At our March Leading in Local conference, one session that everyone went home talking about was the keynote presentation from David S. Kidder. Serial Entrepreneur, angel investor and author of The Startup Playbook, he gave a stirring address on the…
Continuing our charge down the multimedia path, the latest initiative is video round table sessions among BIA/Kelsey analysts. The idea is to capture a topical discussion and unpack the market events that have the most impact on our local media…
During BIA/Kelsey's March Leading in Local conference, Swipely CEO Angus Davis opened our eyes to an innovative concept in the famously challenged local media/ad sales game. Selling operational tools to SMBs can be a lesser path of resistance than advertising…
Deluxe Corp. took a significant step in developing its interactive marketing services for SMBs capability with its recent $27 million acquisition of Vertical Response, an email and social media marketing provider. Deluxe's origins are in providing business checking services. The…
As mentioned earlier this week, we're doubling down on video. And there's no richer source of tidbits and sound bites than a BIA/Kelsey conference. The latest is from our recent Leading in Local conference in Boston: a fireside chat with…
A few months ago, we wrote about ByteLight, a Cambridge MA indoor positioning startup that's pioneering the area of in-store lighting to communicate data to smartphones. It's a novel take on retail customer engagement that goes beyond what others have…
As part of our overall effort to analyze the fast moving local media space, we're experimenting with new formats like infographics and video. One of those projects is an executive interview series to highlight recent areas of coverage and top…
Much of the social media conversations we have at BIA/Kelsey deal with progress in the monetization of social, building social media solutions for small-business advertisers, or how social is being infused throughout local media. We are beginning yet another conversation…
Members of Generation Y, defined as those born since the early 1980s, have earned a very specific workplace reputation. Some characteristics associated with Gen Y include a need for ongoing recognition and positive reinforcement (the result no doubt of coddling…
In the age of Infographics, BIA/Kelsey has decided to add some color to the many data points we devise throughout the year. This has been done to a limited degree over the past year, but we've now formalized the effort…
Lenders are taking control of the UK-based directory company Hibu and converting much of its GBP2.3 billion in debt into equity. This action wasn't unexpected. A series of debt restructurings failed to buy Hibu enough runway to transform the business…
As Peter Krasilovsky posted this week, Apple made two acquisitions last week to advance its position in mapping and navigation. Locationary standardizes local business listings and HopStop -- a company we've been talking to for years -- specializes in navigation…
A quick scan through a summary of BIA/Kelsey's Media Ad View Plus unearthed a number of fun, interesting factoids about the local media ecosystem. Media Ad View is BIA/Kelsey's research product that offers a market by market view of the…
Foursquare just announced that it will now offer its Promoted Updates and Promoted Specials to a wider swath of SMBs. When we first covered the unveiling of these ad units (exactly one year ago), it was available to a list of…
Late last week I had the chance to talk to Telmetrics president and newly minted LSA chairman Bill Dinan about the newest installment of the influential Path to Purchase (PtoP) series. This one zeroes in on the travel vertical and specifically…
Yesterday, BIA/Kelsey issued its annual Global Yellow Pages Forecast, which predicts the industry worldwide would erode at a 4.1% CAGR through 2017. While this forecast may seem bleak, this pace of erosion marks an improvement over the prior five year.…
BIA/Kelsey has just released Media Ad View Plus. For those unfamiliar, it builds on our forecast data (example) among other sources, to calculate local media ad spending by category across U.S. ad markets. The starting point is the $132.5 billion…
Digital media services provider vSplash has made inroads with both newspaper and directory/local search organizations with its BuzzBoard sales productivity tool. vSplash is widely known for its website production capabilities, as well as its voluminous data on small-business digital presence,…
Last month I presented to the International Franchise Association "Fran Camp" conference in Atlanta. To capture and prepare for the presentation, I recorded some of the slides and audio which you can see in the video embedded below. The point…
After lots of rumors, and a weekend article from the Israeli based Globes.co.il, Google has announced it acquired mobile navigation company Waze. This comes after a rumored Facebook acquisition (see our writeup), the drivers of which apply here in lots…