Kelsey Local Media Blog
A number of interesting companies in the local space are taking advantage of the buzz surrounding ILM:10, now under way here in Santa Clara, California, to issue press releases announcing new product, partnerships, funding rounds and so on. The following…
This afternoon's Mobile SuperForum kicked off with a review of our Mobile Local Forecast from BIA/Kelsey mobile guru Mike Boland, followed by insights from a collection of mobile industry leaders weighing in on everything from how extensively mobile is being…
At ILM:10, SB Nation CEO Jim Bankoff revealed that his fleet of brand-based online sports communities is now experimenting with high school sports through the launch of a Washington, D.C., trial site (part of DC.SBNation.com) that will "test if the model scales to…
Greg Gittrich, VP, digital media, and editor-in-chief, NBC Local Integrated Media, told ILM:10 attendees that with strong corporate support, NBC has extended a consistent voice and high-value content across platforms in a manner that develops a franchise in local markets.…
If the first two decades of the local Internet were primarily about on-boarding traffic, then CBS Local Digital Media President Ezra Kucharz foresees that the next decade will be about "opening doors to consumers, getting them the information they want,…
The big money in local looks to be in mobile, if ILM:10 panelists Kara Nortman, senior VP of publishing, CityGrid Media, and Dev Khare, VP, Venrock, have it right. Nortman said that mobile is consuming most of CityGrid's attention right…
Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, in his opening keynote at ILM:10, noted a general frustration with Google's apparent de-emphasis of Yelp's content, but said he sees major opportunity in mobile app access as a workaround of Google. Stoppelman showed an example…
The headlines about 2011 being "the year of local" are everywhere, and as the curtain lifted on ILM:10 (with a record 600+ local-focused attendees filling the master ballroom), BIA/Kelsey President Neal Polachek encouraged the audience that as more media ad spend tilts…
ZipLocal, the independent U.S. directory publisher with more than 300 print directories, is bolstering its digital suite through the integration of VendAsta's StepRep reputation management tool. VendAsta's white-label product will be available to ZipLocal's 110,000 advertising businesses, and soon thereafter,…
SEO companies are a dime a dozen. How do you stand out? How about guaranteeing a front page rank on major search engines to SMBs? That’s what Relevant Ads’ Local Splash has done. The fast-growing SEO company cofounded in 2006…
In what can only be described as preconference insanity, I've neglected my duty to blog daily items from the wide world of mobile media. Below are a few missed -- though notable -- items, some of which I'll circle back to…
EBay's e-commerce prowess is well-established. Now, it is making inroads into the nearly $1 trillion online-search-for-offline-purchase market with the acquisition of Milo, a shopping search engine that catalogs and categorizes real-time inventory at more than 50,000 stores (national retailers such as…
TBD.com, the Washington, D.C., hyperlocal news site branding the online operations of Allbritton Communication' WJLA-TV and Newschannel 8 under the TBD umbrella, is tabling its local ad network, citing limited advertiser interest. The site currently has agreements with more than…
I recently spent two weeks attending directory industry events and meeting with companies in the space in Europe and Asia. Many of the issues facing the industry are amazingly consistent across geographical boundaries. There is a need to transform, and…
Google galvanized a lot of mainstream attention for the online-research-for-offline-purchases market with its recent rollout of Product Search. But with the total sales pie expected to eclipse $1 trillion in 2011, it's a big enough playground for more than just…
A panel at today's Web 2.0 Summit tackled the hot topic of location-based services. Composed fully of speakers and companies we'll have at ILM:10, the panel discussed how location will be a component of most online and mobile products ...…
Chicago, the original home base of deal a day, courtesy of Groupon's Windy City headquarters, has its latest DOD offering through the partnership of a prominent local publisher and white-label provider. Wantsa, a group buying platform that teams with newspapers, online publishers…
Many of you have heard by now that Google has launched a social "layer" onto local search with the new Hotpot feature. -- Rate and review local businesses. -- Add friends from Google contacts (based on Gmail contacts). -- Both…
Google has been telling anyone that will listen just how bullish it is on local/mobile commerce, and it has backed the bombast with a series of initiatives (Places, Place Search and Tags just to name three recent, relevant examples) to aggressively court…
From the Friday cool stuff dept., the folks at prolific design house Frog Design have built a real time heat map of geotagged tweet activity across the globe. Twitter was first to geotag "status" but hasn't done a lot with…
