPad some competition. It reminds us that the rise of tablets has been positioned as a…
India’s auto classifieds marketplace is heating up, as the country’s burgeoning middle class becomes more auto dependent. In August 2009, MotorExchange acquired CarTradeIndia.com, apparently leading to investment in MotorExchange by Canaan Partners. Now, Axel Springer, the German media company, and…
American Express has recently been leveraging its powerful relationship with SMBs on the Web, including a tie to search engine marketing and lead generation via a deal between American Express Open and Clickable. Now Amex is going deep with social…
SB Nation (Sports Blog Nation) presents a fan-centric, highly verticalized (i.e., local) view of sports from dozens of bloggers. The site has completed a new $10.5 million "C" round of funding, pushing it past the $23.5 million mark. The new…
With the rise of consumer-facing real estate sites such as Realtor.com, Zillow and Trulia, it seems only natural that Multiple Listing Services would break out from behind the Realtor and brokerage firewalls, and provide truly local, for-profit real estate sites,…
Local.com has dramatically upgraded its destination site, with soft colors, an excellent user interface and renewed focus on three core categories -- “business,” “coupons” and “events.” The categories are clearly aimed at driving organic traffic from its intended audience of…
The competition among white-label “deal a day” providers is increasingly intense. At the same time, local media companies are beginning to verticalize their deal a days to differentiate themselves. Case in point is The Washington Post, which has rolled out…
Avvo, the Seattle-based vertical site that launched its lawyer ratings service in 2007, has now added doctor ratings, using the proceeds, in part, from a $10 million raise it did in March. In launching a doctors site, it goes head…
CityVoter, the provider of a “best of” platform for broadcasters, is now in 25 cities, working with key TV station groups such as Belo, McGraw-Hill and Tribune. The five-year-old, 12-person service, which is backed by Allen & Co., has gone…
Local is the niche thing that has gone mainstream. All the evidence is clear with our ILM 2010 conference, which is taking place in Santa Clara, California, Dec. 7-9. In fact, ILM:10 is shaping up to be one of the…
Small businesses seeking to pick, choose and install Web applications for their Facebook Pages and Places can now easily do so with Appbistro, a new site that provides app makers an iTunes Store-like model (right down to the 70/30 revenue…
AutoTrader.com is paying a reported $500 million to acquire the assets of Kelley Blue Book. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2010. On the surface, the acquisition of KBB is fairly straightforward. While AutoTrader provides its…
The rollout of Facebook Places was supposed to spell certain doom for check-in companies such as Foursquare and GoWalla, and the whole check-in and location-based services infrastructure, right? But it hasn’t exactly happened that way, says DoubleDutch CEO Lawrence Coburn,…
People question the future of ad agencies, given the evolution away from "Mad Men" big ideas to a multi-device, multi-access-type environment where they need more technology and idea implementation. At Bolo 2010 in Scottsdale today, Forrester analyst Shar VanBoskirk called…
The relationship between traditional advertising agencies and the local ecosystem consisting of local media and directory entities and their vendors has never been an important one. “Agencies” to local media have generally meant the Certified Marketing Reps who distribute and…
