Norwegian-owned Interinfo was purchased by BaltCap, the leading private equity investor in the Baltic states. Interinfo represented the last directory holding of Texas Pacific Group, previous owners of Norway’s Findexa, now owned by Eniro. Terms of the deal were not…
Is there still a role in local search for a "niche" provider like Gannett's Planet Discover? The question comes up after Boston.com VP of Product Bob Kempf said there really is no substitute for a major search engine tie, and…
When I read the article in The Boston Globe today that yet again chronicles the woes of big city Yellow Pages directories (full disclosure alert: I was interviewed for the Boston Globe article but not quoted), several thoughts came to…
U.S. independent publisher Yellow Book announced a distribution and co-branding deal with Cox Communications in which Yellow Book directories in key Cox markets will carry Cox branding and information on Cox products and services in the front of book. The deal currently…
The small-business advertising arms race has gotten hotter in recent weeks, as companies eye a chance to add Google and Yahoo! search solutions, and other services to small-business marketing budgets once totally contained by Yellow Pages. First we had ReachLocal’s…
Today Yellowpages.com, a subsidiary of AT&T, announced a multiyear distribution deal with Microsoft. In April, Yellowpages.com’s local listings and advertisers will begin appearing across Microsoft properties, including, MSN Yellowpages, MSN Search, Live Search and Maps. Financial terms of the transaction…
Marchex has released a report today that profiles the local search space. It essentially takes a deeper dive than the report the company put out in September, which sought to explain the local opportunity to those unfamiliar with the space.…
Here is a quick recap of posts from the past week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full. Local Media Survival Skills in a Down Economy S&MM online columnist Robert Grede shared some interesting…
Since our founding, The Kelsey Group has been committed to delivering our unvarnished view of the dynamics of the ever changing and evolving local advertising market. We have been criticized by some in traditional media who suggested we have overstated…
S&MM online columnist Robert Grede shared some interesting insights in a recent article on how local advertisers can survive in a down economy and what local media sales reps should be communicating to their advertisers and prospects. While many of…
Neal Polachek and I had the opportunity this morning to sit down with Mike Galgon, cheif advertising strategist for Microsoft. Galgon was brought on board as part of Microsoft's $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive, which he cofounded in 1997. The…
It was interesting to see the Yellow Pages Association release its usage data showing print usage was stable at 13.4 billion and IYP usage had increased to 3.8 billion in 2007. While the overall usage figure is a 3 percent…
In an unexpected move, AOL has acquired social network Bebo for $850 million. A move into social networking is interesting for AOL given that portals have traditionally dropped the ball when it comes to social networks (albeit, mostly homegrown ones).…
Last week, we wrote about The Seattle Times Co. and its new “Network search,” which is powered with FAST. This week, we are covering The Boston Globe’s Boston.com and its new “Federated” search solution, powered by Google. Federated and Network…
To follow up on the recent post about Yelp's funding, I was able to sit down with Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman yesterday at the company's San Francisco headquarters. The company is moving in some interesting directions and the $15 million…
Local.com and Idearc Media today renewed their relationship that distributes Superpages ads on Local.com. Superpages advertisers get premium placement on Local.com, while Local.com gets more content in its network and a rev share. According to the release: Under the renewed…
Since so many opinions these days seem to be based on anecdotal evidence, let me add another anecdote to the mix. I am sitting in a coffee shop near where I live doing e-mail and so on. In walks a…
SMB-focused video ad platform Jivox launched today, along with a $2.7 million seed round led by Opus Capital. Jivox joins the hot local merchant video advertising space with a self-serve ad creation and placement engine for SMBs. This includes ad…
U.K. directory publisher Yell has launched a new syndication product called netReach, which serves search contextually relevant results from Yell.com onto a network of syndication partners. The product is launching with a half-dozen partner sites, including the Manchester Evening News, Multimap…
The future of real estate agents is a special cause of mine, since my wife is with Century 21. So whenever I hear someone has bought or sold a house, I always ask them: “How was the agent experience? What…