Promotional services that boost SMBs run the gamut from coupons to prizes. The most popular are free offers, discounts off total amounts, and prizes/free gifts, said Matchpoint CEO Peter Adams, who was speaking at Marketplaces 2009. Adams noted that when…
AOL Yellow Pages has greatly benefited from search engine optimization, with 50 percent of its traffic coming from SEO, according to Chris Spanos, GM, local search, who was speaking today at Kelsey’s Marketplaces conference in Los Angeles. “We have a…
NCI President and CEO Dan McCarthy told attendees of Marketplaces 2009 in Los Angeles today that "local marketing spend is going to be reduced tremendously. It will have a big impact on all marketing budgets,” he said. “Local media starts…
Tim Armstrong, AOL’s new CEO, is a very big believer in local, with personal investments in a New York-area hyperlocal site (Patch) via his Polar Investments. Moreover, in his previous role as head of sales for Google, he frequently commented…
Some VCs are betting that consumers are ready to adopt car maintenance information and solutions on the Web -- especially as the bad economy forces them to hold on to their cars. Today, Allegis Capital, along with Catamount Ventures, said…
Next week’s big conference in L.A., Marketplaces 2009, is likely to be something of a game changer. Great speakers, great signup list, great city and venue … and very hot topics. This time we’ve tinkered with the formula, a bit.…
Is it really so easy for the Facebooks and Wal-Marts of the world to use a national platform like Oodle or LiveDeal to successfully launch classifieds? Jay Schauer, a friend who runs Ad2Ad.com, doesn't think so. (Among other services, Ad2Ad…
LiveDeal, under new management, has moved away from its roots in Yellow Pages and classifieds, and begun a strategic focus on high-end SMB services. As part of its strategy, the company has been selling off many of its directory-related accounts,…
At The Kelsey Group, we’ve come to appreciate that our new owner, BIAfn head Tom Buono, is a major strategist. While Buono’s roots are in the finance of traditional TV, radio and newspapers, he’s mostly thinking about their next steps…
\ Yahoo has announced the addition of The Boston Globe and St. Petersburg Times to its Newspaper Consortium, which now has 37 media companies with 796 newspapers. The announcement was timed for The Newspaper Association of America’s MediaXChange meeting this…
Cox’s Kudzu, a local service rating and review directory, announced last week that it has implemented Facebook Connect. Users can now share their Kudzu reviews with friends by signing in via their Facebook account. Previously registered Kudzu users can also…
Local.com, the public company that started life as Interchange Corp., observed its 10th anniversary last week, complete with a red balloon-festooned party at its headquarters in Irvine, California, and an upgrade of its three-year-old, local ad distribution agreement with Idearc’s…
There are many reasons why price comparisons for services aren’t generally done. (i.e., the difficulty of nailing down providers, price changes, the need for custom quotes in many categories). Generally, people should choose service providers on multiple criteria, not just…
Five-year-old Yelp has been something of a phenomenon, and is a preferred rating and review directory for millions of people online and mobile in 24 cities. In December, comScore pegged its traffic at 7 million visitors, up from 2.8 million…
The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium is seeing new ad dollars coming in, primarily for its behavioral targeted campaigns, which account for 90 percent of its business, per Yahoo VP Lem Lloyd. Lloyd oversees the program for Exec VP Hilary Schneider. (Both…
Oodle has been describing itself as a “social classifieds” platform for some time, extending its reach via deals with local powerhouses such as AOL, Comcast, Cox, Media General, Freedom and Wal-Mart. Now, it is set to make the hype more…
There is a certain magic with coining a far-out name that really sticks, like “Google” or “Yahoo.” Apparently, the new folks running eBay Classifieds, however, don’t think that “Kijiji” has made the grade. Kijiji, which is Swahili for “village,” is…
The New York Times has largely steered clear of local business advertising since its unsuccessful foray into local sales in the late 1990s, when it was working with Zip2. But now it is clearly reviving its local advertiser push. Last…
Simmons Market Research Bureau called me at home on Saturday morning as part of a broad canvassing of Yellow Pages consumers in San Diego County. After some preliminary questions, the surveyor asked me to walk over to where I keep…
Cablevision bet big on synergy (and ignored the CW about the newspaper industry) when it bought Newsday from Tribune Co. last summer for $650 million. Today, less than eight months later, it concedes that it has written off $402 million…
