Other shoppers remain in business, such as American Classifieds (Thrifty Nickel) and many locally or regionally-owned Pennysavers. The name “Pennysaver” goes back to the 18th Century, and is not exclusive.

Our guess is that OpenGate didn’t see a clear path to profitability and decided to simply pull the plug (apparently, without paying final wages.) Core advertisers and consumers have many alternative options on Craigslist and other sources, and OpenGate didn’t seem to have a plan that would have upgraded Pennysaver to a hyperlocal, searchable and mobile-oriented model. That’s where things need to go.

We look across the aisle, for instance, to Cox Target Media’s Valpak, a coupons and advertising business. It has thrived on a hyperlocal publishing strategy, and has developed a robust digital strategy. Valpak has just announced a great Apple Watch app. But PennySaver wasn’t going there.

Theoretically, we still find Shoppers an appealing alternative sales channel. They are generally 100 percent commission, and many products could theoretically be added to their bundle (Google, et al). WebVisible, at one time, teamed up with American Classifieds to pursue such a model. PennySaver, itself, teamed up with Antengo, a mobile classifieds service. But that was discontinued when OpenGate came on board.

The post GoodBye Pennysaver: Is There Life Left in Shopper Publications? appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Craigslist has outlasted its challengers, and remains the platform to beat for classifieds, or “things to sell” marketplaces. eBay, similarly, remains a leader for the sale of goods – although most are not geographically oriented. Amazon is also active in that space.

Can Facebook, with its huge volume and trust networks, cut into their business? It is going to try via a new “For Sale” offering that allow users of its groups to post items for sale. Items are listed with prices, photos, descriptions, pick-up location and prices. They can also be listed as “available” or “sold” to let buyers know what’s still on the market/

The listings are currently free — and probably won’t go into the paid areas that provide the bulk of Craigslist’s revenue: apartments, cars, jobs and “personal services.” But if Facebook decides to provide a greater emphasis on classifieds, it could conceivably move into transactions (and commissions). It could also open the service up beyond its groups to have more of a geo-orientation.

It isn’t the first time that Facebook has been used for classifieds. Oodle, a large classifieds platform that launched in 2005, took over a nascent Facebook classifieds service in 2008 and focused on Facebook’s huge scale to offer items for sale to friends and groups within the service. Oodle was sold to QVC several years ago.

It also isn’t the first time that online groups have been used for classifieds. In their heydays, Yahoo Groups and Big Tent — each with hundreds of thousands of users — had active lists of classifieds. Many associations and groups currently host classifieds on their websites and pages.

The classifieds project is the latest transaction-oriented effort from Facebook, which may want to diversify its revenue beyond advertising. Facebook has been experimenting with various transaction models for several years, including tests with virtual gift cards, deals and virtual currencies. Facebook has also developed an Amazon-like capability to enable transactions on other sites by collecting credit card information on its profiles.

The post Facebook Goes Up Against Craigslist and eBay (Sort of) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

There have been several game changers in local. One is Google search. Another is Yelp reviews. Another has got to be Craigslist.

Craigslist started out as a totally free community site focused on recruitment. In recent years, it has incrementally added paid sections – partly to make them more manageable and it is beginning to make real money from these. According to ‘conservative’ estimates compiled by our friends at AIM Group for its annual Craigslist report, the site’s revenues grew 101 percent in 2013 from $166.5 Million to $335.7 Million.

While Craigslist now serves 700 markets around the world, AIM Group says the vast majority of the revenue comes from 54 markets. The dollars largely come from Craigslist’s affordable fees for recruitment in 28 markets, and its auto ads, which were just introduced in 4Q 2013. AIM estimates that 79 percent of Craigslist’s revenue comes from recruitment; 16 percent comes from autos; and the remaining five percent coming from things like ‘therapeutic’ listers in New York City. The site’s fees range from $5 to $75.

Yet, the site stays true to its roots as an altruistic community resource by not charging for “private party” person to person ads – recruitment ads are just charged to agencies and companies; and auto ads are just charged to dealers.

The question we’ve asked in the past is whether Craigslist is vulnerable. It still seems easy enough to produce a better classifieds site. eBay Classifieds — started after eBay was unable to take over Craigslist — is a much better site in terms of user experience, with links to social media, easy photo uploads, etc.

To be sure, Craigslist is — as AIM notes — the same drab user experience as it has always been. Under the hood, however, AIM notes that Craigslist has finally started improving the site. Suddenly, listings are mapped; there are new ways of searching for goods and services; there is a picture gallery view; and even a way to save thumbnail photos. Moreover, by imposing fees on dealer auto ads, it has become easier to find autos for sale — spam entries have been significantly cut back.

Does all this suggest that Craigslist is now poised to become a state-of-the-art site that truly serves the needs of its users as we move into the mobile age? Not necessarily. But Craigslist has probably done enough to keep its critical mass of listers, and users.

The post Craigslist’s Revenue Up 101%; Measuring Its Impact appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

There have been several game changers in local. One is Google search. Another is Yelp reviews. Another has got to be Craigslist.

Craigslist started out as a totally free community site focused on recruitment. In recent years, it has incrementally added paid sections – partly to make them more manageable and it is beginning to make real money from these. According to ‘conservative’ estimates compiled by our friends at AIM Group for its annual Craigslist report, the site’s revenues grew 101 percent in 2013 from $166.5 Million to $335.7 Million.

While Craigslist now serves 700 markets around the world, AIM Group says the vast majority of the revenue comes from 54 markets. The dollars largely come from Craigslist’s affordable fees for recruitment in 28 markets, and its auto ads, which were just introduced in 4Q 2013. AIM estimates that 79 percent of Craigslist’s revenue comes from recruitment; 16 percent comes from autos; and the remaining five percent coming from things like ‘therapeutic’ listers in New York City. The site’s fees range from $5 to $75.

Yet, the site stays true to its roots as an altruistic community resource by not charging for “private party” person to person ads – recruitment ads are just charged to agencies and companies; and auto ads are just charged to dealers.

The question we’ve asked in the past is whether Craigslist is vulnerable. It still seems easy enough to produce a better classifieds site. eBay Classifieds — started after eBay was unable to take over Craigslist — is a much better site in terms of user experience, with links to social media, easy photo uploads, etc.

To be sure, Craigslist is — as AIM notes — the same drab user experience as it has always been. Under the hood, however, AIM notes that Craigslist has finally started improving the site. Suddenly, listings are mapped; there are new ways of searching for goods and services; there is a picture gallery view; and even a way to save thumbnail photos. Moreover, by imposing fees on dealer auto ads, it has become easier to find autos for sale — spam entries have been significantly cut back.

Does all this suggest that Craigslist is now poised to become a state-of-the-art site that truly serves the needs of its users as we move into the mobile age? Not necessarily. But Craigslist has probably done enough to keep its critical mass of listers, and users.

The post Craigslist's Revenue Up 101%; Measuring Its Impact appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

eBay generally focuses on helping things get sold. But it has never had a “wanted” section. Now it has tipped its toes into “wanted” via a new partnership between eBay Classifieds and Rewarder.

Rewarder, a San Francisco-based expert network, was founded two years ago by former Intuit/StepUp executive Kendall Fargo and backed by Granite Ventures. It has recently been written up by my colleague Mike Boland. The network now has 750,000 experts, who “have a passion for helping people , but don’t want to do it for free,” says Fargo. “It’s an extension of the ‘sharing economy'” pioneered by AirBnB, Uber and others, he suggests.

While there are plenty of free expert resources, they don’t provide you with the detail you need, and they are not a personal solution, Fargo says. Things you want to own, such as cars and products, receive the most “wanted” queries. And the queries are very sharable via social media and other sources.

Mobile also plays a big role in the network. A lot of it is impulse. More than 200,000 people are using the mobile app. Would I use it to find a cat hotel during a car trip this summer? No. That’s more of a social survey. But you’d use it to learn how to start a cat hotel.

Here’s how it works: Rewarder receives the query, including reward amount; sends out alerts to the expert solution; and sends out a payment to the winning solution. Rewards vary widely but many are in the $10 to $50 range. A reward for finding a lost poodle was posted for $100. Another person posted a $50 reward for building a travel itinerary for Sydney, Australia. More than $14 Million worth of rewards are currently posted.

Fargo notes that 30 percent of queries are settled within six hours. “It is a matching and mashing system,” he says.

The post eBay Gets Into Wanted Ads Via Rewarder appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Vertical sites such as AutoTrader, Cars.com, Zillow and Trulia that provide listings, services and features are seeing a large share of their user base move to mobile. But all-in-one classifieds sites in the mode of Craig’s List, Pennysaver, Recycler.com, newspapers and alt weeklies haven’t moved as fast to mobile.

Can a mobile all-in-one approach (i.e. native apps) gain traction? We were sorry to see the drop out last October of Eggdrop.com, a mobile classifieds site that had started to see some traction.

But we’re still gung-ho on mobile classifieds. Mobile is an especially effective mobile channel, given its immediacy; geo-location capabilities; ties to social media ratings/reviews; and ability to be programmed for automatic notifications when items are added or sold.

Several companies, in fact, are pushing hard to build out a mobile-first classifieds marketplace. Among them: Antengo. The San Diego startup, known to its fans as “Ant,” was launched in 2010 by a Microsoft Advertising Network vet and a classifieds entrepreneur who built Barefoot Student and another successful vertical classifieds site.

Antengo has seen over 250,000 downloads of its Android and iPhone apps and seven million listings, with 30 percent average monthly growth across 2012. ” The site is available on iOS, Android and, soon, Windows Phone. It and is entirely focused on mobile.

“A website means nothing to us,” says cofounder Marcus Wandell (the Microsoft vet). “We’re taking an Instagram approach.” Everything traces back to the mobile device. (Users) don’t have to share phone numbers or emails to instantly coordinate location-based deals that save them money.”

While decidedly listings-centric, user profiles are emerging organically via Facebook sign-ins (which account for 36 percent of traffic). By 3Q, user profiles, verified seller status and other forms of marketplace transparency will emerge in the apps. This moves Antengo closer toward an area pioneered by Oodle using Facebook friends for classifieds. Oodle was sold last month to QVC.

The post Antengo Pushes on Mobile Classifieds: ‘Websites Mean Nothing to Us’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Here’s what we’ve been waiting to announce: Google Offers’ head Nitin Mangtani will join our great list of keynoters at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston. We believe Mangtani’s appearance marks one of the first public debuts of Google Offers, which is playing a major role in Google’s vital local strategy, along with Google Places, Google Maps and Zagat ratings and reviews.

Previously announced ILM East keynoters include Groupon Vice Chair +++ Ted Leonsis; American Express SVP of Social Media Leslie Berland; CityGrid Media CEO Jay Herratti; New York Times Research Ops VP Michael Zimbalist; and New York Magazine Digital GM Michael Silberman.

Mangtani joins Google Channel Sales BizDev Head Christine Merritt at ILM East. Merritt will provide Google’s perspective on its emergence in the local ecosystem, and the most effective way to work with Google as a partner.

The next wave of Deals is, in general, a key focus for us at ILM East, along with mobile local media, social local media, video local media, hyperlocal and locally targeted national advertising.

In addition to the keynotes from Google Offers and Groupon, we have a special Day 1 session dedicated to the next wave of deals, featuring EverSave’s Jere Doyle; Find n Save’s Christopher Tippie; Closely’s Perry Evans; and Boomtime’s Bill Bice. That session will be followed by a broader view of deals and ecommerce, which featured NextJump’s Charlie Kim; Cartera’s Jim Douglass; and Bundle.com’s Jaidev Shergill.

Other recent adds to the program include The Boston Globe’s Lisa DeSisto, who joins Boston.com VP of Digital Products Jeff Moriarty as a presenter; and MIT Sloan Associate Professor Catherine Tucker, who gives the low down on the effectiveness of local social media.

Before the show, we’re making a special trip to The Boston Globe’s R&D Lab (Limited Space, RSVP required). Or come to Andrew Shotland’s SEO for the Enterprise session, which also features SEO Expert Will Scott and Advance Digital Media VP John Denny. We’re looking forward to a great show.

Venture Capital
•David Hornik, Principal, August Capital
•Scott Maxwell, Senior Managing Director, OpenView

Mobile Local Media
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Doug McDonald, Director, dotMobi
• John Valentine, VP, East Coast, SCVNGR/LevelUp

Hyperlocal
• Merrill Brown, Principal, MMB Media
• Josh Fenton, CEO, GoLocal24
• Zohar Yardeni, CEO, Main Street Connect

Social Local Media
• Geoff Cramer, CEO, Social Made Simple
• Adam Japko, President, Digital Sherpa
• Jeff Moriarty, VP, Digital Products, Boston.com
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact

Video
• Juan Delgado, Managing Director, Americas, Perform
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications

Deals and Promotional Ecosystem
• Bill Bice, CEO, BoomTime
• Jere Doyle, President and CEO, EverSave
• Perry Evans, CEO, Closely
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave

Transactions
• Charlie Kim, CEO, NextJump
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Retail Advertising, Cartera Commerce
• Jaidev Shergill, CEO, Bundle

National/Brands
•Adam Epstein, President, AdMarketplace
•Pete Gombert,CEO, Balihoo
• Steve Sherfy, Local & Mobile Search, GroupMSearch
• Karl Siebrecht, President and CEO, AdReady

Elections 2012
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360

SMB Marketing
• Dave Galvan, President, Schedulicity
• Maria Kermath, Director, AT&T Ad Solutions
• Randy Parker, President, SMBApps
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Reply.com

Sign up now (and hint: reserve your room earlier rather than later).

The post Google Offers’ Nitin Mangtani Set to Keynote at ILM East appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of doers and innovators who are transforming and redefining the local space. Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon vice chair/AmEx board member/sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and Michael Silberman.

Other highlights of the two-day event includes a preconference rundown on local search run by Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide; a full plate of top BIA/Kelsey research and forecasts; a special venture capital panel; and innovator panels on social, mobile, deals, video and hyperlocal (the latter co-moderated by Merrill Brown).

KEYNOTES/KEYNOTE DISCUSSIONS
� Ted Leonsis: Owner, Monumental Sports (Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards); Vice Chair of Groupon; board member of AmEx, former vice chair of AOL; author, “The Business of Happiness”
� Jason Calacanis: CEO, Mahalo; investor. Calacanis’ career has been at the cutting edge of local and social media and reflects all the big trends, from his development of The Silicon Alley Reporter to Weblogs (AOL), Mahalo and the creation of TechCrunch50 and Launch.
� Leslie Berland, vice president, social strategy, American Express. Berland’s a major deal maker deeply involved in AmEx’ss mega Foursquare and Facebook deals.
� Jay Herratti, CEO, CityGrid Media. Herratti always gets top rankings at our events. He runs IAC’s super quad of the CityGrid Media Network, Citysearch, Urbanspoon and Insider Pages.
� Michael Zimbalist, VP, research operations, New York Times Co. Zimbalist leads the NYT’s 12 person-research unit. He’s deeply immersed in cutting-edge social, mobile, tablet and video efforts.
� Michael Silberman, GM, New York Magazine Silberman is the mastermind of NYMag’s development of a super set of verticals catering to the “New York state of mind.”

FEATURED SPEAKERS
� Bill Bice, CEO, SpaBoom
� Merrill Brown, Cofounder, MSNBC.com, Court TV
� Jim Douglass, EVP, Cartera Commerce
� Jere Doyle, CEO, EverSave
� Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
� Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa
� Maria Kermath, Director, New Tech & Sales Apps, AT&T Advertising Sales
� Mark Josephson, SVP, AOL Local
� Charlie Kim, CEO, Next Jump
� John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
� Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications
� Randy Parker, President, SMB Apps
� Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact
� Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360
� Andrew Shotland, Publisher, Local SEO Guide
� Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave
� Darren Waddell, EVP, Product and Corporate Marketing, Reply.com

Join hundreds of senior level local executives at ILM East for the local community’s best networking and insights. You can register here for earlier bird rates.

Internet Pioneer Ted Leonsis

The post The Super Lineup at ILM East March 26-28 (Boston) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Shopping portals have moved beyond “federated search,” and now combine the best of daily deals, coupons, weekly ads and other promotional information in ways that are more efficient — and drive more shopping.

At the national level, Gannett’s ShopLocal.com has been moving in this direction for some time. At the local level, we’ve recently seen the launch of Local.com’s multi-pronged shopping portal. The daily deal and coupon aggregators such as The Dealmap, 8coupons, Deal Radar and Yipit probably also qualify as shopping portals.

New to the game is FindnSave.com, an effort by Travidia, the digital media vendor that works with 700 newspapers. Two McClatchy sites are currently launched: The Sacramento Bee and The Kansas City Star. Next up are McClatchy newspaper sites in Charlotte, Fort Worth, Fresno and Tacoma.

Travidia Chief Marketing Officer James Green says the newspaper sites have seen an immediate and dramatic increase from their previous shopping areas, which had a lot of information but were not presenting shopping information as efficiently. “They caused consumers to go off in a million directions,” he notes. “Consumers just want the best deal, regardless of the source.”

With newspapers, however, one size doesn’t fit all, Green emphasizes. Some newspapers have different vendor deals locked in, while others want to emphasize different types of information. Both The Sac Bee and KC Star, for instance, feature Groupon deals, Milo.com inventory information and standard features such as a Twitter board of local shopping Tweets.

But The Sac Bee also opted to include online coupons, while The KC Star opted out of online coupons. Such customization isn’t always easy to pull off: Most shopping related vendors don’t have an API that can make them easier to plug in their feed.

The result is that FindnSave has been developed as more of a customizable platform, rather than a turnkey site. Its primary feature is the development of “search blocks” that are integrated on top of the database, and extract relevant information.

Is it better than the competition? Green believes that FindnSave has a competitive edge via the newspapers’ localized information, plus the deep integration of the platform. Eventually, it will integrate various types of shopper-related content as well, such as local shopping blogs, ratings and reviews.

Another asset cited by Green is FindnSave’s easy verticalization, which can be used to create entirely new online vertical properties. The Sac Bee, for instance, is using the product to create a dedicated grocery portal. The portal will feature a slightly different user interface, as well as a combination of newspaper and syndicated content.

Ultimately, FindnSave has been “10 years in the making for us,” says Green. “It’s been a natural evolution. The bottom line is we are not trying to facilitate e-commerce; we are trying to facilitate in-store traffic.”

The post New Era for Local Shopping Portals; Travidia’s ‘FindnSave’ Launches appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Group software seems obsolescent in the social revolution. Or is it?

A few weeks ago, John Battelle’s Federated Media acquired Big Tent, the women’s group enabler with 1.3 million users. It apparently plans to target women with very specific advertising.

Oodle, the mega-classifieds platform, has now followed course, buying Grouply, which is described by TechCrunch as “a do-it-yourself social network built on top of Google Groups and Yahoo Groups.” Oodle isn’t disclosing how much it paid, but Grouply had been funded by VCs (including LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman) to the tune of $2.6 million.

So, what can you do with group software? Oodle CEO Craig Donato sees it as a first step to moving social media beyond just friends. He notes that groups bring in different kinds of conversations in a social context, whether people are giving things away, want to talk to other mothers, or share tips on recycling. Among “first degree friends,” there simply isn’t enough liquidity to engage in robust commerce, he hints.

While the social graph is still mostly about friends, the graphs are getting more complicated, adds Donato. “There are lots of circles, and lots of different affinities. The texture to the graph is incredibly important for commerce. The sweet spot is two or three degrees of separation. This might include friends of friends, college classmates or people from your hometown.

The post Oodle Buys Grouply: Moving the Social Graph Beyond (Just) Friends appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.