Yahoo! announced today that it will partner with BT to bring 120,000 UK business listings to Yahoo! Local UK. The deal also positions Yahoo! to better serve UK local businesses with its YSM paid search platform, which now allows advertisers to target specific geographies in their SEM campaigns. More on that here and here. …

Rupert Murdoch, in a wide-ranging interview with The Hollywood Reporter's Diane Mermigas, emphasizes that broadcasters need to push harder on local and take their Web sites more seriously. "Broadcasters will be more successful if they commit more to local, [and if] they do a lot more news, and they do it a …

Monster has finally broken through the newspaper blockade, making a deal to launch a new Philadelphia-specific job site Aug. 14 with the new owners of The Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Philly.com. The newspapers and Web site were bought last month by Philadelphia Media Holdings from McClatchy. Previously, they were anchor properties for Knight …

In a big change for the music industry, Yahoo! and Sony BMG have started selling Jessica Simpson's new single without Digital Rights Management (DRM). This marks this first time labels with any market clout have opted to sell unprotected digital songs. Generally, the music industry blames piracy for slumping music sales. The limited test releases …

AT&T and MetroFi submitted a joint proposal to operate a municipal Wi-Fi network in Riverside, California, that covers 65 square miles. The proposed project has similarities to the Google-Earthlink partnership for San Francisco. The AT&T MetroFi network will be supported in one of two ways. First, advertising will be inserted into Web pages that users …

MSN plans on spending US$500 million on AdCenter, Windows Live and other online services this year to bolster its competitive edge. Advertising revenue on the network declined 3 percent from the same period last year. In fiscal 2006, the unit posted a US$2 million profit. Microsoft Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell forecast revenue for the …

MediaPost reported some interesting comments from Karen Crow, director of sales and operations for Google: "We’ve been doing a lot of linking with advertisers’ back end to find out, for example, what specific products their local store has, and which of those products are in stock. We’re trying to figure out how to work with …

Reuters reported that an Arkansas court handed Google a victory last Friday "over disgruntled advertisers who had sued the search engine giant accusing it of trying to drive up fees through so-called click fraud." An independent report was commissioned as part of the settlement. "Based on my evaluation, I conclude that Google’s efforts to combat …

In an exclusive interview with Billboard magazine, Microsoft announced that it is launching a new portal music player and integrated music service under the umbrella brand Zune. According to Billboard: "The first implementation of this will be the portable music player and digital music service, in what is the company’s strongest effort yet to rein …

According to Nielsen/NetRatings, Google grabbed 49.9 percent of searches in June, up 31 percent from the previous year. Yahoo! served 23 percent of searches, up 29 percent from a year earlier, followed by MSN at 10.3 percent, up 3 percent. AOL grew on par with MSN at 3.6 percent, serving 6.9 percent of searches. Ask …

MSN released some numbers that claim 25 percent of users in Britain are writing blogs. Not surprisingly, the study also suggests the demographics of blog writing skew younger. Forty-two percent of people under 25 regularly update a blog compared with only 13 percent of users over 45. This suggests there are likely interesting comparisons to …

The Australian Age reported that Publishing and Broadcasting LTD has hired Tony Faure as chief executive running to run its Nine-MSN Internet property. Mr. Faure most recently sold HomeScreen Entertainment, the online DVD rental he founded, to Quickflix. Previously, Mr. Faure was general manager of Yahoo! Australia and New Zealand rising to regional vice president …

I’m back from vacation with little time to post, as I’m running off to meetings and digging out of the requisite backlog of e-mails. But I just saw this item that relates to our ongoing coverage of video game advertising. This is an interesting area to watch that currently has relatively little business activity …

Blogs are beginning to emerge as a key element for local vertical marketing, such as real estate and insurance. Eye Ball Farm, for instance, has developed a blog template for one of its Sacramento insurance clients. It will be used by all 23 agents in the local office and will (theoretically) help foster deeper customer …

GateHouse Media filed last week for an IPO that will enable it to buy and develop clustered "hyperlocal" media properties in the Northeast, Western, Northern, Midwest, Southern Midwest and Atlantic regions, including newspapers, directories, traders, shoppers and locally focused Web sites.
GateHouse, which operates in 285 markets in 17 states, is currently the leading publisher …

This just in. The LBO Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and investment bank Goldman Sachs have acquired a majority stake in PagesJaunes for US$4.3 billion, according to this item in Market Watch.
KKR, you may recall, did quite well on Canada’s Yellow Pages Group, selling off that asset through the income trust instrument.
TKG has …

Interchange announced that it achieved a positive return on ad spend for the month of June. This goal was highlighted during the company’s last earnings call. It means that directionally Local.com is growing traffic and revenue while maintaining costs. CEO Heath Clarke told TKG: "We believe this is a good indicator that we’re on the …

Just saw this item announcing that Verizon Directories has acquired SEM firm Inceptor.com. This appears to be an effort to bolster SuperPages.com’s ability to drive traffic to support its online advertisers.
Verizon Directories is in the process of being spun off or sold and has drawn some interest from private equities. Having a strong, sustainable …

France Telecom’s effort to sell off its 54 percent stake in PagesJaunes has reportedly attracted two bidders — Texas Pacific Group and a consortium formed by KKR and Goldman Sachs.
Another potential bidder, the French entertainment company Vivendi, has backed off, apparently because analysts and shareholders didn't like the price or the …

LiveDeal announced record growth in June. The site recorded more than 1.4 million unique visitors, with traffic up 34 percent from May. ComScore reported the following growth rates for the Directories/Resources>Classifieds category: Craigslist.org (+11 percent), apartments.com (+8 percent), AutoTrader (-2 percent) and Yahoo! Classifieds (-16 percent).
"June's record number of unique visitors attests to the fact …