Two compelling speakers made the case this afternoon at ILM West that newspaper companies can successfully transform into digital media businesses. One problem is that most newspaper companies are not willing to make the tough decisions necessary for this transition.…
Day 1 at ILM West came to a close with a session on how SMBs are using Facebook and social media. This most notably culminated with "3 big ideas" for driving social commerce, from Oodle CEO Craig Donato. These are derived from…
Today at BIA/Kelsey's ILM West conference, prolific Wall Street Journal tech blogger Kara Swisher acknowledged many of the challenges for local media, but was quick to point out that none of these is new. Some of the sleeping giants moving…
In the run-up to any given BIA/Kelsey conference, I'm continually asked about the makeup of our typical audience. This is a good question from both attendees and speakers trying to devise the proper tone for their presentations or prepared panel…
There's a growing crop of mobile ad networks specializing in local ad inventory and location-based ad placements. This is a subcategory of larger, more broadly defined ad networks like AdMob and Millennial. The idea is that this targeting provides better…
The Toronto-based call measurement firm Telmetrics today announced a major expansion of its business into Europe, launching its solution in 10 markets. The launch follows a six-month beta test in which Telmetrics proved out the value of its service for…
Seems every year is a year of transformation in the global Yellow Pages industry. This year is no different, with more leadership changes, financial turmoil, and a much more aggressive push into new strategies and new products. There is a…
As we do every year across BIA/Kelsey's coverage areas, our analysts put their heads together in cross-disciplinary fashion to handicap the 2012 local media space. It's a solid exercise and great preparation for our ILM West conference less than two…
Amazon has just debuted an iPad and Kindle Fire app that lets kids create holiday wish lists. Known as Amazon Santa, it has intuitive functionality and a fun design to create lists and share them with parents, relatives and of…
We're less than two weeks from our big ILM West conference in San Francisco, and the agenda continues to get stronger. On day 3 of the conferfence, we'll be doing things slightly different by devoting the day to discussions about…
I've been travelling internationally so I'm late to this news. But it's worth mentioning that xAd has joined the ranks of ad networks that produce reports on their network activity. We've seen these from the likes of Millennial, and more…
Last week, Local Insight Media emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, roughly one year after seeking protection from its creditors. The company emerges from bankruptcy with a new structure, a new board of directors and a more manageable balance sheet, having…
Last week I had the chance to talk to Goodzer founder Dmitry Pakhomkin in advance of the product's official nationwide launch today. It's also now available both online and as an iOS app. The local product search app enters a…
We keep getting more and more points of affirmation that location targeting in mobile is growing. This is happening as both large advertisers "grow into" the medium, and as it moves down market to SMBs (whose mobile advertising is counted…
The apps vs. mobile Web debate rages on in the marketplace, the blogosphere and at tech conferences. But lots of people are coming around to believe that both development platforms have lots of room for growth. ComScore puts them at…
As we've sought to closely cover the inception and growth of mobile local search over the past few years, Poynt has been an important and influental company on our radar. This has involved a great deal of evolution in broadening…
Last week several of the leading listed directory companies saw sizable spikes in their stock prices following their Q3 earnings announcements, though the surge seems to have died off today. For example, Dex One announced its earnings on Nov. 3. On…
The local display ad companyPaperG today unveiled a deal with AOL to offer its local display advertising technology via Patch, AOL's hyperlocal platform. The PaperG solution offers the ability to create a locally targeted display ad with only the…
During our DMS conference in September, we held a session on the "starting line" tools for SMBs to establish a mobile presence. This is step 1, before the higher frequency discussion of targeting mobile ads. It's what I like to…
Speaking today at ILM Asia in Singapore, Google's James Sanders made a very direct appeal to directory publishers to resell Google advertising products to SMB advertisers in the Asia-Pacific region. "Globally, Yellow Pages companies are our most successful partners," Sanders…