MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton is well known within the newspaper industry as one of the least sentimental businessmen among all the publishers. He’s taken a hard line against journalistic "excess," resulting in products that have been highly profitable but…
Nearly 100 executives in The Kelsey Group community participated in a half-day session that we hosted in London titled Local Online Media. The panel I moderated was "The Financial Future of Directories and Local Search in Europe." The panelists were…
Perry Evans, CEO of Local Matters, took the stage with Neal Polachek today at Local Online Media: London 08, to sift through some of the key issues in the quickly changing local search environment. Evans, as one of the ground-floor…
Newspapers increasingly see an opportunity to sell SEO/SEM solutions to local advertisers. Such efforts probably began in earnest last year with members of the Yahoo! consortium using Yahoo!’s platforms. Others have been working with WebVisible and other resellers on a…
Quick, what industry gets the highest customer service quality ratings from U.S. adult consumers, according to an August 2007 Harris Interactive poll? No. 1 is supermarkets with 92 percent giving them a good rating, No. 2 is online search engines (84…
A few weeks ago, my colleague Michael Taylor sent me a link to a webcast of a panel discussion from last year's World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. I finally got the chance to watch the session titled The Impact…
Google has been hosting a day-and-a-half local symposium here for local media, directory and vertical partners (and potential partners). Roughly 120 execs have come to the invite-only event -- the glamour of the Google-plex campus, and excellent food and drink, making…
2007 U.S. advertising spending is expected to grow just 0.7 percent over 2006 to US$283.8 billion, according to McCann Erickson's well-respected advertising forecaster, Robert Coen. In his biannual Insider's Report, Coen downgraded his 2007 forecast for the second time in a year.…
It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an…
A major benefit associated with R.H. Donnelley's $345 million purchase of Business.com in July was getting Business.com founder Jake Winebaum. RHD needed an Internet change agent, and Winebaum clearly fit the bill after having played that role at Disney and…
At the ILM:07 conference last week in L.A., we saw lots of great mapping demos from Google, mobilePeople, et al. But it was hard to nail down how maps and their related services (ZIP codes, neighborhood mapping and other spatial…
The closing wrap-up panel at ILM:07 included two seasoned industry observers, a high-profile technology developer, and a principal from conference co-sponsor Search Engine Strategies. Under the encouragement of co-moderators Matt Booth and Neal Polachek, each panelist sought to summarize some of…
Two pioneers in the local social space discussed their leading-edge approaches in a panel at ILM:07 today. First up was Mike Orren, president of Pegasus News. Like so many companies in the local online space, Pegasus has not followed a…
Allison Mnookin, VP of Intuit’s Small Business Division, gave a keynote address on Friday at The Kelsey Group’s ILM:07 conference that started with a recap of Intuit’s segmentation approach to the SMB market. (Kelsey conference regulars have heard an earlier…
John Hanke, Google's head of Maps and Earth, keynoted this morning at ILM:07 and spoke in-depth about these products' recent announcements. These include MyLocation, terrain maps, user address corrections and enhancements to MyMaps. Just a normal week for Google though,…
John Hanke, Google's head of Maps and Earth, keynoted this morning at ILM:07 and spoke in-depth about these products' recent announcements. These include MyLocation, terrain maps, user address corrections and enhancements to MyMaps. Just a normal week for Google though,…
Speaking this morning at ILM:07 in Los Angeles, Russell Horowitz, chairman and CEO of Marchex, dismissed the idea that a clean slate is needed to communicate the value proposition of local online advertising to small businesses. He is betting on…
Jonathan Weber started his career in traditional media as a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times, but the new media bug got hold of him. He was the cofounder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard, which…
Jonathan Weber started his career in traditional media as a writer and editor at the Los Angeles Times, but the new media bug got hold of him. He was the cofounder and editor in chief of the Industry Standard, which…
Executive Interview: The Leading Edge: Auto Advertising in Transition had very much the same ring to it as yesterday's session on real estate in transition. At The Kelsey Group's ILM:07 event, the final panel each day was on two of…
