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ServiceMagic Sees 20% Boost in Customer Requests

As a leading player in home verticals, IAC’s ServiceMagic is a company we watch with interest -- especially as IAC intends to split into five pieces. Arguably, it is the one company at IAC that really does straddle its home mortgage…

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Good Qs in MerchantCircle Survey

Merchant Circle has been sending out a survey on online marketing to its list of 350,000 registrants (what else could we call them? "Members"?). The six-question survey has some good Qs, and I'll look forward to the results to four…

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Matchpoint Buys GetVendors.com, Pushes Lead Gen

GetVendors.com, a California-oriented start-up profiled here last August, has been acquired by Matchpoint, a 30-person service, backed by Oak Investments and IdeaLab and incubated by a team of largely LookSmart veterans. Matchpoint got started a year ago and launched in…

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More Retailers Lack Brick-and-Mortar Locations

According to a recent Direct Marketing Association survey, “The absence of a brick-and-mortar store is becoming prevalent among retailers, since 41 percent of survey respondents don't have a physical store.” This is quite a surprising finding and certainly has significant ramifications…

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AdReady: Think Banners, Not Video

When it comes to small businesses on the Web, is it really only about video? AdReady, a new Seattle-based company started by Classmates.com alum and backed by Madrona and Bain Capital, thinks banners are really where the impact is. Local…

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Rural Verticals: The Shift of Small-Town Auction Advertising

Small-town newspapers and radio stations sometimes get into businesses that media companies in larger markets rarely do. They publish directories, develop Web sites, provide Internet access -- you name it. Thousands of newspapers are still family-owned. Increasingly, though, more are controlled…

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MySpace Ramping Up Small-Business Features

MySpace is moving beyond personal and band profiles, and in fact, already has 3 million businesses, according to coverage by PaidContent of comments by Fox President and COO Peter Chernin at a CitiGroup conference in Phoenix. Chernin said the business…

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The ‘Radical Change’ in Classifieds (per Oodle)

Local small-business advertising has been largely synonymous with Yellow Pages. But a compelling case for the rise of classified-and-vertical marketplaces is made by Oodle CEO Craig Donato. (It is a position that we obviously admire, having just launched our Marketplaces…

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Clear Channel Teams With Denver Multimedia for Online Video

Radio has virtually been a non-starter for local online sales, but a new video initiative by Clear Channel Radio, the nation’s largest chain with stations in 80 U.S. markets, might ramp things up. The video initiative, using Denver Multimedia (DMM) as…

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Catzilla Focuses Search Efforts on Autos and Real Estate

Auto dealers and real estate brokers (and agents) are increasingly contending with mission creep for their Web needs that require them to have two or more Web sites. Part of the problem is that they must conform to standardized requirements.…

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MerchantCircle Goes Positive in Telemarketing Effort

MerchantCircle has apparently changed its tact for getting small businesses to sign up. In the past, there have been numerous reports that it autodialed SMBs and notified them they had to check out the company's Web site to see their "bad…

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Mixpo: SMB Videos Need to Be ‘Actionable’

Video production and uploads have become standard upsells for Internet Yellow Pages, local portals and sales organizations in the age of YouTube. But once a business has a video, what does it really do with it? How does it drive…

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Freedom Focuses on ‘Medium-Sized’ Businesses

Freedom Interactive President Michael Mathieu told attendees of Piper Jaffray's Global Internet Summit last week in Laguna Beach, California, that his sales teams are focusing on selling a broad array of local marketing products to medium-sized businesses (i.e., a notch…

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B2B Local Search — Canada’s Weak Link

Closing remarks at the Warrillow Conference in Toronto this week confirmed major opportunities for business-to-business platforms in Canada. Major Canadian national brands that target the 2.3 million small businesses in Canada plan on increasing their online media budgets in 2008.…

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