Return on investment for advertising is generally measured by local businesses in terms of phone calls generated, call duration and/or store visits. That isn't changing soon. But for local ad sellers and their advertisers, it remains a challenge to figure out where calls are coming from, the conversion rate of calls, and the viability of …

A dirty secret in the search wars is that you can basically “buy” enough traffic via Google AdWords and other sources to jump to the top of the usage charts. In a recent ZDNet column, Donna Bogatin implied that Citysearch has done exactly that. “Industry estimates of the cost to Citysearch for its 'partnership' with …

The Washington Post, following Gannett's “Information Center” approach toward the newsroom, says it will beef up several vertical sections in print and for the Web, including Health, Food and Home. A staff memo from Executive Editor Len Downie Jr., republished by Editor and Publisher, noted that “the re-launches of Health, Food and Home will be …

Modern Mom, a Los Angeles-based pioneer in the increasingly crowded “online moms” space, is launching 12 city guides on Wednesday (Nov. 15). Previews of L.A., San Diego, San Francisco, Chicago, New York City and Washington, D.C., are already up. These cities will be joined by Atlanta, Boston, Baltimore, Seattle, Minneapolis and Dallas (if my reading …

InfoSpace today launched Zoo.com, a search engine for kids that filters out sexually explicit content. It does this by filtering out search results that contain any of a list of 50,000 adult words or phrases. It also prioritizes search results from a refined corpus of sources known to be mostly clean, including Wikipedia, ABC News …

There is clearly a lot of activity in the online video space, but there are still many question marks about how to effectively monetize the experience, and how local advertising could eventually come into the picture.
Both of these are related to adoption issues for online video and consumer preferences, which are being …

First we had Topix aggregating local news and events from thousands of sites. Now we have Outside.in trying to pull off the same idea using hyper-local blogs as a primary source. Steven Johnson co-created the site with John Geraci. He talked with us last week via e-mail about the company's ambitions and where he sees …

Very few people are as compelling as Morgan Stanely’s Mary Meeker in arguing that the transition of media and commerce dollars to the Internet is under way. For sure, she understands, and anticipates, the macro.
At the Web 2.0 conference yesterday, she delivered the state of the Internet's transition, circa late 2006. Her basic theme was, …

Backfence may be the biggest laboratory out there for community networks. It reads like a newspaper written by citizens, and its hyper-local coverage features community-by-community Yellow Pages, special sections, business reviews, event calendars, classifieds, blogs and user-generated photos.
The company raised $3 million at this time last year from SAS Investors and The Omidyar Network, and …

I’m down in San Jose at the Consumer Technology Ventures conference, which has featured some engaging panel discussions. The highlight so far for me has been the luncheon keynote yesterday by prolific Wall Street Journal personal tech columnist Walt Mossberg (more on that later).
Like many of the events held by Dow Jones, this had a …

Last night I had the chance to attend Microsoft’s launch event for Virtual Earth 3-D in San Francisco. It was a well-organized event that included introductory remarks by Microsoft GM of Search and Mapping Erik Jorgensen and the GM of the Virtual Earth business unit, Stephen Lawler. Then guests were allowed to wander freely between …

The person who headed up the 1.1 million-employee BellSystem when it was broken up is a Virginia gentleman by the name of Charles Lee Brown. He retired to Princeton, NJ, and I once asked him why he gave up the Yellow Pages business to the Regional Bell Operating Companies. While it was “only” generating about …

Zvents, a Web 2.0 app that enables local sites to manage events, including events inputted by users, announced today that it has received $7 million from several VC firms, including Vantage Point Venture Partners (a funder of ReachLocal). It also announced a new newspaper partnership with The Boston Globe, adding to prior relationships with MediaNews …

Google's announcement that its self-serve system will be enabled for print newspapers gives newspapers an easier way to reach small businesses. Newspapers, of course, are famously challenged to apply their relatively limited sales forces to anything smaller than a car dealer or hospital.
Here are some details: 50 larger newspapers, including titles by Gannett, Tribune, The …

Geosign, a privately owned publisher of dozens of local and vertical services, including TrueLocal, has teamed with Go2 to get a foot in the door of the nascent mobile directory marketplace. Go2, founded in 1999, was a pioneer in mobile directories, employing more than 100 people and forming relationships with key directory players. But it …

In an exciting development from Microsoft, the company just announced it will provide 3-D models of 15 U.S. cities in its Live Search results. Starting tomorrow, users who click on the “maps” tab after entering a search term in Live Search will have the option to see search results within these 3-D maps, in addition …

Gannett, the nation's largest newspaper publisher with 110 titles, is rolling out “information center” guidelines that it calls “the newsroom of the future.” In its essence, the Information Center downplays hard news in favor of more community touch points. It also de-emphasizes the newspaper industry's traditional focus on print in favor of a 24/7 multi-platform …

Here is a quick follow-up on the fallout from the Nov. 1 announcement that the Canadian government will tax income trust dividends. Income trusts had become a popular structure in Canada, and one of the leading trusts is the Yellow Pages Income Fund, operator of Yellow Pages Group, Canada’s leading directory publisher. The government’s decision …

Every now and then you meet someone in business that makes you think it is not just about business; someone you imagine you will have the joy of working with for the rest of your career. For me, Greg Parker has been one of these people. It is with real sadness that I report to …

So, you don't think that phonebooks are a big deal, huh? Well, let's take a look at the incredible noise that Dex caused when it chose to re-scope the Quad-Cities telephone book. The Quad-Cities include Davenport and Bettendorf, IA, and Moline and Rock Island, IL. I must admit I don't know much about the Quad-Cities, …