Grayboxx, which ranks local businesses based on the number of mentions they receive on online consumer services, has finally launched, almost a year after I first wrote about it. The service, which assumes that people generally only mention services they like, has repositioned itself as the rating service for small towns that couldn’t hope to …

Using the Web to drive customers to restaurants via online ads, 2-for-1 coupons, certificates, menus and/or reservations is a big idea that hasn’t totally arrived but is getting closer. There has definitely been some progress in the space. For instance, OpenTable, the high-end reservations manager, appears to have finally secured its niche.
Restaurant.com hopes it has …

          
Every Yellow Pages publisher is trying to answer the question of how to increase revenues through the addition or enhancement of an Internet Yellow Pages product. The larger publishers are able to hire a team of highly skilled and increasingly experienced experts who can help them develop the optimal IYP product and become media integrators …

Video search and monetization has been a hot topic lately, following in the wake of the general hot topic of online video (as advertisers invariably follow the eyeballs). This was accelerated by YouTube’s announcement last week that it will integrate inline video ads.
We’ve explored this nascent field several times in the past, in looking at …

Today I had the chance to speak with a few members of the executive team at MetaCarta, an enterprise software company that has traditionally served, among others, major oil companies and government agencies with geocoded data for oil exploration and other purposes.
The company is now interested in entering the world of local search. Given that …

R.H. Donnelley announced today that it will partner with Yahoo! to give its advertisers a more substantial presence on Yahoo! Local. This will come in three flavors.
From the release:

Featured Listings — Sponsored listings with guaranteed placement on the first or second search results pages for broader exposure in a specific geography or category
Enhanced Listings …

New local search destination Grayboxx launched today in its first locality of Burlington, VT. As mentioned in Grayboxx: A Sneak Peek, the site will have a staggered launch starting in small towns and cities where it believes it has a competitive edge over other local search destinations that focus more on larger metros (see rollout …

In case you missed any, Here are some greatest hits from the past week of blog posts. Click below to read each post in full.
Yelp Integrates Event Listings in 10 Cities
Yelp has added events to its listings, maps and user reviews in 10 cities — San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, San Jose, …

Here is an article on the bond offering for Yellow Pages Group New Zealand. The company’s owners are cutting back on its size to improve demand. This is certainly a sign that at least for now, conditions are not good for private equity deals. Makes us wonder if we will see any more PE deals …

Yelp has added events to its listings, maps and user reviews in 10 cities — San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, San Jose, Austin, Chicago, Washington D.C., and San Diego. The feature includes a landing page for each event, a comment board and a “will you be attending” feature. Unlike Yahoo!’s upcoming.org, which …

I’ve come across a few items this past week worth noting. Will give a quick take on each here.
An article in the Dayton Daily News reports that The Berry Network, the CMR wing of The Berry Co., has landed the Allstate Insurance account. To illustrate what a big win this is for BNI, the company …

I’m a day late to this because of the natural tendency to get caught up in SES, but LiveDeal announced that it will integrate community discussion boards into its classified engine. This is a good integration for LiveDeal that will not only boost the conversations happening around classified listings, but could also serve to enhance …

Jingle Networks, the provider of 1-800-FREE411, has expanded its relationship with Nuance for speech recognition technology. Under terms of the deal, Nuance will also be referring its voice-enabled customers to the Jingle ad platform. Presumably, if Nuance does audio work for McDonald’s, for instance, it could easily be uploaded into the Jingle platform.
The Nuance announcement follows …

The big picture we’ve all been looking at is that online ad spending for search and lead generation is beginning to plateau. ComScore pegs search’s share at around 40 percent.
Google certainly sees it, hence its recent effort to entrench itself into display and video. So does AdMission Corp. A couple of years ago, the vendor …

I’m at SES San Jose today and tomorrow, where there are some interesting local, mobile, social and shopping search sessions going on. I’m in a mobile session now while blogging, responding to e-mail and juggling the bouncy balls they are giving away in the exhibit hall.
Many of the sessions are presentation format rather than panel …

Planet Discover, the pioneering local search and Internet Yellow Pages vendor, won’t sign new contracts with local media outlets that compete with Gannett newspaper and TV properties, according to sources. Gannett purchased Planet Discover in May 2006, but up to now has not interfered with its business development. Gannett’s decision leaves the local search field …

YouTube has launched a new video ad format it has been testing for months (see past post). These ad units, known as inline ads, involve translucent windows that are overlaid on video content for about 10 seconds near the beginning of a given clip.
Experimentation with more integrated and less cumbersome video advertising has flourished in …

White Directory Publishers, a division of Hearst Holdings, announced a marketing partnership with Jingle’s 1-800-FREE411 making it the first independent publisher to resell sponsorship products on the 1-800-FREE411 media channel.
The deal with White Directory comes on the heels of Jingle’s recent blockbuster announcement that Idearc Media would place its Superpages.com information on Jingle’s 1-800-FREE411 network …

We have been discussing the issue of the potential for Internet Yellow Pages offered by print publishers. The question is whether IYPs can be sufficiently significant to merit the necessary investment.
At our recent Drilling Down on Local conference, one of our keynote speakers, Peter Horan, CEO of IAC Media & Advertising, gave a speech titled “What’s …

There is no doubt that online video is blowing up. With increased online use and investment levels on the supply side, have come innovation and experimentation with respect to monetization opportunities, such as dynamically placed inline ads being developed by the likes of Blinkx and Adap.tv.
The NewTeeVee blog reports on a new form of online …