Next week’s big conference in L.A., Marketplaces 2009, is likely to be something of a game changer. Great speakers, great signup list, great city and venue … and very hot topics. This time we’ve tinkered with the formula, a bit.…
Google today announced a noteworthy addition to the relevance algorithm that dictates what ads you see throughout its AdSense network. Known as Interest Based Advertising, essentially what it does is add behavioral targeting to a formula previously ruled by contextual…
Is it really so easy for the Facebooks and Wal-Marts of the world to use a national platform like Oodle or LiveDeal to successfully launch classifieds? Jay Schauer, a friend who runs Ad2Ad.com, doesn't think so. (Among other services, Ad2Ad…
LiveDeal, under new management, has moved away from its roots in Yellow Pages and classifieds, and begun a strategic focus on high-end SMB services. As part of its strategy, the company has been selling off many of its directory-related accounts,…
At The Kelsey Group, we’ve come to appreciate that our new owner, BIAfn head Tom Buono, is a major strategist. While Buono’s roots are in the finance of traditional TV, radio and newspapers, he’s mostly thinking about their next steps…
\ Yahoo has announced the addition of The Boston Globe and St. Petersburg Times to its Newspaper Consortium, which now has 37 media companies with 796 newspapers. The announcement was timed for The Newspaper Association of America’s MediaXChange meeting this…
Cox’s Kudzu, a local service rating and review directory, announced last week that it has implemented Facebook Connect. Users can now share their Kudzu reviews with friends by signing in via their Facebook account. Previously registered Kudzu users can also…
Local.com, the public company that started life as Interchange Corp., observed its 10th anniversary last week, complete with a red balloon-festooned party at its headquarters in Irvine, California, and an upgrade of its three-year-old, local ad distribution agreement with Idearc’s…
Online streaming video provider Ustream is making a stronger push into mobile. The recently released iPhone app we wrote about now has almost a million downloads. This isn't pure mobile television because it's pulling from Ustream's online feed (via Wi-Fi)…
Local Insight Media announced today that its subsidiary The Berry Co. (formerly an AT&T property) will expand its reseller agreement with AT&T's Yellowpages.com. Under the new terms, the number of markets in which Berry reps will carry YPC in the…
There are many reasons why price comparisons for services aren’t generally done. (i.e., the difficulty of nailing down providers, price changes, the need for custom quotes in many categories). Generally, people should choose service providers on multiple criteria, not just…
Netherlands-based Spotzer has launched its online video product in Sweden with partner Lokaldelen i Sverige AB, which is a local print and online directory player that competes with the market leader Eniro. Lokaldelen is a unit of European Directories, which is…
We've written in the past about location targeting: how the capability in mobile devices is starting to show the way for what we can likewise do on the "wired web." The Wi-Fi positioning made popular in the iPhone (care of…
Five-year-old Yelp has been something of a phenomenon, and is a preferred rating and review directory for millions of people online and mobile in 24 cities. In December, comScore pegged its traffic at 7 million visitors, up from 2.8 million…
The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium is seeing new ad dollars coming in, primarily for its behavioral targeted campaigns, which account for 90 percent of its business, per Yahoo VP Lem Lloyd. Lloyd oversees the program for Exec VP Hilary Schneider. (Both…
Oodle has been describing itself as a “social classifieds” platform for some time, extending its reach via deals with local powerhouses such as AOL, Comcast, Cox, Media General, Freedom and Wal-Mart. Now, it is set to make the hype more…
MapQuest announced a series of tools today that let advertisers place themselves along the routes that are generated when users plot driving directions. These are new features to MapQuest's existing Business Locator, which let users choose different types of businesses…
There is a certain magic with coining a far-out name that really sticks, like “Google” or “Yahoo.” Apparently, the new folks running eBay Classifieds, however, don’t think that “Kijiji” has made the grade. Kijiji, which is Swahili for “village,” is…
The New York Times has largely steered clear of local business advertising since its unsuccessful foray into local sales in the late 1990s, when it was working with Zip2. But now it is clearly reviving its local advertiser push. Last…
Simmons Market Research Bureau called me at home on Saturday morning as part of a broad canvassing of Yellow Pages consumers in San Diego County. After some preliminary questions, the surveyor asked me to walk over to where I keep…
