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…
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…
We don't generally reciprocate the blogospheric practice of publishing posts purely on random items of interest, as our style gravitates more towards exclusive interviews or news items in local media. But in the spirit of doing this more often, here…
We're less than a month away from our Leading in Local conference, March 18-20 in Boston, and we're really gearing up for the show. Among many other exciting parts of the conference, and the recent announcement of our Foursquare keynote,…
Fresh off $14 million in funding, Verve Mobile today launched Place Insights, a new ad targeting technology that better utilizes data about specific locations. This is part of the ongoing progression of "Big Data meets Local" which we're watching closely.…
Over the past six months, we've covered the handful of installations from the Path to Purchase study co-produced by Telmetrics, xAd and Nielsen. --Telmetrics/xAd Mobile Local Data, Take 3: Restaurants --Telmetrics and xAd Release Second Wave of “Path to Purchase” Study…
The French search and directory company PagesJaunes Groupe has launched a new corporate brand along with its 2012 earnings announcement. The company is now called Solocal Group, an obvious play on SoLoMo (social, local, mobile). The new corporate brand coincides…
Last week, we reported on Google's new Enhanced Campaigns which create a more federated process for running paid search campaigns across mobile, desktop and web. As promised, there are lots of implications behind the announcement to be explored. In addition to lots…
Two global directory companies at different stages of transformation reported their 2012 earnings this week. Eniro and Yellow Media both reported deep print declines, as well as progress in repairing balance sheets burdened by debt. Mobile development was a high…
Last week, Peter Krasilovsky and I had the chance to catch up with Retailigence about its activity since our last writeup. For those unfamiliar, Retailigence provides local retail product and inventory data to consumer-facing shopping sites, apps, and advertising. It…
Google today announced a significant change to AdWords. Known as "Enhanced Campaigns" advertisers will now run the same -- though conditionally governed -- SEM campaigns across desktop, mobile and tablet. Previously, advertisers were able to run separate campaigns across these devices, altering…
Today I had the chance to talk to Mary Beth Brendza, founder of AppExpress, regarding the company’s announced partnership with the interactive unit of television operator Cordillera. At first glance the partnership provides a key sales channel to scale AppExpress’s…
Seat Pagine Gialle, Italy's leading directory publisher, has announced it is insolvent and unable to meet its debt obligations. Specifically, the company was not able to meet its 2013 debt obligations totaling 200 million euros. Seat will now seek protections…
Capping off a recent string of webcasts, we held one yesterday to discuss the main takeaways from our monster report on mobile local advertising. It was enhanced by the participation of xAd's Monica Ho, and her discussion of xAd's efforts,…
Last week we did a webcast on our top ten predictions for 2013, and this Wednesday we'll host one that unpacks our mobile foundation paper. We're excited to also have xAd's Monica Ho join us to discuss how the company…
As my colleague Charles Laughlin mentioned, we just published our predictions for the coming year in local media. These were cross-disciplinary, bringing together the top 10 predictions across BIA/Kelsey's coverage areas (mobile, online, video, print, social, commerce). To expand on those, below…