The Canadian publisher DirectWest has teamed up with VendAsta to enter the hot group buying space. The new service will be called Mysaskdeals, and it is reportedly the first of its kind in Saskatchewan. “We are very excited about this…
Angie’s List, the premium ratings and review service for home and medical services, has announced that it has raised $22.5 Million from institutional investors as it prepares for an IPO within 18 months. Investors in this round include some public…
Thanks to all who attended and participated in last week's Directional Media Strategies conference. Lots of good content and takeaways. We posted a number of daily coverage roundups throughout the week, but here is the final roundup. All posts are tagged…
SeniorChecked.com, a Washington D.C.-area start-up targeting the $3 trillion elder-care market officially launched today. The company is working to develop SeniorChecked into a national symbol for seniors and their families to find trusted local service providers that are screened through…
The Groupon deal-a-day model -- “no money upfront, but we’ll take up to 50 percent of the coupon value” -- has been met with high satisfaction. Groupon’s internal data show that 97 percent of participating SMBs want to do it…
The final panel of this week's DMS conference rounded up many of the things that were hot topics all week -- how to drive more consumer engagement around online local search. Group buying is clearly a hot area of development…
Vlogger Sarah Austin was in full force at this week's Directional Media Strategies conference in Dallas, shooting a series of interviews about social media. The video series was sponsored by 3L System Group and a clips can be viewed below.…
Community is key to building self-serve and upsell opportunities, believes MerchantCircle's Darren Waddell. Waddell along with Agendize's Alexandre Rambaud spoke on the "Self-Service -- It's Closer Than You Think" panel at the DMS '10 conference yesterday. MerchantCircle works with 1.3…
Microsoft will work more closely with small businesses and interactive agencies, offering itself up as “the local operating system,” according to Randy Wootton, Microsoft Advertising VP of global search and online marketplace, who addressed BIA/Kelsey’s DMS ’10 conference today in…
Is leads-based selling the future of local online sales? Perhaps, but it could take many forms. The directory publisher Dex One revealed on this afternoon's panel "Leads-Based Sales: Salvation or False Hope?" that it will introduce what it calls "action-based…
Today at DMS, an executive interview with VP of Channel Sales Lem Lloyd revealed Yahoo's strategy to better serve local search and display ads across its network. Lloyd heads up the famed Yahoo newspaper consortium, which arms local newspaper sales…
Here is the roundup of today's DMS coverage from our GYP blog. You can also keep up with the action over there, including RSS feeds and e-mail alerts. We'll be back tomorrow morning for the third and final day. --…
Today at DMS, an executive interview with Ken Ray, VP and CMO of AT&T Advertising Solutions, revealed some of the inner workings of the media giant and its technology roadmap. "When people ask me to explain AT&T, my answer is…
Guest moderator and BIA/Kelsey friend Andrew Shotland led a panel at DMS today on social media, and how online publishers in various traditional media are adopting it. To illustrate the popularity and gravitational pull of social media, he showed a…
Yellow Pages publishers are facing an increasingly contentious battle against a restrictive opt-out measure being proposed by the Seattle city council. Yellow Pages Association President Neg Norton made a surprise appearance at DMS ’10 this morning on the panel "Distributing Directories in…
Moderator Peter Krasilovsky, Program Director for BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces advisory service, kicked off this panel on the explosive “deal a day” marketing phenomenon. Topics included the current state-of-the-art, and the likely evolutionary path of the daily deal format. Panelists were two…
Mobile navigation provider TeleNav today announced a new trackable mobile ad metric that will better monetize its navigation products, and those it powers for mobile partners. We recently got a briefing of the new “drive-to rate,” which joins an evolving list…
In the afternoon session on “Ins and Outs of Reputation Management,” moderator Matt Booth kicked off with a definition of reputation management, which is a component of “e-mail reputation and presence management” (ERPM), one of the media categories forecast by…
Day 1 of DMS started with a lively presentation from Yext's Howard Lerman and the energy level never let up. Here is the roundup of coverage from our GYP blog. You can also keep up with the action over there,…
If you're here in Dallas for the DMS conference and you're an iPhone user, download our new app to check out all the event and hotel info. It's a useful app, which Appticity's Mark McCormack built for us. While you're…
