In Jerry Yang's relatively brief on-stage interview with SES host Danny Sullivan this a.m., Yang gave a high-level overview of where Yahoo is going with search and other features of the portal.
He spoke about more tightly integrating services across Yahoo! and beyond the desktop. He also discussed personalization in a broad sense, "Taking mass …

One of the interesting discussions that I find myself having quite a bit lately is the quality vs. quantity of leads discussion. It's a pretty well-known fact that IYP leads are much more qualified than general Web search clicks.
There may be several reasons for this, but the most direct explanation has to do with …

A story this week on Adweek.com talks about a new ad campaign from SBC that tries to restore the mystique of printed Yellow Pages while setting SBC Yellow Pages apart from competitors â€" referred to only as the “Different Bookâ€� in the new campaign.
We haven’t seen the ads yet, just the description provided in the …

The Pew Internet & American Life Project, as part of its ongoing telephone survey, polled roughly 2,200 U.S. residents on their sources of political information and news during the past election cycle.
The results are a window into the larger phenomenon of the relationship between traditional media and the Internet.
According to the survey, 75 million …

According to a news release, Interchange, which recently acquired Swedish Local Search technology platform Inspire AB, announced that it had secured the domain "Local.com" for US$700,000.
It will use the Inspire technology, as well as its own, to support the new destination site. American Town Network owns LocalSearch.com and PremierGuide owns Loqal.com.
According to the release, …

DMNews reports on infoUSA data showing the number of small businesses in the U.S. declined by about 300,000 from 11.6 million at the end of 2003 to 11.3 million at the end of last year.
This prompts me to think about the focus group that The Kelsey Group ran in Denver last Thursday night.
What became …

Newspapers have long thrown up registration pages in front of users coming from newsletters or news aggregation sites in order to capture demographic and personal information for later marketing purposes. The point is to make newspaper sites more valuable to advertisers by creating more targeting capabilities.
The result, however, is incredibly annoying and will ultimately …

Greetings from the Mirage Hotel. I am sitting here staring at Steve Wynn’s enormous signature on his new Vegas strip hotel, poring over my notes from the first general sessions at the Yellow Pages Association annual convention, halfway into its first day.
We heard a lot of cheerleading about the Yellow Pages, but much of it …

Google has launched a personalization capability for Google News, allowing manipulation of the existing news categories and the creation of specialized categories (e.g., "Local Search"). Search Engine Watch has the full rundown. The new functionality is very useful and it makes me wonder if a "MyGoogle" page (a la MyYahoo!) is in the works.
Google …

DexOnline.com was the No. 1 IYP site within its region in 2004, according to consumer research firm comScore. They are not close to No. 1 outside of their region. We do not have information on how other publishers have done in their market areas.
Dex Media's success is in part a function of the excellent …

Here's a USAToday piece that shows the potential direct line from consumer usage/behavior to advertising spend allocation. The article's about SMEs and search-engine marketing (anecdotal but instructive).
Where the consumers are found the advertisers will follow–eventually. This is why IYP must focus on the consumer experience.

Subject: bear stearns media conference – one line summary
Advertising perspectives from our Media Conf – from A. Quadrani. Surprising amount of consistency from both ad buyers and sellers which suggested the ad market is healthy but dollars being dispersed to many more mediums. Broadcast TV is weak. Radio is lackluster (although some hope w/LIM), …