With the probable exception of Yelp, standalone review sites haven’t figured out a way to make money. In the past year, Insider Pages was sold off to Citysearch, and Judy’s Book, famously, changed its model to coupons. So why would…
Last week, Local.com announced that it will acquire PremierGuide, a white-label local search solution, for US$2 million. I’ve read a handful of reviews about this acquisition and most seem to be missing the most important part of this deal: It’s…
Paul Levine has resigned his position as GM of Yahoo! Local to take the VP of marketing slot at AdBright, a Sequoia Capital backed ad marketplace. Jennifer Dulski will be taking over local responsibilities as group vice president and general manager,…
We’re always looking to identify TV station groups that really get it and are going to push hard to compete for local traffic and advertisers online. Is Fisher Communications the one? Last week, Fisher – a publicly traded, Seattle-based owner…
AOL reportedly beat out Microsoft and is paying $275 million for Tacoda, the behavioral targeting company that serves ads to 125 million people across 4,000 Web sites. Tacoda will likely be operated as a separate unit, complementing Advertising.com, AOL’s highly successful…
The National Hockey League and its 30 teams, unable to score exposure on major media networks, are going local and on demand, with extensive game, team and community programming being launched next season. The service, produced by NeuLion, a technology integrator…
The New York Times (subscription req'd) ran a story that will, at the very least, hurt the morale of a competitor and more likely put it out of business. In Monday's paper, Brad Stone wrote that falling advertising is "threatening…
Backfence cofounder Mark Potts has done a “final word” on Backfence. The post is a good catch-all, but contains no revelations. Don’t look for much second-guessing of the company’s strategy, either – although he clearly wishes he could have ridden…
For the past couple of years, Quigo's contextual network product, AdSonar, has been a steady alternative to Google and Yahoo! for local media companies (as have competitors such as ContextWeb and FAST AdMomentum). The company currently has more than 200…
Consumers increasingly use the Web to search for services. But it is tough to complete the loop and actually order service. In many cases, businesses are either unresponsive to phone calls and e-mails, or their information is inaccurate. All this…
Yellowpages.com recently announced it would increase the number of its sales offices from two to 16, staffing each office with both field and telesales reps. While the move is a statement to the industry that Yellowpages.com plans to dominate local…
Here at O’Reilly’s Where 2.0 conference in San Jose, an annual event for 800+ mashup developers, there’s no perspective yet on the importance of maps to the local ecosphere. But a picture is developing of a “3D Data arms race,”…
We’re all guilty of feature creep. A lot of the stuff isn’t especially useful. Now comes Palore. When it comes to directory listings, Palore believes hardly any of the info is useful. In fact, consumers want to know just one…
Spotzer CEO founder Andrew Klein makes no bones about being inspired by SpotRunner, the break-through company that broke out last year by making it easy for small businesses to produce video and place it on local media. Spotzer is pretty…
Superpages.com is getting good reviews from the ad community for new directions it is taking with its redesign (clean), ad serving formats (based on relevancy, performance and bidding) and its overall effort to update itself for a Google-centric marketplace (where…
Scads of stories are popping up that say Google is a likely bidder for Yell Group, the U.K.-based publisher that also operates U.S. independent Yellow Book. Here is a story in today's Independent newspaper, which cites sources saying Google is…
AT&T Advertising & Publishing, the new directory organization arising from the combination of AT&T and BellSouth, is beginning to establish a new identity. The company announced this week that it would adopt "the AT&T Real Yellow Pages" as its new…
MerchantCircle may be best known as the bad boy of telemarketing for a negative marketing scheme that went awry last fall. But the eight-person Rustic Canyon start-up promises it has mended its ways and points to a growing base of…
Kate Kaye at ClickZ has an interesting story on newspaper publishers and local television stations that are sending their salespeople away to learn more about interactive advertising. As the media world in general moves toward many different advertising platforms (Web,…
A handful of articles came out today that together triangulate some interesting points on the future of IPTV and local. The New York Times examines a few automated ad platforms and services that are following the trail blazed by Spot…
