The San Diego News Network seemed like a model for local news development but now its future is less clear. Launched last week after nearly a year of development, the network was built to provide compelling local content to the…
McKinsey & Co. consultant Ali Keshavarz, speaking at the NAA Annual Convention in San Diego, said he believes newspapers can add 20 percent to their online revenues by pushing harder on small-business accounts. McKinsey has been working on an SMB…
Speaking at the NAA Annual Convention in San Diego, McClatchy CEO Gary Pruitt says his company is now operating the leading local Internet business in each of its daily newspaper markets. Among the company's top markets are Miami, where it…
Google CEO Eric Schmidt addressed newspaper publishers this morning at the NAA Annual Convention in San Diego, giving a high-level, thought-provoking talk (without apparent notes) about the future of information and the role that newspapers, search and consumers will play…
While retailers are reducing their brand advertising, along with store inventory and head count at their headquarters and stores, promotions, local events and direct marketing efforts are getting a big boost, says TNS Retail Forward Executive VP Dan Stenik, who…
The Las Vegas Review-Journal has launched an ambitious local mobile video site using the The AP Mobile News Network, said AP President Tom Curley, speaking at the NAA Annual Convention in San Diego. The site extends The Review-Journal’s leadership onto…
It was kind of gutsy of NAA President John Sturm to go on Colbert's "Better Know a Lobby" segment last week on Comedy Central. But I don't think it turned out so well ... (Thanks to Steve Outing for the…
Next week is the Newspaper Association of America’s Annual Convention in San Diego. I’ll cover Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote on Tuesday, in which he’ll express his support of the newspaper industry despite Google’s very public axing in January of…
The IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers are out with their semi-annual report on the online ad market. IAB/PWC say that interactive revenues were $23.4 billion for 2008, which is up 10.6 percent from the prior year. But everyone seems to be pointing…
MySpace and Citysearch today confirmed the launch of MySpace Local, a new local city guide using functionality and feeds from Citysearch, including its taxonomy of categorization, geography structure, search functionality and content. A beta version of the site launches this…
The local appointment space has a new entrant in the form of Austin-based HourVille. The start-up, created by several friends from UT’s business school, premiered at SXSW. It lets users book anything by the hour, including services, rentals, classes and…
One of the great mysteries is what Wal-Mart is really doing with classifieds. Last June, it signed up to use the Oodle platform, but not much has been heard from it since. In this week's Ad Age, Wal-Mart’s Duncan Dreschel…
The Knot has launched 75 local URL sites as well as several niche sites, including Chinese weddings, gay wedding, beach weddings and destination weddings. More than 200 local and niche sites are planned by the end of 2009, according to…
We all live in Google’s world now. Nobody would dispute that there are many positives associated with that. But how do industry practitioners really feel about it?. Can it be improved? We asked three executives who cover different parts of…
AdAge’s Bob Garfield famously sketched out a “chaos scenario” in which the media/advertising infrastructure collapses, venerable media brands fold bad poker hands and feral cats carry off small children. This week, Garfield says it is all actually happening because of…
Online leads for cars are broken. The vast majority of auto shoppers won’t even fill out a request for bid because they think they’ll get inaccurate, incomplete and tardy information from the dealer. But that doesn’t stop vendors from working…
Gabriels and Endeca have launched a new white-label auto portal. The effort formally kicks off a recently announced partnership to inject Endeca’s search capabilities into Gabriels' vertical sites. The new portal moves away from a simple listing product, offering a…
Thanks to everyone who came out to L.A. for the Marketplaces 2009 conference this week -- and to everyone who followed us on the blogs and Twitter. We had a great time. Here are some top-line takeaways. 1. The vertical…
Vertical networks can leverage their knowledge of their consumers to sell marketers wide-ranging research and media programs, according to Active Network CEO Dave Alberga, who keynoted at the Marketplaces 2009 conference in Los Angeles. Alberga, a former Citysearch executive in…
Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti, in a keynote at Marketplaces 2009 in Los Angeles, stressed that there are four things local sites need to focus on: being "more local," "mobile," "social" and "balanced." “Local is really an evolution,” he said. “Now…
