Verizon‘s announcement today that it will buy AOL for $4.4 billion is a bid to get beyond dumb pipes and airwaves to get deeply into mobile and video. By doing so, Verizon, a $200 Billion company, hopes to play on more of a level playing field with other major telecom players combining access to content and personalization services, especially Comcast (with NBC U) and AT&T (with Direct TV.)

The all-cash deal provides a 150 percent return for shareholders in AOL from when CEO Tim Armstrong came on board in 2009. The price is 17 percent above the current stock price. And at the lower price — which may ultimately be even lower if some of the content properties are sold — a lot less is riding on it.

Have you seen this movie before in 2000, when AOL was disastrously sold to Time Warner for $165 Billion? A lot of the same synergies are being discussed: video on demand, personalized content and subscription revenue.

But this time, it is really all about mobile; video on mobile; and the prospect of converting (or selling) 2.1 million dial-up subscribers that continue to be AOL’s biggest moneymaker. Indeed, AOL has built or bought a powerful arsenal of mobile ad serving and video tech, especially LTE Multicast, which uses its cellular network to broadcast live video.

In our view, content is not likely to be an important factor here. It would have been more important if AOL had merged with Yahoo, or with Microsoft. The biggest “what if” probably involves MapQuest, which has technically lagged behind mapping leaders but retains a powerful, verb-like brand in that space. Given Uber’s $3 Billion bid to buy Nokia?s HERE, it may ultimately emerge as an important factor in the deal — much more so than Huffington Post.  AOL’s sizable effort to make Huffington Post into a super content portal, including a major local dimension, failed dramatically last year. Similarly, Armstrong’s huge, multi-hundred million dollar effort with hyperlocal site Patch amounted to very little.

To some degree, we also see Verizon’s acquisition of AOL as an acqui-hire. Verizon has stumbled around advertising for several years but not had an impact. It also has made some small investments in content and classified properties, but hasn’t been confident enough to really spend. Its biggest effort was a promotional program with the NFL to broadcast games for free.

We like the statement issued in the name of Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam, who we note, has long had his eye on geo-targeted advertising. “Verizon’s vision is to provide customers with a premium digital experience based on a global multi-screen network platform. This acquisition supports our strategy to provide a cross-screen connection for consumers, creators and advertisers to deliver that premium customer experience.”

The post AOL's Sale to Verizon: All Eyes on Mobile and Video appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Have you made up your mind to join hundreds of your colleagues at Leading in Local: The National Impact in Atlanta May 7-9? We’re deeply excited about the event and its unique focus on leveraging the franchises, multi location outlets and brands that are investing heavily in local.

Just added: A great Buy Side/Sell Side session with U-Haul‘s Elnora Cunningham and Yelp‘s Pete Hancock. That’s kicking off Day 3 in grand style.

We’ve also announced the full lineup for our Local Retail session. Joining keynoter Mark Marinacci from Gannett/G/O Digital are Twitter‘s Nick Guerriero, General Mills‘ Brian Kittelson, Novus‘ Dave Murphy, AOL‘s John Gregory and Booz‘s Naseem Sayani.

We’ve also recently announced the lineup for our National Vertical session with Angie’s List‘s Kevin Vanes; ESPN Local‘s JonPaul Rexing, New Point Media Group‘s Scott Dixon and Dominion Digital Media‘s Bruce Budkofsky.

Also just announced: the eight finalists for the GoLocal Awards, who will be joined on stage by our judging team, including a great group of real industry experts.

All these additions make up part of our 60 speaker lineup — the biggest group we may have ever had on stage. Register.

The post Hot Adds for Atlanta: Yelp, Twitter, ESPN, Angie’s List appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Have you made up your mind to join hundreds of your colleagues at Leading in Local: The National Impact in Atlanta May 7-9? We’re deeply excited about the event and its unique focus on leveraging the franchises, multi location outlets and brands that are investing heavily in local.

Just added: A great Buy Side/Sell Side session with U-Haul‘s Elnora Cunningham and Yelp‘s Pete Hancock. That’s kicking off Day 3 in grand style.

We’ve also announced the full lineup for our Local Retail session. Joining keynoter Mark Marinacci from Gannett/G/O Digital are Twitter‘s Nick Guerriero, General Mills‘ Brian Kittelson, Novus‘ Dave Murphy, AOL‘s John Gregory and Booz‘s Naseem Sayani.

We’ve also recently announced the lineup for our National Vertical session with Angie’s List‘s Kevin Vanes; ESPN Local‘s JonPaul Rexing, New Point Media Group‘s Scott Dixon and Dominion Digital Media‘s Bruce Budkofsky.

Also just announced: the eight finalists for the GoLocal Awards, who will be joined on stage by our judging team, including a great group of real industry experts.

All these additions make up part of our 60 speaker lineup — the biggest group we may have ever had on stage. Register.

The post Hot Adds for Atlanta: Yelp, Twitter, ESPN, Angie's List appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The spanking new program is set for Leading in Local: The National Impact, which is May 7-9 in Atlanta.

We’ve put together a great list of 55 hand-picked speakers – all centered on what’s really happening in local with a special, unprecedented eye on the all important franchise and brand customer — plus a unique tour of The Weather Company (and a chance to meet weather celebrity Sam Champion.)

Leading executives and thought leaders with advanced franchise and brand applications for local are at the top of the bill, including:

— Chip Perry, Independent Consultant, AutoTrader’s ‘First Employee’
— Curt Hecht, Global CRO, The Weather Co.
— Mark Marinacci, President, Gannett/GO Digital
— David Lebow, EVP & GM of Digital Markets, YP
— Mitch Spolan, EVP, Global Retail, Living Social

And we’ve added some great session speakers, including:

— John Gregory, Chief Category Development Officer, AOL
— JonPaul Rexing, director of sales, ESPN Local
— Kevin Vanes, director, national sales and partnerships, Angie’s List.
— Meribeth Papuga, Exec VP and Director of Local Activation, MediaVest

The centerpiece of the conference is several key sessions where we go deep on search, geotargeting, digital agencies, cross channel and loyalty programs. Leaders will share their local insights from top franchise groups and brands representing most of the top local verticals, including auto dealers, real estate, restaurants/dining, health services, insurance, travel, consumer packaged goods, moving and cleaning. The companies appearing include a vital cross- section of U.S. commerce:

— AAA of the Carolinas
— Aflac
— AutoTrader
— General Mills
— Genghis Grill
— McKesson Health
— Maid Right
— Scion
— Two Men and a Truck
— U-Haul International

Will you join the BIA/Kelsey local community in Atlanta? Register

The post Speaker Update for ‘Leading in Local: The National Impact’ May 7-9, Atlanta appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The spanking new program is set for Leading in Local: The National Impact, which is May 7-9 in Atlanta.

We?ve put together a great list of 55 hand-picked speakers ? all centered on what?s really happening in local with a special, unprecedented eye on the all important franchise and brand customer — plus a unique tour of The Weather Company (and a chance to meet weather celebrity Sam Champion.)

Leading executives and thought leaders with advanced franchise and brand applications for local are at the top of the bill, including:

— Chip Perry, Independent Consultant, AutoTrader’s ‘First Employee’
— Curt Hecht, Global CRO, The Weather Co.
— Mark Marinacci, President, Gannett/GO Digital
— David Lebow, EVP & GM of Digital Markets, YP
— Mitch Spolan, EVP, Global Retail, Living Social

And we’ve added some great session speakers, including:

— John Gregory, Chief Category Development Officer, AOL
— JonPaul Rexing, director of sales, ESPN Local
— Kevin Vanes, director, national sales and partnerships, Angie’s List.
— Meribeth Papuga, Exec VP and Director of Local Activation, MediaVest

The centerpiece of the conference is several key sessions where we go deep on search, geotargeting, digital agencies, cross channel and loyalty programs. Leaders will share their local insights from top franchise groups and brands representing most of the top local verticals, including auto dealers, real estate, restaurants/dining, health services, insurance, travel, consumer packaged goods, moving and cleaning. The companies appearing include a vital cross- section of U.S. commerce:

— AAA of the Carolinas
— Aflac
— AutoTrader
— General Mills
— Genghis Grill
— McKesson Health
— Maid Right
— Scion
— Two Men and a Truck
— U-Haul International

Will you join the BIA/Kelsey local community in Atlanta? Register

The post Speaker Update for 'Leading in Local: The National Impact' May 7-9, Atlanta appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

“AOL has a huge bet on local and Patch in particular,” said Mark Josephson, senior vice president of revenue at AOL Local during our afternoon session at ILM East. Patch hyperlocal sites reach 865 communities that Josephson describes as “under served” by traditional media.  Patch’s business model operates at local, regional and national levels. At the local level, Josephson says Patch’s 17,000 bloggers, 1000 editors and 300-person sales teams are engaged with the community and main street businesses. In addition, AOL works with several agencies at the regional level. “We have a bias towards local and regional advertisers,” Josephson said.

At the national level, Patch has partnered with big brands to generate buzz and sales for SMBs. For example, Patch partnered with national brand American Express for Small Business Saturday. AmEx underwrote ads for local advertising. Patch made nearly 100,000 sales calls to get small businesses online with Patch and to partner with AmEx.

Josephson shrugged off questions of profitability, high-level departures, budget strains and speculation of layoffs. “Our growth metrics are strong,” Josephson said. We’ll keep our eyes are on the numbers of both people and profits as we head into Q2 2012.

The post ILM East: AOL’s Big Bet on Local appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Blinkx, a British video search company, will now power video search on AOL.com. Its video platform includes the ability to listen to the sound track using speech-to-text technology, look at the images on screen using advanced video analytics, and read other information embedded into the file by using media-analysis plug-ins. Blinkx will also incorporate AOL’s premium videos in its own search engine.

AOL is looking to expand its video audience. According to comScore, it receives 450 million video views per month. But Google is still the alpha of video search. Until recently, AOL used Truveo’s video search platform after acquiring the company in 2006. Now that the global Internet services and media company trails behind Yahoo, Facebook and Microsoft sites in unique video viewers, it seeks to explore a new video search platform.

The post Blinkx to Power AOL Video Search appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Ease of transaction, rewards and “exclusives” will be key to the next generation of deals, and the credit card companies are determined to play a major role. MasterCard is working with NextJump for a special rewards programs, and has a number of other initiatives in the space (which key execs will discuss at our Deals 3D conference next month). CitiGroup branded MasterCard, similarly, is partnering with Google to offer deals over mobile phones. Groupon is also said to be working on a credit card arrangement.

Now, American Express is revving up “Serve,” its erstwhile PayPal killer. Serve is an online and mobile commerce platform that enables consumers to preload cash on the card and eliminates the need to print out coupons, among other things. A key part of the platform will be local deals, which will be promoted on AOL’s Patch.com, which expects to have more than 1,000 hyperlocal sites by the end of the year. Customers will need a special credit card to participate.

The arrangement kicks in this fall, launching in Eugene, Oregon. Full personalization based on individual customer data will be fully developed in six to 12 months, according to AmEx (via Chicago Business).

It isn’t clear whether Patch will also be sourcing deals. Patch had previously announced a new initiative it calls “Patch eSaver,” which will show all the deals available in town every Tuesday.

The post AmEx’s Serve and AOL’s Patch.com Partner for Prepaid, Paperless Deals appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

AOL’s Patch.com, which is now in 813 markets, is meeting internal goals and poised for success, according to President Warren Webster, who addressed San Diego Interactive Day yesterday.

Webster said Patch is now reaching 6.9 million unique visitors and has seen 194 percent growth in the past six months. The site will continue to rapidly add new communities, including some special local/vertical sites such as inner city Newark and military community sites for Camp Pendleton and Coronado, California. By the end of the year, Patch is expected to hit the 1,000-site milestone. “We’d like to have thousands more,” he said, noting that today’s typical Patch community has a population of 27,000 people.

Webster noted that one of the keys to the site’s potential success is a tight focus on potential users. The typical Patch “persona,” he said, is a 41-year-old wife and full-time mother who is a daily Web user; checks Facebook on her iPhone; and is engaged in activities involving kids, friends, school and her town.

Editorially, the site is focused on a Patch 360 initiative, hitting users in every way they need to be hit. Core to the strategy is the daily email newsletter, which integrates content from a variety of sources — especially seasonal content, which gets 67 percent higher usage. New initiatives include the Patch eSaver on Tuesdays, which show all the deals that are available in town. “Patch is all about giving people 10 things they want every day,” said Webster.

Mobile is also playing a major role in the site’s strategy, added Webster, especially for weekend use. iPhone users generate 7 percent more traffic on the weekend than the average weekday. “We could be an entirely mobile company and be just as successful,” Webster mused. “But we would never do that.”

All this is a big bet on on being an attractive local ad medium, added Webster, who said Patch already has several hundred salespeople. “We are focused on being a concierge to the Web” for local businesses. The challenge is “to find the right feature set on our site that is very, very simple, trackable and drives traffic.” Businesses need a single source like Patch to “do it for them.”

While the site runs banner advertising because businesses are used to it, “we want to put products up on Patch the drives people to retail business. Banner and click based advertising doesn’t work for local,” he said. The focus, he reasserted, is on providing solutions that are “less fragmented, platform agnostic and hugely simplified.”

The post Patch President Warren Webster on ‘Patch 360’ Initiatives appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

AOL will buy The Huffington Post for $300 million in cash and $15 million in stock, and put Arianna Huffington in charge of the AOL Local sites (MapQuest, Patch, MovieFone) as well as its growing collection of opinionated tech and vertical news properties, such as TechCrunch, Engadget and Popeater. AOL’s vertical sites, such as TMZ.com, run by David Eun — the former “MediaGlow” properties — will continue to be run separately.

The acquisition of The Huffington Post might be seen as the crown jewel of an AOL strategy that has rounded up some of the most provocative sites that bring consumers back to check multiple times a day. The Huffington Post will add its tabloid-like, huge headlines on its front page to AOL’s already successful funneling.

The service relies on the contribution of hundreds of inexpensive-but-often famous contributors who are happy for the exposure. It also relies on aggregated content. As such, HuffPo represents a different view of the industry’s future than Yahoo’s $100 million acquisition of Associated Content, which commissions content based on demand analyzed by search algorithm — although a content farm would fit too. AOL CEO Tim Armstrong was an original investor in Associated Content.

The Huffington Post gets a lot of mileage from its links to pictures of semi-naked women, and its provocative headlines, including, it seems, anything to do with Sarah Palin. It has a tabloid-like appeal and represents a liberal alternative to Fox News on the right. It receives more than 25 million unique visitors a month.

Strategically, however, The Huffington Post is more about its successful verticalization of 25 vertical headings ranging from politics, media and entertainment (the early ones) to newer ones such as green, books, divorce, comedy and college.

The vertical strategy, indeed, was first explored as The Huffington Post began to branch out in local, with city editions developed for Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Denver. The irony is that local, after a big splash, has been backburnered by HuffPo as it saw a bigger bang for the buck by pushing more efficiently into the other verticals.

Will local become more of a priority under Huffington? It might, in a sideways manner. Editorially, Huffington noted on her site that Patch’s broad scale now provides “an incredible infrastructure for citizen journalism in time for the 2012 election, and a focus on community and local solutions that have been an integral part of HuffPost’s DNA.”

Business-wise, one of the reasons Patch has spent so heavily to launch so many editions so quickly is to scale nationally. That would allow it to heavily market the Patch brand — and attract national advertisers for geotargeting. With a broader collection of vertical content, the branding effort might now be more efficient. But the brand may not be Patch (or MapQuest, or MovieFone) so much as The Huffington Post.

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