Today, Yell announced its acquisition of Moonfruit, a United Kingdom DIY website and online shop builder, for approximately GBP 18 million, funded out of Yell's cash reserves. Retention bonuses of up to GBP 5.2 million will be paid to key…
Business listings provider Localeze announced today that it will provide online business listings to Savvi, a savings network. Localeze business listings are standardized across its list of approximately 150 local search platform partners, including search engines, online directories, social networks,…
XAd, a mobile local ad network, released its Q1 2012 report today that shows growth in the local-mobile search category, particularly transportation-related search within the travel sector. We're not surprised by the results, given our forecast of total U.S. mobile…
In the run-up to Facebook's ballyhooed IPO, BIA/Kelsey has released Wave III of its U.S. Social Media Advertising Forecast, which reveals overall market acceleration in 2012 and 2013, and steady growth in locally targeted social spend. From 2011 to 2016,…
Verizon's new Visual 411 app is designed to provide a more integrative user experience across mobile, FiOS TV and desktop devices. A common platform supports all three media. In addition, the free app lets users search local businesses and provides…
Explaining the basics of local and social marketing to clients and prospects is a tough task for companies, which might come off as patronizing. Why not give them a book? A couple of years ago, Yodle CEO Court Cunningham wrote…
Google made up 66.5 percent of the U.S. market share in explicit core search in April, a 0.1 percentage point rise from the previous month, according to comScore's qSearch analysis. Microsoft came in second at 15.4 percent and Yahoo rounded…
Groupon Rewards -- "the easiest rewards program in the world" -- rolled out nationally this week after tests in 36 markets that began in October. The product is Groupon’s answer to the emerging “transaction marketing” space that many believe will…
With more than 1 million registered users and 87 million company profiles, Manta has established itself as a hub where small businesses can be found…and find each other. Now, having raised a fresh round of $44 million in funding from…
AT&T has finalized the sale of 53 percent of its Yellow Pages operation to the private equity firm Cerberus Capital, which has launched YP Holdings LLC. The new company will be led by newly appointed CEO David Krantz, who had…
Nielsen reported yesterday that ad spending on national cable networks has caught up to where their broadcast network brethren now stand. That's a big acknowledgement that the investments in programming and promotion that have been made by the content providers…
The local event calendars are filling up. A new event we’ll be attending is The Street Fight Summit West, which is June 5 at Bently Reserve in San Francisco, a classy location. Street Fight head Laura Rich tells us the…
via CNN If anybody wonders whether the considerable “legs” of Facebook justify a valuation now set for $83 billion, have a listen to a terrific BIA/Kelsey webinar on Facebook’s IPO, featuring Trada CEO Niel Robertson Wildfire CEO Victoria Ransom and…
EXAI is a white-label solution for SMBs based in Israel with global resellers, that offers hosting, domain purchasing and website development. I caught up with CEO Gal Moran, who expressed one of the major challenges in selling website services to…
You can learn a lot about failure from a guy who lost 11 jobs in 12 months. Richard Keith Latman, an entrepreneur who also started 11 companies over a 20-year period, documents his stumbles in The Good Fail. I interviewed…
Last November, major players in the newspaper industry bought Travidia as the cornerstone of a new shopping strategy. Travidia had been mostly known for its print to digital circular business, but it had recently repositioned itself with FindnSave, a new…
Among the myriad questions swirling around Facebook's imminent IPO (other than "when will it actually happen?"), the two most pressing are: 1) Can the social network actually support an assumed $100 billion valuation? and 2) How? BIA/Kelsey sought to answer…
Meineke Car Care Centers, with 900 franchises, has a huge ad budget, which it has been spending on Yellow Pages, TV, coupons, SEM and the Internet. Recently, Meineke has worked to integrate local ad opportunities under one “local expert.” But…
We’re seeing three models in the new loyalty and engagement space: "punch cards" where merchants reward you based on how often you come back, "Frequent flyer" or diner points that give you a leg up on airline or hotel points…
Business-to-consumer companies have tried to invade the business-to-business space in multiple instances, almost always with disastrous results. The logic for B2C companies is always there: move up the value chain with great big accounts that require no branding efforts. But…
