Online directory technology provider Local Matters is touting the launch of R.H. Donnelley’s Chicago.B2B.com, a "local search and shopping marketplace" for Chicago-area businesses. The site uses Local Matters’ Destination Search platform, which is being positioned as a solution for directory publishers to offer products that compete with local search providers.
TKG will write about this …

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.

The San Jose Mercury News has an interesting article today about cost-per-action advertising, and the relaunch of search engine Snap by serial entrepreneur and paid search luminary Bill Gross.
Interestingly, cost-per-action could begin to receive more attention and use among advertisers, given that paid search overall has received diminishing returns over the past …

Classified aggregator Oodle launched today in the U.K. The press release is here, and we’ll have more after we get the chance to talk to the company later this week.

Business 2.0’s Future Boy has a very interesting column about Google’s possible plans for Google Earth. The company is moving toward letting users design and create objects on its virtual Earthscape using simple 3-D modeling software.
These can be representations of real objects (think real estate sales) or any object of a user’s imagination. This …

Google’s second annual press day is going on as we speak. I’ve been watching bits and pieces of the webcast and will have more commentary later.
You can watch it here, and read Philipp Lessen’s live blogging of the event here.

We spoke with Scott Randall, CEO of shopping engine Yokel, recently about the site’s market positioning and some of the challenges of building an online shopping model (majority of conversions happen offline, difficulty in tracking consumer’s, lack of inventory data, etc.). These issues are explored further here.
The site officially launched today, and we’ll be …

Here’s an interesting piece from CNET about local advertisers marketing themselves on MySpace. In essence a business can set up a profile on MySpace in the same way that a teenager would. We wrote about this concept a few weeks ago here.
From the article:
Hoffman, who works for KEA Advertising in Valley Cottage, N.Y., …

CNET has a good wrap-up of Google’s press day product launches. More to come.

Here is a write-up of today’s Yellow Pages Group annual meeting. I am traveling today and have not yet been able to listen to the call.
One interesting item is the C$2.5 million purchase of 389 Canadian domain names across vertical categories (e.g., autos.ca, doctors.ca). Pretty smart way to generate some organic traffic along …

Maybe I’m missing something, but I’m having a hard time getting past the first obvious question that comes to mind as I read this announcement. If this is such a breakthrough business concept, then how come it’s being sold on eBay? Just wondering.

The following is an excerpt from an article we prepared for Local Media Journal regarding Yahoo!'s new ad engine. It was published last month for our client advisory service. Given Yahoo!'s announcement today, we thought that a portion of the article would make a relevant post.
[From LMJ]
TKG thinks the speculated changes would have a …

What is the best way to bridge the so-called digital divide?
• Provide a sub-$100 notebook computer for educational use in developing nations?• Introduce an ultra low-cost computer that is a combination phone and personal organizer that can be fitted with an inexpensive display and keyboard?• Offer a sub-$400 educational laptop and a five-year $1 billion program to …

To add to Wednesday’s post of the same name, Om Malik has some interesting data about the battle that is heating up for bundled services between cable and telecom companies.

Om Malik also reports on the quickly consolidating telecom landscape and the corresponding branding game being played. It seems now that AT&T-owned Cingular could soon change its name to, well, AT&T.
Many questioned the name change from SBC to AT&T, with the notion that the latter is an old-guard icon of a past era …

After months of testing, and a very limited rollout to an invite-only list of small businesses, Microsoft’s today announced the details of its adCenter SEM platform. The press release is here.
AdCenter’s selling points include better targeting options than Google’s AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing. In other words, additional layers of context …

A Wall Street Journal article today is receiving a log of attention for its speculation that Microsoft could be interested in a sizable equity stake in Yahoo!. The combined forces would be meant to battle Google. Here is additional commentary from SEW, Search Engine Journal and a pessimistic view from …

Just as Comcast’s first-quarter revenue growth (announced last week) was attributed to bundled service packages, this CNet article today points out that Time Warner Cable has experienced something similar.
Quadruple-play offerings (voice, data, video and wireless) will become standard in the battle for market share, as telcos move into the cable industry’s video business, and …

Bob Garfield, editor at large for Advertising Age, tried hard (perhaps too hard) to entertain the audience at the recent Yellow Pages Association annual convention. It was one of those multimedia presentations where he used a combination of PowerPoint, video and humor to try to get his point across.
He claims that today media is chaotic, …

A new personalized news site called Spotback launched yesterday that will customize news based on the aggregate tracking of an individual user's behavior. This will involve tracking how users manually customize their news and rate stories they have read. Techcrunch has the scoop here.
This is compared with Eurekster’s "passive …