Channel Sales (partnerships with local resellers of AdWords) is one of Google’s fastest growing divisions. That’s according to Global Channel Sales Director Todd Rowe who was interviewed along with an executive entourage in a Google mega-panel at ILM ’14 today.

James Croom, Google My Business Senior Product Marketing Manager, Google
Max Frause, Global Business Lead, Google Shopping, Google
Christine Merritt, Head of Premier SMB Partnerships, Channel Sales North America, Google
Todd Rowe, Managing Director, Global Channel Sales, Google
Francisco Uribe, Adwords Express Product Manager, Google
Moderator: Matt Booth, CEO, Connectivity

According to Rowe, this was born in a meeting with Larry, Sergey, and then-CEO Eric Schmidt about tackling the SMB sector through partners. And that’s a departure from Google’s normal “invented here” way (my words). So the channel sales division was born out of this necessity.

“The good news is there’s 100 million SMBs,” said Rowe. “The bad news is there’s 100 million SMBs. How do you wrap your arms around that?”

The discussion, moderated by former BIA/Kelsey Chief Strategy Offer Matt Booth, reached into many functional areas relevant to local and SMBs. Those included product listings ads, AdWords Express, Google My Business (GMB), and of course mobile.

— Product listings ads are growing within search results, particularly in mobile where users are high-intent shoppers. The product data are primarily from retailers and partners, but the next step is to get better real time inventory data for SMBs (likely through partners).

— Listings integrity is another sticky area, given the quickly changing SMB landscape and the fact that they aren’t always self-policing location data in Google (including Maps). So finding the right sources for accurate listings is an ongoing strategy for GMB.

— The biggest question coming from AdWords reseller partners is how to offer YouTube to advertisers in more turnkey ways. “We are working to provide more scalable ways to create content,” said Christine Merritt. “If we can scale it well for SMBs, it will take off.”

— The way towards this video goal, according Rowe is to templatize — in both production and distribution. SMB video quality has lots of variance, given typical cost of high production quality. Local videographers, templates and standardized pricing are the path.

— In mobile, the strategy is to go beyond the cliche of “mobile-first” in cases where the market is “mobile-only” (emerging markets). “It’s a great force function to design something simple that lets them get online with google and grow their business,” said Frause.

The post At ILM 2014: Google Mega Panel Wants More Partners, Video and ‘Mobile-Only’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Channel Sales (partnerships with local resellers of AdWords) is one of Google’s fastest growing divisions. That’s according to Global Channel Sales Director Todd Rowe who was interviewed along with an executive entourage in a Google mega-panel at ILM ’14 today.

James Croom, Google My Business Senior Product Marketing Manager, Google
Max Frause, Global Business Lead, Google Shopping, Google
Christine Merritt, Head of Premier SMB Partnerships, Channel Sales North America, Google
Todd Rowe, Managing Director, Global Channel Sales, Google
Francisco Uribe, Adwords Express Product Manager, Google
Moderator: Matt Booth, CEO, Connectivity

According to Rowe, this was born in a meeting with Larry, Sergey, and then-CEO Eric Schmidt about tackling the SMB sector through partners. And that’s a departure from Google’s normal “invented here” way (my words). So the channel sales division was born out of this necessity.

“The good news is there’s 100 million SMBs,” said Rowe. “The bad news is there’s 100 million SMBs. How do you wrap your arms around that?”

The discussion, moderated by former BIA/Kelsey Chief Strategy Offer Matt Booth, reached into many functional areas relevant to local and SMBs. Those included product listings ads, AdWords Express, Google My Business (GMB), and of course mobile.

— Product listings ads are growing within search results, particularly in mobile where users are high-intent shoppers. The product data are primarily from retailers and partners, but the next step is to get better real time inventory data for SMBs (likely through partners).

— Listings integrity is another sticky area, given the quickly changing SMB landscape and the fact that they aren’t always self-policing location data in Google (including Maps). So finding the right sources for accurate listings is an ongoing strategy for GMB.

— The biggest question coming from AdWords reseller partners is how to offer YouTube to advertisers in more turnkey ways. “We are working to provide more scalable ways to create content,” said Christine Merritt. “If we can scale it well for SMBs, it will take off.”

— The way towards this video goal, according Rowe is to templatize — in both production and distribution. SMB video quality has lots of variance, given typical cost of high production quality. Local videographers, templates and standardized pricing are the path.

— In mobile, the strategy is to go beyond the cliche of “mobile-first” in cases where the market is “mobile-only” (emerging markets). “It’s a great force function to design something simple that lets them get online with google and grow their business,” said Frause.

The post At ILM 2014: Google Mega Panel Wants More Partners, Video and 'Mobile-Only' appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The end of the year usually means a few things to us: the holidays; our annual predictions; and Leading in Local: Interactive Local Media, the industry’s flagship event.

This year’s event is especially hot — a 2 1/2 day extravaganza taking place Dec. 3-5 in San Francisco. More than 50 speakers have been recruited by the analyst team, and we’ve added some great extra-curricular activities, including a Tech Expo with top companies showing off their wares “Before The Bell” on Day 1; a Women’s Leading in Local networking event on day 2; and an International Roundtable.

Here’s our newest news: BIA/Kelsey Analyst Emeritus Matt Booth (currently CEO, Connectivity) is coming back to moderate one of two Executive Sessions with Google leaders. We’ll kick off with Managing Director of Global Channel Sales Todd Rowe, than go deep in conversations with Head of premier SMB partnerships Christine Merritt; Adwords Express Product Manager Francisco Uribe; Google My Business Senior Product Manager James Croom; and Global Business Leader for Google Shopping Max Frause.

We also have feature presentations set by YP CMO Allison Checchi; Deseret Digital Media CEO Clark Gilbert and President Chris Lee; Yodle CEO Court Cunningham; Pinterest Head of Partnerships Joel Meek; and Salesforce VP Randy Wootton.

We are also set with a great discussion between me and Business Book of the Year Winner Brad Stone, author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon. And then there are the feature presentations by First Data SVP Krish Mantripragada; InfoGroup CDO Matt Graves; and Go Daddy SVP Raj Mukherjee. And we’ve also got a great, seven company Superforum dedicated to local’s most important issue: “Make the Phone Ring.”

There’s so much more. Check out the Full agenda. Register here.

The post Leading in Local Update: 50 Speakers Are Set (Dec. 3-5, SFO) appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Matt Booth hasn’t let any grass under his feet since taking the helm at Solfo/Yellowbot last year. The company has closed a $6.35 million Series A funding round, build up its team to include more focus on marketing and business development, expanded the product portfolio and, finally, changed its name to Connectivity.

As Solfo/Yellowbot, the company was known for its reputation and presence management solutions, and was known as a strong engineering-centric company. One of Booth’s objectives has been to expand the marketing and business development focus. He has grown the team to 27 (from around 20 when he joined) and plans to expand to 65 by the end of the year, adding both engineering and marketing/business development talent.

On the product side, Booth said Connectivity plans to focus on three core products — reputation management, listings management and a new piece, which is building automated customer lists. The latter works from the premise, supported by BIA/Kelsey data, that most small-businesses don’t have a very clear idea who their customers are. Building lists from unique identifiers (most commonly through a phone contact), puts a powerful tool in the SMB’s hand that they can in turn use to do more on the retention/remarketing side of the equation.

“Most small businesses don’t spend any money on retention because they don’t know who their customers are,” Booth said. His premise is that having a better way to capture and engage with customers will spur more investment in retaining and growing existing customers.

“Products have to be great in order to be part of what a business does every day,” Booth said. The standard he cited was OpenTable. Once a restaurant installs OpenTable it is very rarely uninstalled.

Connectivity currently has 92,000 paying SaaS customers, acquired largely through self-service and resellers. Most of these are smaller merchants, but recent growth has come from from the franchise and multilocation side of the equation. Going forward, Connectivity’s efforts will focus on working with agencies and directly with brands to bring in more multilocation businesses. Booth see what everyone else sees — there is no way to scale an effort at acquiring very small businesses other than self-service or working with large resellers. Direct efforts have to focus upstream.

The recently closed Series A round will fund the company’s expansion and product development efforts. The financing was led by Greycroft Partners, with participation by Rincon Venture Partners, Daher Capital, Double M Partners, TenOneTen Ventures, Eytan Elbaz and SLP Ventures.

The post Solfo Raises Money, Becomes ‘Connectivity’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Matt Booth hasn’t let any grass under his feet since taking the helm at Solfo/Yellowbot last year. The company has closed a $6.35 million Series A funding round, build up its team to include more focus on marketing and business development, expanded the product portfolio and, finally, changed its name to Connectivity.

As Solfo/Yellowbot, the company was known for its reputation and presence management solutions, and was known as a strong engineering-centric company. One of Booth’s objectives has been to expand the marketing and business development focus. He has grown the team to 27 (from around 20 when he joined) and plans to expand to 65 by the end of the year, adding both engineering and marketing/business development talent.

On the product side, Booth said Connectivity plans to focus on three core products — reputation management, listings management and a new piece, which is building automated customer lists. The latter works from the premise, supported by BIA/Kelsey data, that most small-businesses don’t have a very clear idea who their customers are. Building lists from unique identifiers (most commonly through a phone contact), puts a powerful tool in the SMB’s hand that they can in turn use to do more on the retention/remarketing side of the equation.

“Most small businesses don’t spend any money on retention because they don’t know who their customers are,” Booth said. His premise is that having a better way to capture and engage with customers will spur more investment in retaining and growing existing customers.

“Products have to be great in order to be part of what a business does every day,” Booth said. The standard he cited was OpenTable. Once a restaurant installs OpenTable it is very rarely uninstalled.

Connectivity currently has 92,000 paying SaaS customers, acquired largely through self-service and resellers. Most of these are smaller merchants, but recent growth has come from from the franchise and multilocation side of the equation. Going forward, Connectivity’s efforts will focus on working with agencies and directly with brands to bring in more multilocation businesses. Booth see what everyone else sees — there is no way to scale an effort at acquiring very small businesses other than self-service or working with large resellers. Direct efforts have to focus upstream.

The recently closed Series A round will fund the company’s expansion and product development efforts. The financing was led by Greycroft Partners, with participation by Rincon Venture Partners, Daher Capital, Double M Partners, TenOneTen Ventures, Eytan Elbaz and SLP Ventures.

The post Solfo Raises Money, Becomes 'Connectivity' appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.