Buried in an item from channelnewsasia.com on Singapore Yellow Pages’ recent annual results announcement was the following:
Going forward, Yellow Pages is looking to expand, including possible acquisitions in Asia.
Singapore YP, which posted a 42 percent improvement in the bottom line despite continuing slippage at the top line, may see expansion …

The Kelsey Report® issued an Advisory yesterday that offers some insight into the online strategies of three leading European directory publishers. Here is what the cover letter says:
The latest Advisory from The Kelsey Report® chronicles the progress being made by leading European directory publishers in migrating their online properties from extensions …

A few news bits from the interactive media world this week:
—Online search and contextual advertising firm Marchex announced yesterday that it will buy Open List. Open List has a vertical and local aggregation platform for reviews and listings data that will help Marchex improve the many local domains in its network.
—Prolific …

This is an interesting story from the Miami Herald about post-hurricane remodeling. Note the mention of Home Depot and Lowe’s installation services. This development in the local services marketplace is something TKG will be following in the coming months.

Reports circulated over the weekend that France Telecom is considering selling off the 54 percent it owns of PagesJaunes Groupe. PagesJaunes is among the best Yellow Pages assets in the world. It has had the great advantage of learning from Minitel (perhaps the world’s first online Yellow Pages) and using that knowledge to evolve its …

Vodafone UK announced earlier this week that its mobile TV service has reached 100,000 subscribers and more than 70,000 streams per day. The service, known as SkyMobile TV, is the result of a partnership with British broadcaster BSkyB formed in November. Retail sails, according to Vodofone, are largely driving adoption. More details can be found …

Here is some news from the past few days in case you missed it (or we missed it):
—The biggest event of the past couple of days that we haven’t blogged about yet is the partnership formed between eBay and Yahoo!. Yahoo! will run ads on eBay, while eBay’s PayPal will run Yahoo!’s online payment service. …

Microsoft today signed a deal with infoUSA to license its business listing database. This will bring 13.5 million U.S. businesses into MSN Local Search and Windows Live Local Search — a significant data boost that will complement the new feature set and usability enhancements of Windows Live Local announced yesterday (see previous post). Microsoft currently …

As we mentioned yesterday, Windows Live Local has launched its third version, a sizable improvement that deserves a closer look. We examine the product in this week’s Local Media Journal (published today), and below is part of that article with comments from Microsoft and some additional screenshots:
In its new release, Windows Live Local’s UI …

After Microsoft acquired video game advertising company Massive late last month, the concept of placing ads in video games seems to have gotten more attention from the media and investment community. We’ve blogged at length about video game advertising and its targeting and contextual advertising possibilities. And Microsoft recently told us about …

Have you registered your "dot" mobi domain name? You better get to it because they’re going fast. A company founded with the help of Microsoft, Google, Vodafone and Nokia is now registering "dot" mobi domains. Ever since the Internet became a mass-market experience, media companies have been trying to translate the online experience to the …

Yell Group got a loud round of applause from Merrill Lynch as the company reiterated its "buy" advice after releasing its full-year results. Among the various metrics shared by Yell, the most impressive was the 10 percent organic growth. This suggests Yellow Book was able to continue the strong same-store sales of a year ago. …

Last week, Matt Booth and I were briefed on the third release of Windows Live Local, which has some impressive new features that have gone live (obvious pun not intended) today.
As we pointed out in an Advisory in March ("Maps: Where Are We Now, Where Are We Going?"), WLL has the most …

Not a lot of time to blog today, but Google has fired the latest shot in the quickly developing search engine marketing space by adding the capability for advertisers to distribute video ads throughout its content network.
Marketers will be able to distribute video ads by bidding on ad space in the same …

This morning's New York Times (subscription required) has two major stories about the newspaper industry on the front page of the business section. Columnist David Carr reported a conversation he had with an editor of a major newspaper about a year ago. "With business concluded, we had The Conversation, the one …

Just a quick note to announce that a new ILM Advisory has been released today that examines Yahoo!’s and Microsoft’s new and enhanced SEM platforms. A summary of the Advisory can be found here and here is the official cover letter:
The latest Advisory from Interactive Local Media sums …

It is an old saw in the Yellow Pages business that the industry's three greatest strengths are its sales force, data collection and ability to publish a virtually error-free directory. Like most businesses, Yellow Pages looks simple from the outside but is very complex as you peel back the layers of the onion. Each of …

Barry Schwartz at SEW pointed to an item on the Google Blog on Monday that announced Google’s plans to integrate AdWords with Google Base. We speculated on this possibility in the Nov. 3, 2005, issue of Local Media Journal (after Google Base launched).
The gist is that anyone who publishes information or classifieds to Google Base …

Over the past several months, we have been working on expanding our coverage and building new proprietary research, market estimates and company profiles around several new coverage areas. We will be releasing forecasts, data, research and White Papers this year around many vertical search categories, including automotive and real estate. We have spent considerable time …

In case you haven’t seen it, the Yahoo! home page has a new look. There is also lots of new ajax functionality baked in (similar to the recent enhancements to Ask.com). Here is coverage from CNET and Search Engine Journal.