I don’t know about you, but I’m not sure my glasses are working anymore. Every morning, I find myself cleaning my glasses as I skim the huge number of news bites about local commerce and media. The nicely drawn lines…
The Internet services and online marketing solutions provider Web.com launched a new interface this week that may eliminate the need for SMBs to create two websites, one for Internet local search and another for mobile. Web.com's mobile website detects when…
Sensis Digital Media will create a new ad business by joining forces with the Telstra and BigPond classifieds in the Media Application and User Expreience Group (MAX). Starting July 1, the merged businesses will have access to more than 9…
Today at the MMA Forum in New York, a panel of local broadcasters broke down the opportunities at the crossroads of television and mobile. So far, the way this has played out is mostly through positioning mobile as an extension…
I'm at the MMA Forum in New York today, where a hoarse-voiced Tim Westergren keynoted after a "late night" (much props) in the immediate wake of Pandora's successful IPO (at the time of this post, the company's stock price is…
The deals space is largely oriented toward consumers, but is there a role for B2B? That’s the question that entrepreneur John Amato has asked himself. B2B deals have typically been limited to coupons and auctions (i.e., Overstock.com). The founder of…
You know the saying: “Pretty soon, we’re talking about real money.” So how big is the deals space? Groupon COO Margo Georgiadis suggests it’s after the $150B local ad market. Mark Fratrik, BIA/Kelsey’s own economist, forecast the U.S. deal space…
NextJump has launched a beta version of OO.com, a consumer-facing destination site that seeks to leverage its relationships with merchants, national marketers and local marketing entities including LivingSocial (deals), Restaurant.com (restaurant deals) and now Grubhub (restaurant order out). The site…
A headline in a recent Broadcasting and Cable newsletter suggested that the cable upfront appears to be ready to surpass the broadcast market’s recent $9 billion plus take from advertisers. Estimates for the cable upfront seem to be focusing in…
At this week's Advertising Research Foundation annual Audience Measurement 6.0 conference, BIA/Kelsey presented a new research study on the cross-platform video User Experience ("UX") it conducted for the Council for Research Excellence. BIA/Kelsey reviewed well over 100 industry and academic…
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…
Jed and I haven't been blogging much because behind the scenes we have been researching and writing reports on Social Local Media business models. Those reports are now starting to come out and I am pleased to announce the publishing…
Yellow Pages has yielded the top spot for local business lookups to search engines like Google and Bing, but it still holds a significant spot in the local search hierarchy, according to new data released today by the Local Search Association.
The latest “Local Media Tracking Study” shows that search engines rank higher than Yellow Pages (print and digital combined) in monthly reach (67 percent vs. 62 percent), while combined Yellow Pages still has the edge over search in annual reach (84 percent vs. 76 percent). Print Yellow Pages alone, however, has fallen behind search in both annual (78 percent to 74 percent) and monthly (67 percent to 49 percent) reach.
LSA President Neg Norton said in a briefing last week that the study reflects the new direction of the association, which earlier this year changed its name from the Yellow Pages Association.
“This is an example of how the association is changing,” he said. “This is not a Yellow Pages study. It is a more holistic look at the local landscape.”
The Deals space is so hot, yet there are many unanswered questions about it. We know it will be big, but who really knows what it is going to look like 18 months from now? With that in mind, we…
With Groupon going public, the promotions space is getting tremendously revved up. Hoping to get in on the action are promotional relatives of the deals space, including providers of grocery “cents off” coupons, retail weekly sales (circulars), retail rewards and…
Product launches in mobile LBS are reaching ridiculous levels. Without exaggeration, there are many per day, prompting what I've started to call NAGS (Not Another GeoLocation Service). Many are good, but most are opportunistic bolt-ons to a hot segment with…
The Local Search Association filed suit today against the City and County of San Francisco, the Board of Supervisors, and Mayor Edwin Lee asking the U.S. District Court to overturn the city's recently passed opt-in ordinance. The suit claims that the…
Just Dial, a local search engine company in India, raised approximately $10 million from SAP Ventures and Sequoia Capital Global Equities. The Mumbai-based firm was founded by VSS Mani in 1996 to connect potential buyers of products and services with small businesses.…
Yellowbook announced the launch of its new Android tablet app today. The new app features map-based business listing results. This feature allows users to find a business by searching the business name, popular categories, nearby businesses or by browsing their…
YPG Canada announced today that it will join Foursquare's venues project. This will provide Foursquare with the 1.5 million business listings in YPG's YellowAPI. Existing YellowAPI developers will conversely have one-stop access to Foursquare's API. The venues project is meant…