Sabrina Alimi, IAB's senior manager of Industry Initiatives spoke today at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference. Alimi reported that, "IAB's Local Committee has been looking at three areas - local search; mobile location; and data transparency." For local search, the…
The old model of pay per leads that had driven the success of ServiceMagic and other home and trade oriented service companies is shifting as social media makes its impact. Speaking at Leading in Local 2013 in Boston March 19,…
Local search is taking lots of new directions, with unprecedented opportunities opening up for low budget SMBs, according to an all star panel of search experts at Leading in Local in Boston March 19. Moderator Andrew Shotland of Local SEO…
This afternoon at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local BIA/Kelsey launched its version of the Shark Tank start up competition, the LOCAL Liftoff Awards, where three finalist companies gave a short pitch, followed by a brief grilling by celebrity judges Randy Parker, the…
This afternoon at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local, David Kidder, serial entrepreneur, angel investor and author of the "Start-up Playbook" offered some tips that separate the truly great entrepreneurs from the also-rans. Some of his advice includes: * Don't do things you…
Last week at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference, a panel of players in the local deals and loyalty space walked through the biggest opportunities and pain points they're facing. Tom Beecher: President and CEO, Cartera Commerce Angus Davis: Founder and…
Today at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference, John Busby, VP, Marchex Institute, shared some compelling data about mobile calls and conversion rates. Busby kicked off the "Mobile Superforum" that capped off a busy morning here in Boston. Busby shared that, somewhat…
Native advertising was on stage today at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference. Chris Cunningham, CEO, appsavvy and Jeff Moriarty, VP Digital, The Boston Globe spoke to reimagining advertising by integrating ads and content for a seamless experience. Cunningham spoke to…
The power of localized national marketing was explored in multiple ways during an all star session today at Leading in Local: The National Impact, a conference taking place in Boston March 18-20. Speakers included Yodle CEO Court Cunningham, LivingSocial SVP…
Last week at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference, Foursquare CRO Steven Rosenblatt outlined some of the company's current initiatives. These are mostly built on the premise that lots of underlying technology is disrupting the old ways of local advertising beyond…
This afternoon at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local, Neal Polachek, board advisor for vSplash, offered an analysis suggesting local independent pizza owners must get more sophisticated online or the rest of us will be stuck with a choice between Dominos and…
Shane Vaughn, Chief Marketing Officer at Balihoo, spoke today at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference and shared findings from a new CMO Council research study on how national brands will leverage local channels to activate local customers. The report can…
Today at BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference, we kicked things off with an analyst roundtable. The theme: mobile is siphoning off usage from the desktop and other media. That comes in the form of search query volume, minutes spent, etc.…
Today's BIA/Kelsey's Leading in Local Conference began with a pre-conference workshop on "Valuation and Funding in Local Digital Media." The workshop began with a rundown of BIA/Kelsey's new M&A database, which includes an analysis of 598 deals, including 438 deals with…
Dex One and SuperMedia have each entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a pre-packaged deal as the two companies moved toward merging by mid 2013. The prepackaged route was necessary because the companies were not able to convince all…
Directory assistance is going through major upgrades, as more companies seek the power of leads from pay per call advertising, while relying on new technologies, such as cloud based- and mobile services. One of these is Soleo, which provides local…
We’re looking forward to seeing everyone in Boston Mon-Wed. for our next conference gathering entitled "Leading in Local-The National Impact." The title of this event represents a bit of a change for us. BIA/Kelsey has always focused attention on the…
The London Evening Standard is reporting that an attempt to engineer a buyout of Hibu's U.S. operation (Yellowbook) is behind the recent dismissal of two senior Hibu U.S. executives. In an internal memo last week, Hibu CEO Mike Pocock announced…
A couple weeks ago, we wrote about Yelp VP of Business Development Mike Ghaffary, and his new model for defining the sustainability of local offline commerce; the Local Coefficient. As promised, I caught up with Ghaffary to get some more…
Google dominates the world of mobile advertising, and its options continue to expand. Its share of search queries -- the foundation for its positioning in mobile -- is about 95 percent (compared with about 65 percent on the desktop). It hasn't squandered…