TBD.com, the Washington, D.C., hyperlocal news site branding the online operations of Allbritton Communication’ WJLA-TV and Newschannel 8 under the TBD umbrella, is tabling its local ad network, citing limited advertiser interest.

The site currently has agreements with more than 200 blogs and local sites (up from 120 at launch in August) to link to their work from TBD’s home page. As an extension of this hub-and-spoke strategy, which blends original content with outside linking, TBD formed the ad network so that its sales force could leverage the reach of these content partners for bigger and more targeted buys.

Former TBD General Manager Jim Brady told BIA/Kelsey in September that the hope was that advertisers would see added value in delivering messages to wider audiences, but at geo- and contextually targeted levels (local sports teams or Fairfax County families, for example). At the time, three purely digital sellers were brought on-board to complement Allbritton’s 20-plus member TV sales force.

Early takers were the MLS soccer team D.C. United and the Washington Opera. But according to Steve Buttry, TBD’s director of community engagement, “the advertising aspect of the network has not taken off as effectively as the traffic and linking relationship.” TBD will now consider alternative approaches.

Brady resigned his post in early November after philosophical disagreements with management over future content directions for the site.

TBD is not alone in experimenting with community ad networks. Recently, KING-TV in Seattle, in conjunction with the Seattle Times, developed an online ad network in which the TV and newspaper sales teams market to mid-market clients and agencies across a swath of 28 western Washington blogs. It is part of Belo’s beLOCAL Ad Network, a division of belocalmedia.com.

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Yellowbook had signed on to a new local ad exchange launched today by Chitika, an ad network established in 2003 that serves more than 2 billion monthly impressions across 80,000 Web sites. The core idea is to apply the ad exchange model to the local and mobile space.

For Yellowbook, the exchange offers a way to better monetize its own  local traffic while offering its existing advertisers broader reach. Yellowbook has half a million advertisers and generates more than 100 million searches per month, according to Mike Wilson, GM and vice president of digital media at Yellowbook.

The new ad exchange also has mobile local and pay-per-call components. Chitika says it already serves 100 million local mobile impressions every month.

Chitika has created a local-oriented mobile ad unit that will detect mobile devices and serve an ad designed for mobile users. The ads also allow visitors who receive a local ad on their phone to call the advertiser with one touch.

“We’re always looking for unique opportunities to extend the reach of our more than half a million clients beyond the traditional distribution platforms,” says Wilson. “The first time we saw what Chitika was doing with LAX, we recognized the incredible impact this synergistic platform could deliver. We believe it meshes well with our overall performance advertising strategy.”

In an e-mail, Chitika CEO Venkat Kolluri offered his take on the deal’s most significant elements. 

He said the idea is to “bring to the table the distribution that we already have in our network. Basically we want to aggregate and re-direct the ‘local’ supply and create an adsense-like network for the search+local+mobile sector. We need to draw the industry’s attention to the intersection of search, local and mobile and build a program with special focus in this sector.”

Kolluri also emphasized the fact that the LAX is an open platform. “To be able to succeed and make this work we need to make the program as open as possible so that all types of players can benefit from the core ecosystem.”

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Citysearch officially rolled out its CityGrid publisher network this week. The network moves Citysearch away from an exclusive focus on its individual sites (“Citysearch.com,” “Insiderpages.com,” “Urbanspoon”). Instead, it works on a distributed basis with partners (i.e., “SuperPages”) to marry local content and advertising.

In the short term, CityGrid represents the new face of Citysearch and the next evolution in the local market. It allows the company to leverage its existing infrastructure and content, and reach down into the distribution channel with a more automated and cost-effective option versus a focused business development effort. For its publisher network, and its 500,000 local advertisers — projected to jump to 750,000 by year-end — it also represents a real alternative to Google.

Overall, our enthusiasm for the product is as high as it was when we were first walked through it some 14 months ago. Here’s why we like it. The local market fundamentally suffers from two broad problems. First, it’s hard to make money without a substantial investment in sales. Even then, success is not assured. Second, content is expensive to create. Yes, user reviews can be acquired, but there are still large swaths of categories that still lack deep engaging content.

In theory, CityGrid addresses both problems. It gives small and large developers local content and local monetization together in package. The power of this cannot really be underestimated since both of these are hard to come by, not to mention expensive. Urbanspoon used this to great success and eventually was acquired by IAC (Citysearch’s parent). Nearly every review and ad on Urbanspoon was from Citysearch.

We have seen some reports that this product is a reaction to other companies in the field entering the space. It’s not. If anything, it simply takes the winning strategy of opening up an API to developers and letting them build products on robust infrastructure. Think Google Maps, for example.

To our knowledge, there is no one else doing this model with the same scale and focus. Indeed, 100 developers signed up to work with the API within the first two days of its release. We expect, however, that more people will enter this market quickly. But not before Citysearch gets a major head start, if Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti gets his way.

“My vision is [that it will become] the leading content and ad network for local,” he told us, adding that it is no longer just about Citysearch.com as a destination site. “This is Citysearch,” he says. “It isn’t distributed in one place. It is part of many places, all around the Web.”

The result also provides an alternative to Google. “We look at what Google is doing with local as a major competitive threat,” says Herratti. “It controls access to the Internet.

“Last year, we were building and rebuilding,” Herratti notes. “This year, we are very, very focused on execution.” Still, the current product is relatively primitive and will be rapidly evolving. “Right now, we are talking about version 1.0” he says. “Twelve months from now, there will be new geotargeting solutions, new ways of creating content. We’re taking all of these pieces and putting them together. The next thing is to optimize, and optimize.”

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