That was quick. Yahoo’s radical shift to a new Commerce/ Marketplaces strategy -- announced in mid April -- has abruptly ended with the resignation of CEO and former PayPal head Scott Thompson, and SVP Sam Shrauger, his PayPal colleague, who…
When it comes to Local Yokel Media’s business focus, it's all about 15 miles. That’s because 80 percent of consumer spending is done within 15 miles of home. CEO and Founder Dick O’Hare shared that fact at this afternoon’s session…
Zillow, after five years and $87 million raised, says it is now in the black for the first time, after focusing more on revenues. It also announced that Spencer Rascoff has been appointed CEO, replacing Expedia Founder Rich Barton, who…
AOL’s Patch gave a progress report today on its $50 million hyperlocal initiative. The site said it now has 100 hyperlocal sites, and will launch 400 more over the next six months. It also said it plans to hire at…
Gannett’s local newspapers and TV stations will begin selling Yahoo inventory, considerably boosting the size of Yahoo’s local sales efforts. The deal, which involves 81 newspaper organizations and seven of its 23 TV stations, is similar to the efforts of…
Yahoo is seeking to extend direct marketing budgets online via a new deal with DM giant Valassis, which claims 15,000 advertisers and reaches 114 million shoppers. The new effort adds another dimension to Yahoo’s local reachout, which currently focuses on…
Monster Worldwide has bought HotJobs from Yahoo for $225 million. It will also be in charge of Yahoo's recruitment content in North America for the next three years, bringing in perhaps another $100 million for the life of the deal…
Allmenus.com, the online ordering portal with 255,000 restaurant menus around the country and 3,500 online ordering relationships, will focus on specific local markets via a new partnership program that gives a portion of revenues to newspapers or other local promotional…
Under the new leadership of CEO Carol Bartz, everything is up for review at Yahoo, and that probably includes HotJobs, its recruitment site. But recent press reports suggesting that HotJobs has already been designated for sale are off base. The…
Next week is the Newspaper Association of America’s Annual Convention in San Diego. I’ll cover Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s keynote on Tuesday, in which he’ll express his support of the newspaper industry despite Google’s very public axing in January of…
AOL Yellow Pages has greatly benefited from search engine optimization, with 50 percent of its traffic coming from SEO, according to Chris Spanos, GM, local search, who was speaking today at Kelsey’s Marketplaces conference in Los Angeles. “We have a…
\ Yahoo has announced the addition of The Boston Globe and St. Petersburg Times to its Newspaper Consortium, which now has 37 media companies with 796 newspapers. The announcement was timed for The Newspaper Association of America’s MediaXChange meeting this…
The Yahoo Newspaper Consortium is seeing new ad dollars coming in, primarily for its behavioral targeted campaigns, which account for 90 percent of its business, per Yahoo VP Lem Lloyd. Lloyd oversees the program for Exec VP Hilary Schneider. (Both…
Scott Moore, who is back at Microsoft as GM and executive producer of the U.S. content business after four years at Yahoo, told paidContent he had been hoping to launch an ad-supported local news/info service. Apparently, Microsoft seemed like a safer…
Our Marketplaces 2009 conference in L.A. is just around the corner (March 16-18). Some great additions have just been announced: Active Network CEO Dave Alberga (our fourth keynote); Yahoo Local leader Atif Rafiq; and all the ins and outs of…
We’re out with our predictions for 2009. But what’s the final word for 2008? Truly, it was a very stimulating and thoughtful year for our local media and commerce industry. But speaking for myself, it’s hard to say whether it…
Bakersfield Californian President and CEO Richard Beene says smaller advertisers will be receiving more and more focus by the independently owned paper -- something that many newspapers say, but few really do much about. In a note to employees discussing recent…
Google announced today that it has decided to walk away from its ad partnership with Yahoo, citing that legal battles with federal antitrust regulators won't make it worthwhile to pursue. The deal would have placed Google text ads throughout Yahoo's…
We’re just about ready to go with Interactive Local Media 2008, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It should be a very important, game-defining event -- and the first one for The Kelsey…
OK, we’ve got the format(s) and “best and brightest” speaker roster set for Interactive Local Media: Extending Local Channels, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, California, next to San Jose. At the top of the list is Angie Hicks,…