Yahoo! and AT&T have extended their current relationship (Yahoo! exclusive content and an optimized My Yahoo! portal are offered to AT&T broadband customers) to now also offer integrated voice services. The voice-enabled Yahoo! messenger will be offered free to AT&T broadband subscribers including voice mail and missed-call retrieval. More analysis is deserved here (and it will be coming) because of the conflict this could present to AT&T’s existing fixed line business.

There is also the far off possibility that this partnership could bring the voice-enabled Yahoo! messenger together with YellowPages.com to create click-to-call listings. This isn’t likely in the near future, but this partnership gets the two companies closer to such a scenerio. And again here, a conflict could arise with Yahoo!’s own local listings in Yahoo! local where it would presumably infuse click-to-call first.

In other AT&T news, the company has partnered with Vongo, Starz’ online video service, to bundle its content packages with AT&T broadband services. Like the above item, this could present an eventual conflict with AT&T’s own IPTV initiatives. More likely, it will end up being a content partnership, however, to boost AT&T’s video delivery efforts. Content aggregation will in fact be one of its biggest challenges in addition to infrastructure deployment and securing franchise rights.

Speaking of which, the battle to gain the right to acquire statewide franchise rights (rather than each individual municipality) is heating up for AT&T in California. The San Jose Mercury News explains the ins and outs, and more background can be gained from reading our past writing on the subject.

Lastly, the company announced this week at the National Association of Broadcaster show in Las Vegas that it will offer IPTV service in 20 additional markets by the end of the year. It currently only serves its hometown market of San Antonio, where it first began testing the service on a limited basis last year. More can be found here, including the projection by eMarketer that there will be 36.8 million worldwide IPTV subscribers in 2009 — an increase of 2.3 million from last year.

This just in: Yell will acquire Spain’s Telefónica Publicidad e Información for US$3.9 billion. Here is a Bloomberg article with some details. We will cover this in more detail in an Advisory. This is a new direction for Yell, which had focused on its domestic market as well as its growth-engine U.S. property, Yellow Book. TPI is the dominant player in Spain and a key player in Latin America, giving Yell a presence on three continents.

Some news from the past couple of days:

—It’s official: McClatchy has found buyers for some of the big market papers it acquired with its recent purchase of Knight Ridder. MediaNews Group (Publisher of The Denver Post) and Hearst are the buyers. The deal is broken down futher in this AP article.

—After months of invitation-only access, online video distribution engine Brightcove will be available today for all content creators to begin building, distributing and monetizing (ad placement) their content. CNET’s media blog has the scoop.

—Yet another player has entered the social networking space. This time it’s Microsoft. Search Engine Journal has a good write-up on the new service, which is called Wallop.

—Newspaper Executives sound off to the San Jose Mercury News about the future of the industry.

—Classified aggregator LiveDeal reached US$5 billion worth of goods sold on its site. Read the release here.

—A roundup of forecasts for the projected growth in the IPTV market can be found here.

—Two interesting articles appeared this week in Ad Age. This story examines the advantages of user-generated content in local television (lost remote has a similar write-up here), and this one covers Wal-Mart’s new stance on the importance of local advertising.

—Lastly, this Red Herring article examines a deal that could push the mobile TV industry forward.

Here is the press release detailing the winners of this year’s Yellow Pages Association Industry Excellence Awards. This year’s crop includes many very well-deserved honors, and we congratulate all the winners. It’s fair to say that the list of winners provides a useful digest of innovative ideas making the rounds in this industry today.

We do note the low representation of international (non-North American) and independent publishers among the winners. What we don’t know is the degree to which this reflects their lack of participation in the awards process. Just like any contest, you have to enter to win. It is also possible that these constituencies entered in sufficient numbers but their submissions did not measure up. You also have to deserve to win.

Whatever the reasons, these awards could probably use an infusion of diversity, both geographically and in terms of company size, in order to more truly reflect this industry.

Washington Post Tech columnist Leslie Walker has an interesting piece today about search engine optimization. Worth a read.

We’ve written about the concept of inserting advertisements in video games here. The Washington Post has a piece today about the current state of the art.

From the article:

While most online advertising revenue comes from banner ads or sponsored links that accompany search results, firms are focusing on adding more dimensions to their ads, as with games. To do so, they’re collecting detailed information about people’s habits, what they search for, what they buy online, what they talk about in e-mails — and create a kind of profile that includes a person’s gender, age, demographic and product preferences.

Microsoft has also entered the in-game advertising space today by purchasing Massive, a company that provides the technology that inserts ads within games. The above article has more, as does this New York Times story.

We wrote about online video start-up DaveTV in last year’s White Paper "From Reach to Targeting: The Transfomation of Television in the Internet Age" (and here). Om Malik has a quick analysis of the company’s contextualized ad strategy for video channels (akin to AdSense) here.

are here.

Yahoo! has launched a new local advertising search product called Featured Listings. You can see it here on the product page.

The advertising product is a fixed ad unit that is sold by position across all local categories. There are "North" positions above the fold and "South" positions below the fold. On each page there are a total of six ads that range in price depending on city (or region), category, search volume and placement. Prices are: $300, $100, $50, $30 and $20.

According to Yahoo! during a call today, "the pricing has been simplified to make it easy for advertisers and resellers." Yahoo! has numerous reseller agreements and we expect more soon. Especially since the placement strategy is similar for offline Yellow Pages. Hmmm …

Yahoo! is clearly merchandising the ad product above the fold to drive self sign-up. Notice the "Advertise your business here" on this page. This is a good strategy that allows Yahoo! to cross merchandise Featured Listings with other product opportunities. Yahoo! is taking full advantage of its local traffic. In March, comScore reported that the Yahoo! Local Network (inclusive of Yahoo! Maps, Yahoo! Local and Yahoo! Yellowpages) had 28.77 million U.S. visitors compared with Google Local/Maps at 19.1 million U.S. visitors.

Our research shows that keyword bidding and multiple term selection are confusing for many SMEs. We expect this product to have good uptake because of its simplicity, fixed position and relatively low price point. These attributes work well for both resellers and merchants that use self sign-up.

Here are a few advertisers that came through self-registration process:

• handyman in Gardena, CA
• home care in Hacienda Heights, CA
• bike shop in Wheat Ridge, CO

Lots of interesting things have happened so far this week, mostly in the online video, social networking, and online news and classifieds spaces. Here is a quick recap:

—Many of the monetization challenges that face MySpace (analyzed in yesterday's post) also face video sharing site YouTube, as explored in this CNET News.com article (interestingly, both sites have also succeeded in rapidly ramping up their traffic with similar viral marketing strategies).

—As we recently explored the potential social networking bubble that could lead to consolidation in the space, this CNNMoney.com article analyzes a parallel trend in the online video space.

—The L.A. times has an interesting article on television networks' online distribution and branding strategies. Lost Remote has a similar piece here.

—Comcast is taking steps to expand its VOD content and to attract advertisers to buy accompanying ad space.

—USC Annenberg's Online Journalism Review looks at newspapers' abilities to establish and sustain successful blogs. Some interesting comments are included from journalists nationwide.

—Washington Post tech columnist Leslie Walker provides a good overview of the online classified market and the challenges facing newspaper publishers, which have traditionally owned the space. We'll explore this topic further in the second installment of our recent White Paper, "Newspapers 2.0: The Competitive Dynamics and Challenges Facing Newspapers in the Online Economy." A summary of the first installment is here (Kelsey Group clients can log in to view it in full).

—According to Search Engine Journal, Yahoo! has added a button to its toolbar for online photo sharing service Flickr. For more, see our Advisory on portal and IYP toolbar strategies, "Toolbars, Traffic and Consumer Traction."

—Some interesting data from Mediamark Research about media use among kids between the ages of 6 and 11.

—Many of the challenges of building out a municipal Wi-Fi network are explored in this article.

—Lastly, the Interactive Advertising Bureau reported late last week (I'm a bit late on this one) that online advertising revenues grew 30 percent in 2005 to US$12.5 billion. This marked the third consecutive year of growth. Search accounted for US$5.1 billion (41 percent) of this total.