SuperMedia has announced a new program that extends its SuperGuarantee idea into the autos vertical. The SuperGuarantee Autos program gives anyone who buys a car on SuperMedia's EveryCarListed.com automotive vertical a free limited powertrain warranty good for up to $3,000.…
Huffington Post CEO Eric Hippeau defended the role of the site in journalism and said it is helping to herald in “a golden age of journalism” that has more content and audience participation than ever before. Speaking at IAB’s Annual…
I had the opportunity to speak with Brad Reynolds, CEO of Mongoose Metrics, a Cleveland, Ohio-based call measurement and conversion analytics company. Reynolds was quick to point out that it is not simply a call tracking company, but rather it…
IAC’s ServiceMagic reported today that it saw a 51 percent boost in 4Q revenues, growing from $25.3 million in 2008 to $38.2 million in 2009. The boost was accompanied by 21 percent growth in the number of home and trade…
Yelp has been on a roll, and is now reporting that it gets 29 million unique visitors a month. Given that, the company’s immediate challenge is to move beyond its core base of restaurant and shopping reviews and dive deep…
Monster Worldwide has bought HotJobs from Yahoo for $225 million. It will also be in charge of Yahoo's recruitment content in North America for the next three years, bringing in perhaps another $100 million for the life of the deal…
In the quest to produce good leads, no stone goes unturned. In coming years, one of the best sources of leads may be online scheduling (or "appointment calendars"). Former YPG executive JP Lion is working on scheduling solutions with Maxipage.…
Vertical businesses that have relied on Yellow Pages and newspapers and other classified channels aren’t always seeing the same performance-based results that they might expect in the Google age. But many of them also aren’t likely to become keyword experts,…
Allmenus.com, the online ordering portal with 255,000 restaurant menus around the country and 3,500 online ordering relationships, will focus on specific local markets via a new partnership program that gives a portion of revenues to newspapers or other local promotional…
Here’s a question: How long would directory publishers sit back and let new companies such as RedBeacon, AlikeList and others disrupt the leads economy for SMBs with search and socially driven features such as Twitter and Facebook? Or Google, with…
Canada's Yellow Pages Group has deepened its investment in verticals with its recent acquisition of Restaurantica, one of Canada's largest online dining communities. Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but a report by Paul Steep at Scotia Capital suggests…
Serial Web entrepreneur Mark H. Goldstein has been the founder of such sites as Kmart’s BlueLight and Impulse Buy. More recently, he invested in green ecology-based ventures, but he grew bored and came back to ecommerce with Loyalty Lab and …
Rumors have been flying that Google is poised to buy Trulia, “the real estate search engine” that competes with, among others, Zillow (which just said it is aiming to IPO in 2011). But according to reports by attendees, no information…
Three years ago, BIA/Kelsey created the Marketplaces research program and conference because we saw that local advertising was quickly "verticalizing." Indeed, money and talent have poured in for the new breed of vertical products that would take their place among…
Real-time reservations have moved beyond restaurants, hair salons and parking garages and are now being offered for self storage units. G5 Search Marketing, which specializes in self storage, has teamed with Centershift and United Stor-All Management to launch Web sites…
ReachLocal’s S1 filing to raise $100 million includes valuable details about the company. With grosses of $146.7 million for the first nine months of 2009, and operations in the U.S., Canada, the U.K. and Australia, the local search and display…
EBay is expected to dramatically boost its efforts in classifieds in 2010, so we welcome clues into its historical and current thinking into classifieds via eBay vs. Craigslist. EBay has been seeking redress from Craigslist, which has diluted its 28…
The battle to win a digital slice of the $150 billion auto repair marketplace heated up a little today as RepairPal announced a new $4 million round, adding to $3 million it previously raised. The round was led by Tugboat…
Verticals that can engage certain demographics on a socio/geo basis and drive loyalty and conversion are the basis of our Marketplaces research program. A new one that has caught our eye is WineTwits from HappyHours.com founder Steve Gilberg. Three years…
Facing up to the reality of a real estate market in which many houses for sale end up becoming “shadow” rentals, Zillow has added rental listings and information to its real estate services. At the same time, Zillow is attaching…
