Chris Jennewein
The layoffs at Patch have been met around the industry as the latest sign that hyperlocal can’t work because of the difficulties in scaling content and ad sales locally while attracting a reasonable quorum of local readers. Hale Global, the new owners at Patch, don’t believe it. And neither do the hundreds of people …

 
vSplash‘s Board Advisor and former BIA/Kelsey executive Neal Polachek briefed BIA/Kelsey on some recent milestones achieved by vSplash with their sales engagement tool – BuzzBoard. Launched by vSplash the BuzzBoard sales tool has gained significant market adoption since Charles Laughlin wrote about it here.
BuzzBoard’s technology currently crawls and analyzes over a hundred parameters against over …

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 …

With the exception of efforts like AOL’s Patch and New England’s GoLocal24, “Hyperlocal” has really moved away from its initial focus on neighborhood journalism to more of a focus on geo-targeted advertising and commerce.
Redefined this way, there’s a lot going on in hyperlocal. Today, Stamford,CT-based Local Yokel Media, a hyperlocal ad …

In BIA/Kelsey’s Feb 21st webinar, National Marketers Refining Localization Strategies – A ‘Leading in Local’ Conversation, (available on-demand), the discussion focused on how national brands are increasing their efforts in marketing their products on a local level. Balihoo’s Marketing Director, Susan Tormollen, along with Jed Williams, BIA/Kelsey Senior Analyst, analyzed key findings from a new …

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 …

Newspapers have local brand credibility and content; agencies have media expertise; and neither of them do especially well selling SMBs on today’s social-infused media options.
That’s the challenge being addressed by Speakeasy, a new local social service being owned in partnership by Belo’s Dallas Morning News and Slingshot, a Dallas-based interactive agency that …

When eBay purchased Jack Abraham’s Milo.com in December 2010, it caused some head scratching. While retail Inventory is helpful to track goods availability and has some value in developing location-based promotions, it seemed an unlikely anchor for eBay’s SMB and local ecommerce services.
Abraham’s upgrade of his title to head of EBay Local last year, however, …

Zagat is Google’s great equalizer against Yelp. Google has now demonstrated why it paid $151 million for Zagat last September by including Zagat, which formerly cost $4.95 a month (or $24.95 per year), as part of its new rollout of Google+ Local. The newly branded service replaces Google Places.
As a result of the integration, which …

Nielsen reported yesterday that ad spending on national cable networks has caught up to where their broadcast network brethren now stand.
That’s a big acknowledgement that the investments in programming and promotion that have been made by the content providers have shown an excellent return. Cable has always suffered the “little brother” syndrome in …

“AOL has a huge bet on local and Patch in particular,” said Mark Josephson, senior vice president of revenue at AOL Local during our afternoon session at ILM East. Patch hyperlocal sites reach 865 communities that Josephson describes as “under served” by traditional media.  Patch’s business model operates at local, regional and national levels. At …

In the past 12 months, local radio and television stations have made significant strides to bolster their online activities, and it is generating noticeable revenues.
As will be detailed in BIA/Kelsey’s upcoming Investing In Television® and Investing In Radio® publications, in 2011 local television stations saw a 19.0 percent increase in their online revenues to …

The vision for Hyperlocal — if you believe in it — boils down to two camps. The first camp says it is a labor of love that must be hand-curated to work with merchants and engage the citizenry, town by town. Perhaps sites can use shopping and other directory tools, like Local Thunder and …

Here’s what we’ve been waiting to announce: Google Offers’ head Nitin Mangtani will join our great list of keynoters at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston. We believe Mangtani’s appearance marks one of the first public debuts of Google Offers, which is playing a major role in Google’s vital local strategy, along with Google Places, …

ILM East keynoter Ted Leonsis, in a BIA/Kelsey pre-conference webinar, proclaimed a “new generation and reinvigoration of local products.” The new opportunity in local is “where social, video and mobile intersect,” Leonsis said.
What surprises Leonsis, who currently serves as Groupon’s vice chair and a board member of AmEx, is that VCs and entrepreneurs are correctly …

ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of doers and innovators who are transforming and redefining the local space. Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon vice chair/AmEx board member/sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and …

The decline of newspaper readership opens a door for other media to head the news cycle, with everything else trickling down to the TV and radio stations and websites that feed off the original content.
That’s the premise for GoLocal24, a local news and lifestyle content company that started with a website and broadcast partnerships in …

A few years ago, the location of businesses became a big question mark, as well as a strategic issue, as people wanted to shop or dine nearby. These “geo-fencing” issues were especially important for Yellow Pages companies.
Since then, search has become more the norm, along with GPS-based phones, which have location baked into them. What …

No one talks much about certain topics after public crashes — even when the opportunity remains clear. Hyperlocal is one of these. TBD.com in Washington, D.C., crashed last February, and there is a lot of speculation that Patch.com has become a cash drain on AOL.com and is not sustainable (although CEO Tim Armstrong asserts …

One of our big complaints against hyperlocal sites is they haven’t really invested in the commercial lifeblood of their community. They’re more like the (almost totally irrelevant) equivalent of a public access cable TV channel.
That’s why we like the approach of ShopCity, which lets hyperlocal sites, chambers of commerce, local publishers and local governments use …