Kelsey Local Media Blog
The Sweden-based local search company Eniro has acquired some of the assets of De Gule Sider in Denmark, the Yellow Pages operation closed down recently by European Directories. EDSA has made the decision to discontinue print directories in Denmark, where…
The search marketing firm WebVisible was abruptly closed down by its creditors over the holidays, with CEO Ron Burr managing only to convince the company's lenders to wait until after Christmas to foreclose on the business. As of Dec. 27…
Heavily leveraged Yell Group has earned some breathing room from a deal with its lenders announced yesterday. Yell announced that it has reached terms with the "overwhelming majority of lenders" to increase the headroom on its debt. Without such concessions, Yell…
The last act at ILM West was a panel on the future of "SoLoMo" (Social/Local/Mobile). Moderators Mike Boland and Jed Williams tag-teamed a panel of four: -David Courtney, CEO, JiWire, a location-based media channel connecting advertisers and mobile consumers via…
The events listings space has taken a number of twists and turns with Zvents trying to steer people to retail events as a business model, and also become a media driver in its own right; Eventful focusing more and more…
Moh Ok, Chief Scientist at PayPal, and Bo Fishback, CEO and Founder of Zaarly, talked about the integration of social, local and mobile to close the loop on driving consumer purchases during a morning dedicated to SoLoMo here at ILM…
Gillian Heltai, comScore's senior director, presented new search data showing that while local search is still growing, its trajectory is slowing down. She broke search into online and mobile. Year over year, online search grew 9 percent online to 19.3…
Moderator Peter Krasilovsky led a session Monday afternoon on how several leading vertical sites are successfully leveraging social media. As sites that are focused on a specific business, profession or user need, verticals will typically contain a directory, specialized editorial…
It’s obvious that the deals business is going to quickly move to a broader set of offerings. But how? That was the question posed today at ILM West in San Francisco. Belo Interactive GM Joe Weir noted that deals remains…
Court Cunningham, CEO of Yodle, made news at ILM West this afternoon, announcing a three-year deal with Canada's Rogers Communicationsduring a 15-minute Q&A with BIA/Kelsey analyst Bobbi Loy Luster. Rogers is a leading communications company in Canada. Its deal…
Local Search Association President Neg Norton announced today at ILM West in San Francisco that the trade group would work with BIA/Kelsey to produce its annual conference, April 21-24 in Boca Raton, Florida. Norton said the LSA is committed to…
Dan Hess, CEO of deals aggregator and research company Local Offer Network, played mythbuster at ILM West, using data to set the record straight on where the market is moving…and where it isn’t. Hess is convinced that there is still…
Dex One Chief Strategy Officer David Sharman shared with us today some of the key challenges the longtime traditional directory publisher is facing as it evolves its business into the digital world. The primary challenge that he sees in the…
Search engine marketers are no longer selling calls to merchants but conversion. Prior discussions among industry insiders focused on calls, but according to a Manta survey, 49 percent of merchants named referrals as the most valuable lead source. This was…
Two compelling speakers made the case this afternoon at ILM West that newspaper companies can successfully transform into digital media businesses. One problem is that most newspaper companies are not willing to make the tough decisions necessary for this transition.…
137 billion. That's how big the local media market is. Steve Marshall and Matt Booth highlighted findings from "Wave XV" of BIA Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor during this morning's session, "New Directions for Interactive Local Commerce." Not surprisingly, there is…
The Toronto-based call measurement firm Telmetrics today announced a major expansion of its business into Europe, launching its solution in 10 markets. The launch follows a six-month beta test in which Telmetrics proved out the value of its service for…
The idea of an online marketplace has continued to evolve dramatically in 2011. With the emergence of deals, we now have full-fledged interactive local commerce in place, in addition to advertising. It seems that everyone has jumped into the pool.…
One of our big complaints against hyperlocal sites is they haven’t really invested in the commercial lifeblood of their community. They’re more like the (almost totally irrelevant) equivalent of a public access cable TV channel. That’s why we like the…
Yelp launched its local review site in Australia today and cofounder Jeremy Stoppelman traveled to the country for the occasion. Since 2004 the company has accumulated a database of more than 22 million reviews, none of which has included Australian…
