Free directory assistance services, funded by pay-per-call ads, have been rolled out by a number of entrepreneurial companies, telcos and Yellow Pages publishers. But now comes The Florida Times-Union, which quietly rolled out a local version of Say Hello Inc.…
Last week, Local.com announced that it will acquire PremierGuide, a white-label local search solution, for US$2 million. I’ve read a handful of reviews about this acquisition and most seem to be missing the most important part of this deal: It’s…
OK. Here is the truth. As an analyst, you become quite the connoisseur of hockey stick graphs. “I do like the way the chartreuse in the bar chart plays off the light and complements your logo.” I heard that in…
This just in. Directory publisher R.H. Donnelley has acquired Business.com, a B2B-oriented search engine and ad network that was acquired by Earthlink founder Sky Dayton for US$7.5 million in 1999. The acquisition was announced today, just before RHD's second-quarter earnings…
Paul Levine has resigned his position as GM of Yahoo! Local to take the VP of marketing slot at AdBright, a Sequoia Capital backed ad marketplace. Jennifer Dulski will be taking over local responsibilities as group vice president and general manager,…
AOL reportedly beat out Microsoft and is paying $275 million for Tacoda, the behavioral targeting company that serves ads to 125 million people across 4,000 Web sites. Tacoda will likely be operated as a separate unit, complementing Advertising.com, AOL’s highly successful…
Summary Ad network Specific Media focuses on premium inventory across major Web sites for national brand advertising. But it also has some interesting methods for tracking the influence of branding on search behavior and some interesting implications for local advertising.…
Tribune Interactive has added Los Angeles to its list of Metromix city guides, which also include Chicago, Orlando and Baltimore. Next week, it will add New York City as well. Eventually, Tribune aims to have the Metromix brand in all…
For the past couple of years, Quigo's contextual network product, AdSonar, has been a steady alternative to Google and Yahoo! for local media companies (as have competitors such as ContextWeb and FAST AdMomentum). The company currently has more than 200…
You learn a lot from talking to local advertisers. Occasionally, I get to leave my ivory tower and give a speech or appear on a panel in front of local advertisers. Generally, I'm talking “Local Local.” A couple of weeks…
Summary EBay announced today that it will begin working with radio ad start-up Bid4Spots. The deal will bring Bid4Spots' auction-based radio ad sales capability to eBay's Media Marketplace. This represents a growing direction for eBay to broker ads to cable…
Spotzer CEO founder Andrew Klein makes no bones about being inspired by SpotRunner, the break-through company that broke out last year by making it easy for small businesses to produce video and place it on local media. Spotzer is pretty…
ShopLocal, the shopping service owned by Tribune, Gannett and McClatchy, often gets overlooked in the glare of Amazon, eBay and the pricing comparison engines. But the service’s three networks are now getting over 200 million page views a month, which…
Centro’s Summit in Chicago this week not only featured a positive outlook on national brands buying local online media, but also dealt with the impact of user-generated content and video on the local ad marketplace, and on the agencies themselves.…
Agency reps appearing at Centro’s Local Media Publisher Summit in Chicago said they’re ready to work with local media publishers, but they’re looking for non-cookie-cutter approaches. They emphasized that they’re overwhelmed by manpower shortages and that it is generally easier…
It's really the year of video on the Net, and local video plays a big role in that (and we're talking about more than the big rats that were filmed running amok at the TacoBell/KFC in Greenwich Village). At our…
Fresh off its partnership with Nokia, which we wrote about here and in this week's Local Media Journal, AdStar has partnered with classified aggregator Edgeio. Edgeio will use AdStar's software to offer print advertising upsells (on behalf of newspapers) to…
MerchantCircle may be best known as the bad boy of telemarketing for a negative marketing scheme that went awry last fall. But the eight-person Rustic Canyon start-up promises it has mended its ways and points to a growing base of…
Kate Kaye at ClickZ has an interesting story on newspaper publishers and local television stations that are sending their salespeople away to learn more about interactive advertising. As the media world in general moves toward many different advertising platforms (Web,…
The rumors were true. Last month we wrote about the possibility of Google buying in-game ad placement firm AdScape to broaden its reach in cross-platform advertising. The company has announced that it purchased AdScape for $23 million. Like Microsoft's acquisition…
