In the first of many possible partnerships with local media companies, Centro has teamed up with Morris Digital Works to create a network that allows advertisers to place geo- and vertical- based ads across a broad spectrum of local and…
It's been an active week for The Washington Post Co. First, it added to its portfolio of vertical sites with the launch of Service Alley. Now, it is hatching a subsidiary brand -- SocialCode -- to act as a full-service Facebook…
Alt weeklies have certainly taken a hit from city guides (and especially from classified sites such has Craigslist). There has been a great deal of consolidation in the space. Yet the biggest consolidator, Phoenix-based Village Voice Media, with 14 local…
Deal-a-day group buying is a certain hit. But how important is it in the scheme of things for local media companies? For The San Diego Union-Tribune, deals represented “the number one new revenue growth,” in 2010, according to Mike Hodges,…
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…
The ability to track retail inventory has been on the retail wish list for years. Retailers advertise goods, and then disappoint customers when they don’t have them in stock. Or they have loads of stock in the store, and don’t…
Local and vertical content is eagerly sought by national players, from The New York Times to Yahoo, MSN/Bing to AOL. Now, Thompson Reuters is leading the local, vertical charge for wire services. In an aggressive push to lure traditional U.S. media…
During the 72-hour whirlwind that was ILM:10, several other announcements also came down the pike. Among them: - Group buying giant Groupon continues its flurry of partnerships. The Chicago-based deal a day inked separate deals with the Chicago Tribune Media Group and…
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…
One of the big hopes for local this year is ... national. As local targeting tools get more granular, there has been an upsurge in national/local advertisers, especially as they focus on touching consumers on the local purchase level. Gannett…
(Image is of Zinio Newsstand for iPad, but you get the idea ... ) The release of the Samsung Galaxy Tab will give the iPad some competition. It reminds us that the rise of tablets has been positioned as a…
The competition among white-label “deal a day” providers is increasingly intense. At the same time, local media companies are beginning to verticalize their deal a days to differentiate themselves. Case in point is The Washington Post, which has rolled out…
The future of city guides has been morphing beyond events and features. This was driven home today by the launch of Metromix Deals, a JV between Metromix, the 50+ site city guide chain co-owned by Gannett and Tribune, and Local…
The Las Vegas Sun is focusing on hyperlocal “Home News” neighborhood information that positions it for Yellow Pages-like sales, according to Sun President Brian Greenspun, who was speaking at a recent conference at the University of Las Vegas Nevada. Greenspun,…
The deal-a-day model thrives on the power of its e-mail list, sales channels, promotion, clever copywriting and vendor selection. Newspapers and TV stations should be especially well positioned to leverage these strengths, right? Many, in fact, are diving in to…
High school sports have been the centerpiece of many hyperlocal efforts. They bring to the table highly passionate fans, families and players in the hard-to-reach 12- to 17-year-old demo. But the economics of school-by-school efforts don’t always work, whether for…
AOL’s Patch gave a progress report today on its $50 million hyperlocal initiative. The site said it now has 100 hyperlocal sites, and will launch 400 more over the next six months. It also said it plans to hire at…
The Sacramento area is fast becoming Ground Zero for local blog networks. McClatchy’s Sacramento Connect, a project carved from The Sacramento Bee, is a content connector for 70+ area blogs and Web sites. It started incubating last summer and was…
Gannett’s local newspapers and TV stations will begin selling Yahoo inventory, considerably boosting the size of Yahoo’s local sales efforts. The deal, which involves 81 newspaper organizations and seven of its 23 TV stations, is similar to the efforts of…
Michael Zimbalist, who runs R&D at The New York Times Co., told Inman Real Estate Connect attendees in San Francisco yesterday that the rise of social networks has spearheaded a very real shift from “the paradigm of publishing to the…
