Kelsey Local Media Blog
The battle to win a digital slice of the $150 billion auto repair marketplace heated up a little today as RepairPal announced a new $4 million round, adding to $3 million it previously raised. The round was led by Tugboat…
New Zealand's Yellow Pages Group posted a net loss after tax of NZ$338 million for the financial year ended June 30, but much of the loss resulted from one-time items. The company actually managed to grow revenues 1.4 percent to…
Verticals that can engage certain demographics on a socio/geo basis and drive loyalty and conversion are the basis of our Marketplaces research program. A new one that has caught our eye is WineTwits from HappyHours.com founder Steve Gilberg. Three years…
Call measurement firm Telmetrics has issued an announcement detailing its predictions for how pay per call will evolve in 2010. We think it's a pretty good list. Here is our summation of what they say, with some commentary of our…
Mobile bar code scanning app Red Laser has reached the elusive feat of being among the iPhone's top five paid apps for three consecutive months (via MobileCrunch). Oh yeah, and the $1.99 app has brought in $1 million in subscription…
Millennial Media, in the spirit of its monthly SMART reports, is one of the first to join the requisite torrent of year-end predictions. According to the mobile ad network, we'll see over the next year: 1. The U.S. Mobile Web…
Facing up to the reality of a real estate market in which many houses for sale end up becoming “shadow” rentals, Zillow has added rental listings and information to its real estate services. At the same time, Zillow is attaching…
Last week during the Interactive Local Media conference, search marketing company Kenshoo launched a new division to tackle the challenging but opportunistic area of local. I spent some time talking with division head Sivan Metzger both on and off the…
Special thanks to the 60 speakers and 515 attendees who made the ILM:09 conference such a great learning and socializing experience. Among the 85 conferences produced by John and Pam Kelsey and their team (including myself), we think it might…
Reuters is reporting that both Idearc and R.H. Donnelley are close to completing their bankruptcy processes, and are planning to hit the ground running with plans to transform themselves from print-centric to multiproduct businesses. The following quote from Idearc CEO…
The closing panel at the ILM:09 conference was a dialog between Peter Krasilovsky, program director of Marketplaces, and two seasoned luminaries from the world of journalism: Geneva Overholser, director, School of Journalism, USC Annenberg School of Communication. She is also…
How about that fourth screen? This growing media sector is projected to grow at an annual CAGR of 13.5 percent through 2013 with a total category take of $3.7 billion. But, trying to define what DOOH is and how to…
Aaron Finn of AdReady and Michael Barr of iPromote discussed the opportunity to serve advertisers interested in display advertising particularly in the self-serve environment. Finn noted that there are roughly 1.4 million businesses participating in search whereas there are only…
Kicking off this afternoon's Mobile SuperForum, BIA/Kelsey analyst Mike Boland walked through a number of key trends he sees affecting the development of mobile local search. These include rapid hardware improvement, the increasing local focus of mobile, the growing appreciate…
Andy Sims of Skype shed some light on its new partnership with European Directories in which European Directories sells advertisers in its seven European countries a subscriptions package to deliver calls to that advertiser. Anywhere the advertiser's phone number shows…
Chris LaSala, director, SMB reseller partnerships, Google, updated the audience at ILM:09 on how Google's approach to local monetization is evolving. LaSala walked through a number of new or recent product innovations that raised the ante in Google's effort to…
Cory Bergman of MSNBC; Jim Pastor of ESPN Local and Kinsey Wilson of NPR Digital Media tackled issues related to how local "local" must be and what's the best mix of national brands and platforms with local news and info.…
BIA/Kelsey has been promoting the development of reputation management for some time now and sees this area as defining the local space in the next three years. On a panel this morning BIA/Kelsey analyst Matt Booth hosted a discussion that…
In a wide-ranging interview this afternoon at ILM:09, ILM Program Director and conference chair Matt Booth tried several times to pin the Yelp COO, Geoff Donaker to the mat. But the unflappable and diplomatic Donaker just wasn’t going to go…
Microsoft's new MSN Local preview site is set to launch in 2010, Scott Moore and Cyrus Krohn announced on their “localizing the portal” panel at ILM:09. MSN Local will leverage Microsoft assets like its 100 million U.S. MSN users,…
