Local Corp. has branched out in several directions in an effort to leverage its local platform. It has recently acquired Krillion (retail and product search) and Rovion (rich media platform and integration). Another major effort is its development of Spreebird, a deals company being built on top of its acquisition of Southern California’s Screamin’ Deals.

Spreebird has been mostly differentiated in the deals space by its profit share with local schools or charities. Users can designate which school or charity they want to designate 10 percent of the deal’s net proceeds for. To date, $650,000 has been donated, or 10 percent of its net profits.

The site, after roughly six months, has now unveiled a new look that gives it a stronger visual ID that is more feminine (more than 80 percent of its users are female). The site has also revealed a new tagline: “Shop Smarter. Make a Difference.”

Senior VP Malcolm Lewis tells us that the site is really focused on providing a better shopping experience, and isn’t limiting itself to typical deals entitles such as restaurant and spa deals. A recent deal, for instance, sold several hundred sets of bath towels and bedding, he noted.

Deals are being highly targeted based on a number of algorithms for location, purchaser history and the popularity of the deals category. The algorithm will recognize buying patterns, he said.

Spreebird is also set to move beyond deals, which is just one of six promotional categories that he envisions (but won’t reveal). The site is also very mobile-centric, with a “significant percentage” looking up deals via daily alert emails and mobile browser, although the percentage actually buying from mobile is much smaller.

In all, Lewis envisions that Spreebird isn’t trying to be a generic deals site. He thinks the site could compete as a strong premium niche, “like Volvo.”

The post Local’s Spreebird Broadening Approach to Deals appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The ability to marry store inventory with search and promotions is an intriguing one for interactive local media. But what closes the loop on this vision?

Sherry Thomas-Zon, VP, local shopping, Local Corp. — the new name for Local.com — suggested this week at ILM West in San Francisco that inventory can serve as an anchor for a 360 shopping offering. The key is to break the components of shopping into functional departments instead of making it “one size fits all.”

“The opportunity is to add value across the retail mix,” said Thomas-Zon, former president of Krillion, which was recently acquired by Local. You don’t just want to have shopping content. “You want a shopping module. It is what product search looks like on site in a mobile context.”

Speed and convenience are key parts of it. Components include grab and go shopping, need it now, where to buy, nearby stores. Thomas-Zon noted that there are different types of shopping.

For instance, there might be high consideration items, contrasting with shopping types such as low-cost replenishment, habitual purchases with limited decision making, big-box stores, off-price stores and small format products.

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Aiming to be a Top 5 deals site by the end of next year, Local.com today announced that it has bought Southern California’s Screamin’ Daily Deals to provide the infrastructure for its Spreebird daily deals site. The site has been purchased for $12.5 in stock, cash and relief of debt, with two-year, performance-based earn-outs possibly bringing the founders up to $20 million more.

Local.com hopes to leverage the existing company user base and technology and organizational infrastructure, and scale it through its own 22 million unique visitors around the U.S. SDD is currently operating in 14 markets. The vast majority are in Southern California, but the company has also set up shop in Salt Lake City. In addition to daily deals, the company has recently launched travel deals.

SDD grossed $2.4 million in 2010 and $4.4 million during the first half of 2011. If average deal sizes were $30, that would translate into 80,000 deals and 147,000 deals respectively. One differentiator to the site is its focus on “School Rewards,” which has already brought in $409,142 to 700 local schools and nonprofits. The company donates 10 percent of its share of deals — or roughly 4 percent to 5 percent of the cost of deals — to the program. Local.com says it will continue to build on the program, which complements a charity program it runs that provides 1 percent of profits to local charities — when it is profitable. Last year, it donated $140,000.

SDD’s 60 employees have been based in San Juan Capistrano, California, but will move to Local.com’s Irvine location, which is about 10 miles north. Its three C-level founders will become Spreebird’s VP of sales and marketing, product and operations, respectively. They report to Local.com SVP and Spreebird GM Malcolm Lewis. The deal fits a recent pattern of Local.com buying Southern California companies. It had also recently purchased Octane 360, a SMB optimizer based about 30 miles north of Irvine.

We spoke with Malcolm Lewis and Local.com CEO Heath Clarke about the acquisition. They say SDD gives them “a real business platform with very comprehensive back office automation.” While there had been hopes among some that the company’s $450k acquisition of iTwango at the end of 2010 would serve a similar need, iTwango’s real strength was limited to technology and it has mostly been used for personalization, says Clarke.

One of the real advantages of working with a local destination site like SDD is that it already has formed direct relationships with local merchants. As the daily deal space shakes out, this is going to be a key battleground, says Lewis.

One area that Local.com now hopes to innovate in the deal space is its marriage of merchant inventory with deals via its recent acquisition of Krillion. With 70,000 products from 15,000 retailers, “We can pull heavily discounted inventory from big-box retailers” for deals, says Clarke.

Clarke adds that the company is “already a Top 10 deals player based on revenue. Our aspiration is to be a Top 5 player by the end of next year. And we intend, ultimately, to be No. 1 in community deals.”

Local.com’s Malcolm Lewis is a featured speaker next Monday and Tuesday at BIA/Kelsey’s Deals 3D conference in San Francisco. You may register here.

The post Local.com’s Spreebird Solidifies Deals Strategy; Buys Destination Site appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Finally, we have the long awaited merger of a directory with a retail solution. Today, prior to its earnings call, Local.com announced it would integrate product and store availability into its growing suite of women-oriented services by acquiring Krillion.com. The sale price was $3.5 million.

When it was launched in 2006, Krillion was a real pioneer in bringing search engine optimization to the fore for products. It was built on the idea of tying products closely to vertical shopping categories. Some of its initial ideas didn’t work. SEO, for instance, proved to be a poor substitute for destination traffic when it comes to retail. But the company has continued innovating.

Local’s acquisition cost appears to have been well below Krillion’s $9.1 million capitalization, per peHUB. But it is more than a good deal. It gives Local entry to shopping, and pits it against other shopping-driven initiatives, including eBay, via its $75 million acquisition of Milo.com. Other major competitors include JiWire, Wishpond and now SaleLocator, a privately funded initiative. ShopLocal, of course, remains the granddaddy in the space as it ventures beyond the traditional domain of weekly store circulars.

Krillion comes with a rich set of features that should help Local right away. These include an archive of product images, and information on current pricing, manufacturer/ retailer discounts and real-time in-stock information.

It also has a structured index of 70,000+ products for 1,200 brands across a number of vertical categories, which now include appliances, baby gear, consumer electronics, computers, tools, video games and home & garden. More than 50,000 retail locations are tracked.

Most of this can now be neatly tied into Local.com’s expanding suite of services, which include Local’s directory, the Octane 360 SMB network, the Rovion rich media ad network, and Deals (via Spreebird, the newly announced brand for its deal a day). In addition to the Local properties, Krillion can continue to serve its own network, which includes Consumer Reports, SuperPages, ShopSavvy, Topix, Yp.com and The Find.com.

Under terms of the deal, Krillion CEO Sherry Thomas-Zon becomes Local.com’s VP, local shopping, and the 13-person company remains headquartered in Mountain View rather than relocating to Local’s Southern California location.

The post Local.com Buys Krillion; Will Integrate Retail Information appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the bigger questions is how the local portals will fully leverage the emerging social deals platform, with deal a day, coupons, flash sales, et al. Local.com, which reaches 22 million unique visitors via its destination site and network, has been wrestling with the question as well.

Today, the company has announced that it has created a separate social buying business unit. The new unit, which will roll out its first products in mid-2011, is being built on the back of iTwango, a deals service it acquired in late December. The unit will also work with a syndicated offers platform that was unveiled with Local.com’s women-oriented relaunch in November 2010.

Malcolm Lewis, the founder of Premier Guide, an online directory for hundreds of broadcasters and newspapers, has been named to run the unit. Lewis was an executive for Local.com after its purchase of Premier Guide. He then branched off to launch Fablistic, a social recommendations engine.

“Daily Deals are not the end game,” Lewis told us. “That’s too narrow a view of the offer space,” which he notes, also includes coupons, flash sales and other promotions. “We are always looking for ways to connect with customers to add incremental sales.”

Lewis adds that “customers” means both local small businesses and national advertisers seeking to target local consumers. ”Local.com’s core competency is connecting other people’s local advertisers to a huge network of consumers.”

The post Local.com Creates ‘Social Buying’ Division appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Local.com, which recently introduced an integrated coupon and sales platform as part of its relaunch, has announced that it will enter the group buying/deal-a-day space via the acquisition of iTwango, a Los Angeles-based start-up that launched in October. The company, founded by former Citysearch CTO Hal Oreif, will be rebranded under Local.com.

The company’s first group buying products for Local.com will be rolled out in mid-2011. They will be supported by Local.com, its various hosted sites, and its network of 1,000-plus local and regional media sites. These sites can add the deals site on a white-label basis, pitting Local.com directly against such companies as Tippr.com, Nimble Commerce, Deal Current and others. At the same time, the deal network will be built up with telesales and e-mail marketing.

Local.com CEO Heath Clarke says that the Local.com diligence team was impressed that iTwango was built “almost as an exchange” that can easily funnel coupons through the platform and publish to the Local.com search engine.

The whole point is to provide a broader range of services, adds Clarke, noting that group buying is a perfect fit with Local.com’s directory, its coupon and deals platform, and and its Octane 360 optimization service. “We can sell through some of those on a wholesale basis.”

The post Local.Com Buys Group Buying Start-Up appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Content farms and aggregators are a major part of the new, scalable local ecosystem. But the rules of the road are different for local content than for general content, according to executives speaking at ILM:10 in Santa Clara.

MerchantCircle Local Content Studio GM Andy Halliday noted that MerchantCircle is pumping up its context with local content, and now has 120,000 pieces of local content from 15,000 contributors after just six months. “Local content has a long tail, but there are fewer searches per item,” said Halliday. “It is not the same economics as non-geo topical content like Demand Media.”

Halliday also noted that local is “the wild west frontier for getting content up on the Web. It needs to have ‘liveness’ or it’s just a placard. More possibilities open up with the advent of mobile with geotracking,” he added.

Local.com VP for Octane 360 Adam Rioux echoed Halliday’s view, noting that Octane is custom building content that Local.com can sell targeted advertising around. He also noted that Local.com is driving much greater usage for the content by distributing the content not only to Local.com, but also to its partner network, publishers and to SMB profiles.

Perfect Market CEO Julie Schoenfeld said the company has been successfully focusing on working with publishers to monetize non-mainstream content that may have low usage at first but can be pumped up with contextual placement based on search algorithms. It is now working with 30 publishers.

“Think of every article you produce as a deposit in the vault that yields dividends over time,” said Schoenfeld. She advised the audience that with location-based services becoming more prevalent, “great meta data, including local geotargeted content about when or where it was written, is very important.”

The post ILM:10: Local Content Economics ‘Not Like Demand Media’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The hordes of shoppers who still enjoy standing in lines and fighting for parking spaces on the “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving is an offline event. Or is it?

Local sites are prepping shoppers who want to see what’s available at the stores, including The Dealmap, Milo.com, Local.com and Superpages. Other local media companies, including the Los Angeles Times, are helping small businesses get in on the game for Cyber Monday.

American Express is also getting in on the game with Small Business Saturday, a promotion for SMBs that include a $25 gift certificate for consumers who shop participating SMBs, and a cash donation to Girls Inc. of $1 per “like” of the effort’s Facebook page (867,594 “likes” have been registered). We also noticed that Yelp is involved with the effort, listing several recommended local SMBs on a geotargeted basis, which is really useful.

The Dealmap’s effort is categorizing and mapping more than 150,000 unique Black Friday product offers at nearly 50,000 retail locations. Smartphone owners can use their phones to check out the deals when they are on the go, and will even be notified if they are near a deal. The site reports that 300,000 people have downloaded its app.

Milo.com is also in on the game, providing sales information and, more important, real-time inventory feeds for more than 5,000 products. Its inventory feeds will include major chains, such as Target, Toys “R” Us and Macy’s.

Local.com, meanwhile, has integrated the local and daily deals from The Dealmap along with major retailer coupon codes and deals from Savings.com; loyalty card coupons from Coupons.com; and weekly circular ads from ShopLocal. Superpages.com has also done a great job integrating various kinds of coupons.

The LA Times, for its part, is supporting Cyber Monday with a Shopping Directory that is being published in its Main News section on 11/29, and also accessible on latimes.com.

The post Local Sites Prep for Black Friday, SMB Saturday, Cyber Monday appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Local.com has dramatically upgraded its destination site, with soft colors, an excellent user interface and renewed focus on three core categories — “business,” “coupons” and “events.” The categories are clearly aimed at driving organic traffic from its intended audience of women and mothers.

The site is geotargeted to automatically provide local listings and features. Listings can also be easily featured on users’ Facebook pages. Business Listings, meanwhile, include dropdown subcategories on top of core sections (restaurants, health & wellness, home services, pro services, activities, pets).

“It is a 180-degree turn around” from the prior site, says CEO Heath Clarke. He noted that the effort was very resource intensive in terms of people and money.

The destination site accounts for half of Local.com’s revenues. It is strategic to the company for a number of reasons. The new version is intended to bring in more advertising based on its “abundant fresh content to enrich your life” commissioned via Octane Expert, a division within Octane 360, Local.com’s recently acquired SMB services company.

Octane, setting off on a similar path as Demand Media and MerchantCircle Content Studios, can develop articles (i.e., “How to Prepare Italian Food”) for $8 to $15, and sell an array of advertising related to it.

Local.com’s new coupons section comes from The Dealmap on the local level, as well as (largely) retail ads from ShopLocal and national ads from Savings.com and Coupons.com. Events come from a partnership with Eventful.

The post Local.com Overhauls Web Site; Targets Women appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

College students are a rich market for local businesses in college towns. Indeed, advertising has become more important to local SMBs as colleges increasingly compete for the business and try to keep students (and their money) on campus.

CampusLive, the brainchild of UMass Amherst students in 2008, is positioning itself to serve as a media magnet for college students, and as a platform for both localized national advertising and local SMB advertising. The 11 FTE, Boston-based service, which now covers 225 schools, marries social media, RSS’d campus news, games and commerce – mostly restaurant menus and takeout orders.

Key to the service is its system of 400 Campus Reps, who keep the social media conversation live and local, and help facilitate a “crowd-sourcing” concept that keeps the information flowing. In exchange, the reps get points that can add up to gift cards. So far, the company has handed out $15,000 in gift cards, based on a model of 25 cents per submitted message.

In addition to the Campus Rep activity and crowd sourcing of information such as menus, CampusLive provides advertisers with access to a customized WordPress blog where they can provide updates to offers, place advertising and manage contests, where they are assessed charges on a per-student basis.

Peter Pan Bus Lines, a regional player that serves many Northeast colleges, for instance, has developed a challenge game where users can earn a Foursquare-like badge, and compete for one of two grand prizes – a party bus for 20 or a flight to Manhattan on the corporate jet. Other advertisers include college student-hungry marketers such as The Marine Corps, Domino’s, and Buffalo Wild Wings. Advertising fees have ranged from $8,000 to $50,000.

Cofounder and CEO Boris Revsin, 24, says the company is focusing on developing the technology and marketing for the site — mostly with an eye on widgetizing on top of social sites such as Facebook. While it has three internal sales reps, it mostly relies on outsourcing for sales and content. MediaMate, for instance, handles national advertising. At the same time, the company is working with Local.com for local news and directory services.

The post CampusLive Connects College Students to Local SMBs appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.