Ad network AdBrite has announced it will power a new ad management dashboard for concert promoter LiveNation. The eFan Finder application is an extension of the existing relationship between the companies that placed geotargeted event ads throughout AdBrite’s network of 50,000 sites. This now brings campaign management and reporting down to the band manager level.

“We’ve been working with Live Nation for a year and they want their local constituents to know how well all this stuff is working,” says AdBrite VP of Marketing Paul Levine (previously ran Local for Yahoo!). “This works at the age-old challenge in local advertising of tangibility. We’ve built a system to have local marketers see where their ads are.”

This essentially plays off one of AdBrite’s differentiators as an ad network in that it offers site level transparency. In other words, beyond traditional analytics, its dashboard indicates to marketers the specific sites where their ads can be found. Too often in online ad campaigns (SEM and display), ads are fanned out to dynamic ad units ruled by whatever targeting metric is in play; but it’s difficult for advertisers to actually go and see their ad.

This is arguably more relevant for SMBs than national advertisers. The latter has dedicated marketing people that are happy enough with bottom line analytics. But smaller local businesses sometimes need the intangible ROI that is the warm and fuzzy feeling you get from seeing your ad. This is another reason why online video is showing an early relevance to SMBs compared to SEM and other online ad mediums they’ve been pushed.

A full comprehension of local importance seems to be rare for Ad networks. Placecast is doing some interesting things, and AdBrite has the benefit of Levine’s local perspective. Today’s deal is evidence of this, and it has good implications for similar deals in other verticals where there are national or regional entities with localized constituents (auto dealer groups, real estate agencies, hotel chains, franchise based corporations, etc).

“We have exclusivity with LiveNation in events but we’re interested in forming relationships in other verticals where this same kind of dynamic exists,” says Levine. “You can see the same thing in retail, insurance, auto, fast food or any of these categories where its a national organization with local interests. We’re having lots of discussions now.”

AgendiZe announced today from the EADP conference in Spain that it will partner with Videoagency to power its video ads with call to action features. This brings AgendiZe’s signature click-to-call and save and share features (profiled in a past post) to video for the first time.

Mixpo provides similar functionality, which is a strong proposition to advertisers that want to take advantage of the direct response capabilities of video that is served in a local search context. This is the “lean forward” mode of video viewing we’ve examined in the past.

This is a logical step for AgendiZe, whose call to action buttons in local listings bring social and personalization capabilities to IYPs. As video is increasingly integrated in these venues, AgendiZe is following suit. Its existing relationships with Yellowbook.com and Yellowpages.ca, among others, could also help Videoagency and the combined offering gain IYP channel relationships.

Videoagency currently distributes mostly on search engines, utilizing a video SEO tool in combination with increasing video favorability in search engine results (universal search). Like Spot Runner and TurnHere, the company relies on an outsourced network of 4,000 filmmakers to shoot and edit content for SMB videos.

The company is yet another in this quickly growing segment of SMB video vendors. Differentiation will be vital if and when we reach a shakeout in the space, and actionable videos like these (and Mixpo) are one point of differentiation. Check out the demo here.

Despite some traction by sites like Yelp — OK, specifically Yelp — the hybrid IYP/rating-and-review segment remains something of a question mark in the industry. It remains to be seen whether such sites can attract a large number of frequent reviewers and users — and not just recent college grads and/or mothers. It also remains to be seen whether they can cross the chasm out of restaurants and bars into the gold mine of services traditionally mined by Yellow Pages.

Besides Yelp, other sites abound, including Cox’s Kudzu, Boorah, Loladex and Citysearch’s Insider Pages. But it is hard to get a handle on how well they are doing. MojoPages, a newer Yelp-like site, reports it has been making progress.

A year out of the gate, the San Diego-based site claims a solid base of 500,000 user reviews and 100,000 local advertisers across the U.S., mostly on the backs of partners including Superpages.com, Marchex, ServiceMagic and ServiceMaster. It also has coupon distribution with ValPak.

President Jon Carder, a 29-year-old vertical search pro who previously sold a mortgage-oriented venture to IdeaLab, says the site has been seeing steady growth. He acknowledges the comparisons to Yelp and others, but says MojoPages has been developing its own unique mix of features, including video reviews, e-mail notification for reviewed businesses, and an “ask friends” feature. It also has set its algorithms to bring up more relevant results.

A search on MojoPages for Carpet Cleaners in Sen Diego will get you mostly relevant results, he says. If you do a search for carpet cleaners in San Diego on Yelp, he says, “six of the 10 results aren’t even carpet cleaners.”

Like Idearc Media earlier this week, R.H. Donnelley received a boost in its share price today after unveiling first-quarter results that showed market conditions are about as bad as expected, but not any worse. The company also unveiled a refinancing plan that will increase interest expense while also extending the maturing of much of its debt and gaining more flexible terms. The refinancing seems to have contributed to improved confidence in RHD’s stability.

The company also maintained a strong EBITDA margin in Q1 and announced plans to cut about US$30 million in costs, much of it in head count and other employee-related expenses.

The market seemed to like the results. As of 4 p.m. Eastern Time, RHD shares were up 28.5 percent to 8.20. Idearc shares are up almost 8 percent. Following its Q1 announcement, Idearc shares rose significantly and RHD enjoyed a bump as well. Today, the situation was reversed and RHD returned the favor, so to speak.

While it was a good day for the company’s share price, the outlook for ad sales painted by RHD CEO Dave Swanson was anything but rosy. The publisher reported total first-quarter revenues of US$674.7 million, a 2 percent increase over 2007. Ad sales, however, dropped 4.8 percent, which RHD executives pointed out was in line with 2008 guidance of mid-single-digit declines. The company confirmed its 2008 guidance on today’s call.

In describing the current environment, Swanson was very careful not to raise hopes that a recovery was on the horizon.

Responding to a question from an analyst, Swanson emphasized that he “has not seen anything that would indicate any positive turn to the North” in sales results. Asked specifically about Las Vegas, one of RHD’s key markets, Swanson described it as the worst business environment he has seen in his career. While Florida and Nevada remain the worst markets, the pain of a slowing economy is being felt across all 28 states RHD operates in, according to Swanson.

So RHD is making it clear that while the economy will keep results down for a while (and executives maintain the downturn is cyclical rather than secular), the company has taken measures, cost cutting and refinancing, that will improve the stability of the business. RHD is also working on a new version of DexKnows.com, which will go into beta later this year.

On the eve of today’s announcement, Deutsche Bank upgraded RHD from sell to hold, a boost that reflects a view that RHD is less risky as an investment than it was just a few weeks ago.

During DDL last week, I was able to finally meet Palore CEO Hanan Lifshitz. We profiled Palore a year ago, when it was a browser overlay that enhanced search engine results with personalized icon-based notifications of business attributes (pet friendly, kosher, vegetarian, etc.).

Since then, the company has changed its model to utilize all the data it was scraping from local search sites to get this info. From that have come useful data sets that the company is now structuring in various ways to be used by destination sites (licensed), or as research tools for marketers.

The company is starting to release some of the data to wet the market’s appetite, including a simple comparison of restaurants that have Web sites across major metros (see below). Other specific drill downs would be interesting to see, such as who is providing menus, table reservation features, and video (a comparative look at volumes of video clips across IYPs would also be interesting).

The point is that there are lots of mashups of local search data that are possible and potentially of interest or promotional value to destination sites, as well as local marketers and industry watchers. I’m meeting with Hanan again next week, and will find out more about the data he can scrape, aggregate and structure in interesting ways. More to come.

Perry Evans has a great post today on the opportunity and threat Yellow Pages publishers face from the verticalization of local search. We thank him for acknowledging TKG’s role in highlighting the emergence of vertical search at our Drilling Down on Local conference last week in Seattle.

In particular, Evans talks about the perilous position IYP operators are in as vertical content proliferates online. He also makes it clear that the publishers have assets to compete in verticals. Evans points out that Avvo may be positioned as a Yellow Pages killer (in the legal category anyway), but online Yellow Pages has the tools at hand to transform itself into an Avvo killer. Whether it does so is another matter.

This whole notion of how Yellow Pages companies can leverage the vertical opportunity will be on the agenda at The Kelsey Group’s Directory Driven Commerce conference, Sept. 15-17, in Atlanta. Check out our preliminary program.

The final day of The Kelsey Group’s Drilling Down on Local conference featured a keynote by Merrill Brown of MMB Media. Brown is an industry guru with a history of developing groundbreaking media strategies and operations. Among other things, he has been editor-in-chief then SVP of MSNBC.com. He also created Court TV along the way.

Brown’s comments served as a fitting capstone for much of the conference – or given his morning time slot, perhaps I should say a prequel to the conclusion.

Brown thinks the various “revolutions” that are shaking up online market-making and marketplaces are in their early stages. Specifically, he believes:

• The newspaper industry is just beginning a period of wrenching restructuring (of its content strategy and business model).
• Verticals will continue to grow apace, to the point where online vertical markets will play a vital part of our quotidian online experience.
• Web 2.0 capabilities (e.g., social networking, video) will become closely woven into online markets.

What was most interesting about his remarks, however, was his overall tone. Brown spoke with the urgency of someone (a guru) who senses we’re in the early stages of a real revolution, and we need to be aware of the magnitude of the changes to come.

Elizabeth Gage of PCM International posted a well thought out blog on the challenges small and medium-sized businesses face when purchasing search engine marketing campaigns, either on their own or through Yellow Page publishers. After reading her thoughts on the subject, I couldn’t help but realize that the focus of current SEM efforts has been on getting the appointment and making the sale. Gage’s post, however, highlights the challenges after the sale is made.  

As more SMBs begin to experiment with online advertising, the problem of supporting and informing them of the progress of their online campaigns increases. Based on my own experience in the back-office side of supporting SEM sales, I can attest that new online advertisers simply require more communication on how their campaign is working, numbers of calls generated, how to effectively improve keyword performance, and how best to update their profile or Web site to generate more leads. New online advertisers are in the experimental mode and are not yet sold on the value of SEM, which requires constant reinforcement of the ongoing value delivered by online advertising.  

While gaining appointments and educating SMBs on the benefits of online advertising is important in selling SEM, continually communicating the value of what is being delivered is what will help maintain SMB online advertisers. Failing to reinforce the value to new SEM advertisers ultimately leads to higher advertiser turnover in the second or third year, meaning the sales force will have to continually replace advertisers with more new advertisers rather than work on developing existing advertiser campaigns. 

Two consumer advocacy groups plan to file an FTC complaint about mobile marketing and its emerging practices. The advocacy group Digital Democracy filed its complaint in conjunction with U.S. Public Interest Research Group.  

According to an article in MediaPost, Jeff Chester, founder of Digital Democracy, says, “We’re filing a complaint to force the FTC to take a proactive stance. Mobile ad companies incorporate the same problematic business practices that we witnessed with PC-based broadband marketing, including behavioral targeting and profiling techniques — except that this time they know your location.”  

The main focus of the complaint is behavioral targeting in general since this type of data is often captured without first obtaining consent. The Federal Communications Commission already prohibits marketers from sending text message ads to consumers without their opt-in consent, but some other types of mobile ads — such as wireless application protocol banners or search ads — are not similarly restricted.  

The Kelsey Group forecasts the mobile marketing segment to grow from a current $33.2 million to $1.4 billion by 2012. Our forecast also predicts the mobile Internet population will grow to 91 million by 2012, making the mobile advertising market too attractive to ignore.  

The goal of the FTC complaint is to place restrictions on mobile advertising while the category is still developing. The downside is that these types of restrictions are the very things that have kept the mobile advertising industry from developing in the U.S. With search growth slowing, mobile advertising is the next logical platform for growth and investment particularly by the major portals, meaning it will be a hard-fought battle to maintain the freedom to experiment with advertising formats and data gathering techniques to determine what consumers will and will not accept on their mobile handsets.   

Online video production company Spot Runner announced today that it has received $51 million from Legg Mason, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), Grupo Televisa, and Groupe Arnault/LVMH.

The company will use the funding to continue growing its capacity to deliver video advertising, both online and off. These investments are also strategic in nature, involving a collaboration of international media assets with Spot Runner’s video production platform. According to the release:

DMGT is one of the largest and most successful media companies in the United Kingdom with interests in national newspapers and related digital operations, local media, business and financial information, exhibitions and radio. In addition to the United Kingdom, it has operations in Central Europe, the United States, Canada, Asia, the Middle East and Australasia.

“Spot Runner is transforming the way media is optimized and targeted across a broad spectrum of advertising mediums. As a media company with one of the largest bases of local advertisers in Europe, we look forward to collaborating with Spot Runner and applying its model to our business, particularly as we continue to innovate in connecting advertisers with local audiences,” said David Roddick, commercial director of Northcliffe Media, the local media division of DMGT.

Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world. Televisa operates four broadcast channels in Mexico that have consistently maintained a sign-on to sign-off audience share of more than 70 percent. Televisa also has interests in the production of pay-television networks, international distribution of television programming, direct-to-home satellite services, cable television, magazine publishing and distribution, and radio broadcasting.

“Spot Runner has demonstrated its ability to create meaningful value for media companies by bringing new categories of advertisers to television and other media and by helping larger companies invest their budgets more intelligently and effectively,” said Alfonso de Angoitia, executive vice president of Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. “We feel Spot Runner’s model has great applicability to the Latin American market and we’re excited to explore new opportunities to partner.”

Groupe Arnault/LVMH is the world’s leading luxury products group, with a portfolio of over 60 prestigious brands including Moët & Chandon, Hennessy, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Donna Karan, Sephora and TAG Heuer.

“The global media landscape is undergoing a sea change. For advertisers to be effective, they will need to completely shift their thinking about how media is targeted and distributed, and how creative can be versioned for multiple audiences,” said Antoine Arnault, head of communications for Louis Vuitton. ”Spot Runner is the clear leader in this area. As one of the largest advertisers in the fashion category, we’re very enthusiastic about the prospect of working with them to capitalize on these transformations.”

Spot Runner has seen lots of action lately, emblematic of the activity level in the local online video space. This includes the recent acquisition of the GlobeShooter production network and that of local online advertising firm Weblistic.

Funding in this round also included existing investors Allen & Co., Battery Ventures, Capital Research and Management, CBS, Index Ventures, The Interpublic Group, Tudor Investment Corp. and WPP.