It has been a quite the week for WhatsApp after being acquired for $19 billion by Facebook (FB) last Wednesday. Word about the deal has traveled fast. However, the big question that everyone is asking is "could the deal possibly…
We've been tracking the transition of automotive marketing to digital for ten years or more, but have just recently seen major pickup at local dealers. There has been a definite lag at the dealer level compared to the car manufacturers.…
This year will be the beginning of the end for printed Yellow Pages and the end of the beginning for native advertising. This reflects just two of the "Analyst Picks & Predictions" that BIA/Kelsey published this week. Other 2014 analyst…
What does a newspaper company do when it loses its affiliation with a major vertical brand? That was the question for The San Jose Mercury News and some of the other Digital First Media papers on New Years Day, when…
ReachLocal announced today that it is moving away from its new ClubLocal business, which connects consumers with service providers. The publicly-owned company said that it is now considering a deal that would allow ClubLocal to be taken over by a…
Craig's List is going to begin charging used car dealers $5 for 30 day placements, beginning December 3. The new fee is the latest stage in the slow evolution of Craig's List to a partially premium site that still offers…
Facebook isn't obvious as a major competitor for auto advertising. But Google certainly watches Facebook's every move in autos, as it worries that advertising that might have otherwise gone to its services is being cannibalized by social media. Is it…
The $1.8 billion of leisure/recreation advertising on Out-of-Home media was its largest vertical, representing 25% of total Out-of-Home advertising in 2012, according to BIA/Kelsey's Media Ad View Plus. The Finance/Insurance vertical was the second highest, with 10% of total Out-of-Home…
According to BIA/Kelsey's Media Ad View Plus, radio garnered nearly $14.7 billion in advertising revenue in 2012, representing over 11% of total advertising spend, placing it in fourth place behind direct mail, newspaper and television. Unlike other media, radio advertising…
Despite the well documented declines in newspaper circulation, advertising on newspaper was $22.5 billion in 2012, representing 17.1% of total advertising spend in the U.S. and second only to direct mail, according to BIA/Kelsey's Media Ad View Plus. In a…
In 2012, newspaper continued to lead the way in real estate advertising spending at $563 million (27.7%), followed closely by online advertising at $487 million (23.9%), according to Media Ad View Plus, BIA/Kelsey’s local market ad forecast report. 2012 Real…
Television dominated the Government/Political/Religion ("GPR") vertical in 2012, according to BIA/Kelsey's Media Ad View Plus. In 2012, television's $3.1 billion of advertising from GPR represented nearly 3/4 of total advertising for this vertical. 2012 Government/Political/Religion Ad Spending by Media The…
In 2012, television dominated both the Automotive advertising and Government/Political/Religion ("GPR") verticals, according to BIA/Kelsey's Media Ad View Plus. More on the GPR vertical later. Television's $4.6 billion share of automotive advertising represented 28.4% of total automotive advertising in 2012.…
According to BIA/Kelsey’s Media Ad View Plus more than 43 percent, or $10.7 billion, of retail advertising dollars went to direct mail in 2012. That $10.7 billion represents 30 percent of direct mail’s total ad spending. Furthermore, BIA/Kelsey doesn't expect…
People are getting excited about Content Marketing again this year, with Website, mobile and video editorial content, ratings and reviews, promotions and listings broadening the content farm/search ranking algorithms segment we saw several years go. Q&A sites are a key…
The scheduling space is heating up, with a number of key vendors competing for SMB business, companies such as Groupon and Merchant Circle acquiring and integrating scheduling companies into core activities, and new companies such as MyTime attempting to aggregate…
Photo: CNN Online restaurant ordering and discovery giants GrubHub and Seamless have agreed to merge their operations, creating a single company. Chicago-based GrubHub currently serves more than 20,000 food ordering establishments in 500 cities, while New York-based Seamless serves more…
Seven years ago, in 2006, we began evangelizing a vision of local media driven by vertical specialties. These would drive high value leads with better, more relevant searches. In this light, Google was seen as a "perpetual vertical machine," driving…
Solocal Group CEO Jean-Pierre Remy offered directory publishers a vision for print to digital transformation built on a strong focus on building content, vertical segmentation and a relentless focus on execution. Remy was the keynote speaker at the Local Search…
Chip Perry, the visionary who was asked by Cox in 1997 to facilitate its own disruption with the launch of AutoTrader --going right after its print classified revenues -- has resigned as President and CEO of Cox Enterprise's AutoTrader Group.…