Last week, Peter Krasilovsky and I had the chance to catch up with Retailigence about its activity since our last writeup. For those unfamiliar, Retailigence provides local retail product and inventory data to consumer-facing shopping sites, apps, and advertising. It…
Google today announced a significant change to AdWords. Known as "Enhanced Campaigns" advertisers will now run the same -- though conditionally governed -- SEM campaigns across desktop, mobile and tablet. Previously, advertisers were able to run separate campaigns across these devices, altering…
Today I had the chance to talk to Mary Beth Brendza, founder of AppExpress, regarding the company’s announced partnership with the interactive unit of television operator Cordillera. At first glance the partnership provides a key sales channel to scale AppExpress’s…
Seat Pagine Gialle, Italy's leading directory publisher, has announced it is insolvent and unable to meet its debt obligations. Specifically, the company was not able to meet its 2013 debt obligations totaling 200 million euros. Seat will now seek protections…
The startup ethos is something that a lot of companies want to emulate: the constant drive and hustle, passion and ruthlessness of it all. We are many years from the first dot com explosion, but I still have a habit…
Capping off a recent string of webcasts, we held one yesterday to discuss the main takeaways from our monster report on mobile local advertising. It was enhanced by the participation of xAd's Monica Ho, and her discussion of xAd's efforts,…
Loyalty sales (including analytics) are typically associated with large brands such as Hilton and United Airlines. But a number of companies have been also trying to crack the code on SMBs, where the volume is. This week, Edo Interactive announces…
Deals are fading for many publishers. Group Commerce Inc., for instance, is just the latest company to cut back on its support of local deals. But for local businesses, deals remain potent building blocks for a wide range of promotional…
Last week we did a webcast on our top ten predictions for 2013, and this Wednesday we'll host one that unpacks our mobile foundation paper. We're excited to also have xAd's Monica Ho join us to discuss how the company…
Various companies have built SMB websites and landing pages by scraping the Web. PaperG comes to mind. How about using Facebook. BIA/Kelsey data from our Local Commerce Monitor shows that more than 40 percent of U.S. SMBs have Facebook pages.…
We’re seeing a rich breeding ground of startups fuel the next generation of Web services. BIA/Kelsey is recognizing local-themed startups during our upcoming Leading in Local event in Boston March 18-20. During a special startup segment on Day 2, we’re…
As my colleague Charles Laughlin mentioned, we just published our predictions for the coming year in local media. These were cross-disciplinary, bringing together the top 10 predictions across BIA/Kelsey's coverage areas (mobile, online, video, print, social, commerce). To expand on those, below…
In keeping with tradition, BIA/Kelsey released its annual "Picks and Predictions" report this week, offering a collective view on the events that will drive the 2013 agenda in our local media coverage areas -- directional, interactive, mobile, social, vertical and video.…
I recently contributed a column to Business Insider that has lots of overlap with this blog. So in the spirit of cross-pollination, an excerpt is below and you can read the whole thing here. The gist is Apple's directions in…
Local has become a key channel - not only for local small businesses, but for regional businesses, national franchises, and national brands. The inclusion of national players and revenue to local channels has added a new cast of major characters…
Google Commerce last week introduced Zavers by Google, a coupon/transaction marketing management and loyalty rewards service that it purchased last November. Using Zavers, shoppers find offers on their websites and save them to their Zavers account. The offers are then…
The French search and directories firm PagesJaunes has expanded its presence in the dining vertical by acquiring Chronoresto, a site that allows consumers to order takeout food online. The acquisition follows the company's strategy of building deep content and transaction capability in…
Today we release a report that brings together months of coverage in mobile local advertising. One important trend we've seen is how national advertisers are evolving into "native" thinking in mobile. Among the ways that's materializing, localized ad campaigns are…
Scoutmob, the Atlanta-based, mobile deals provider, has been taking a fresh approach to the deals space since its launch. It has focused entirely on mobile to leverage geo-location; changed the business model from commissions on deal value to flat fee;…
Vertical sites such as AutoTrader, Cars.com, Zillow and Trulia that provide listings, services and features are seeing a large share of their user base move to mobile. But all-in-one classifieds sites in the mode of Craig’s List, Pennysaver, Recycler.com, newspapers…
