Google is well known for its forays into seemingly exotic innovations such as skunkworks, top secret Project X research lab known for coming out with  inventions like driverless cars, Google Glass and high altitude balloons for bringing the Internet to hard to serve populations.
Christine Merritt, Google’s head of business development and partnerships for its North …

In a digital world that has us all swimming in readily accessible data, one might be tempted to torture the familiar line from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner into, “Data, data everywhere. Nor any drop of insight to drink.” The role of journalists, some argue, is to bring data based insights to the public …

Jason E. Klein, Founder and CEO of On Grid Ventures, led a StreetFight Summit panel of investors exploring where the next billion dollar opportunities in hyperlocal might be. Joining Klein were Matt Turck, Managing Partner, First Mark Capital and Ben Siscovick, with IA Ventures.
Klein framed the discussion by calling Google’s June 2013 acquisition of Waze for $966 million …

Speaking at Digital Media East 2013 today, I shared five themes we’re seeing in local media and among Small-Medium Businesses (SMBs):
1. Traditional Media rule… and will continue to do so.
2. Content (generation, discovery, distribution) as ever stronger nexus among brands, media, audiences.
3. Omnichannel, transmedia campaigns for greater lift.
4. SMB “Operating System” – mobile commerce, CRM, …

First Data’s Senior VP Dom Morea provided a set of important insights into the next generation of marketing services to small and medium businesses (SMBs) at BIA/Kelsey’s 2013 SMB Digital Marketing conference, saying these may be more about “commerce” than “advertising.” Using payments as an anchor, these “transaction marketing” services include deals, coupons, loyalty services …

During a Webinar yesterday, BIA/Kelsey’s Senior Analyst Mike Boland, along with Marchex VP of Operations Travis Fairchild and Head of SEM Cody Kunning discussed how businesses and those managing online and mobile advertising campaigns can best maximize performance with Google’s AdWords Enhanced Campaigns, which are set to kick off on July 22nd.
Enhanced Campaigns is …

This is “Internet Week” in New York City as MediaPost hosts a series of conferences on the heels of the the second annual Digital Content Newsfronts. This is the Internet industry’s answer to broadcast and cable television’s “Upfronts” where the major networks hype the new shows and build advertiser and agency interest in committing to making …

If you’re planning to be at next week’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, please look us up. During A Fireside Chat with Facebook and Google: Partnerships and New Ventures, I will interview Kay Madati from Facebook; and Bright Parks and David Gehrig from Google about new ways local stations can be benefit from working with …

Sabrina Alimi, IAB’s senior manager of Industry Initiatives spoke today at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference. Alimi reported that, “IAB’s Local Committee has been looking at three areas – local search; mobile location; and data transparency.”
For local search, the committee is concerned with business listings and discoverability. IAB’s goal is to have more businesses show …

Native advertising was on stage today at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference. Chris Cunningham, CEO, appsavvy and Jeff Moriarty, VP Digital, The Boston Globe spoke to reimagining advertising by integrating ads and content for a seamless experience.
Cunningham spoke to native advertising’s value proposition,”We believe this is premium inventory because it creates a better user experience.” …

Shane Vaughn, Chief Marketing Officer at Balihoo, spoke today at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference and shared findings from a new CMO Council research study on how national brands will leverage local channels to activate local customers. The report can be downloaded here: http://balihoo.com/resources/cmo-council-report.
How important is localized marketing to demand generation and revenue in your …

Al Jazeera’s apparent $500 million deal to acquire Current TV’s 40 million U.S. cable homes, as reported in the New York Times, essentially values U.S. cable network distribution at $10.25 per cable home. Is this transaction a good deal? And perhaps more interestingly, what does it mean for how traditional media like cable versus digital …

BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor of SMBs shows that in our core sample (up to 100 employees, no minimum ad spend level), the number of marketing media used for advertising and promotion is on a path to double in 2013. The trend in our annual survey series shows the number of media used increased from 3.0 …

As I argued in a recent TV Technology article, “It’s inescapable that today’s video consumer expects cross-platform access to content. If that’s where the audience and advertisers are, then broadcasters need to be there, as well. What broadcasters need to do is create a positive experience for their audiences and advertisers as seamlessly as possible, …

What is “native advertising”? A Google search returns 109 thousand hits for a term that is just over a year old. Some credit Union Square Ventures’ Fred Wilson with coining the term in September 2011. Wilson argued at the time that advertising leveraging the native capabilities of a device or medium and fit the content …

Verve Mobile’s CEO Tom MacIsaac is bullish on local publishers’ ability to drive this revenue growth by selling local audiences not just to local advertisers but also to national brands seeking access to local audiences in a trusted context, through partners like Verve.
The secret sauce is Verve’s ability to deliver quality location-based audiences into a …

From iPad apps to cross-media daily deals to paid firewalls to local ad networks, leading newspaper companies have shifted their revenue mix as they develop their plans to keep them as local leaders. Mike Hodges, President/COO of U-T San Diego and Jim Moroney, Publisher/CEO of Belo’s Dallas Morning News shared how they’re essentially operating living …

The UK local newspaper industry has been a segment in decline as companies worked margins by cutting costs in an attempt to keep air flowing under the wings as they faced declining revenues. Where does this leave the future of local and regional news? This week, we got a glimpse of this as a new …

Pay for Performance is the Holy Grail in SMB advertising. SMBs only want to pay for leads that their advertising programs deliver. But moving SMBs from inclusion to performance has never been easy. Recent progress in lead quality assessment has been critical in moving performance media closer to the mainstream, as has the movement toward …

“Yes!” say University of Virginia’s Darden Business School professors Rajkumar Venkatesan and Paul Farris. The 99 percenters who fail to redeem coupons they receive in fact do matter. Their new  research to this point is summarized in this month’s Harvard Business Review.
In 2010, U.S. consumers redeemed 3.3 billion coupons for $3.7 billion worth of savings, …