In an executive interview today with the “Father of IYP,” Pat Marshall, Yellow Book’s chief new media officer talked about his re-entrance to the IYP space and what Yellow Book is looking for new business partners.

In all fairness, Marshall, who was previously head of Idearc’s (the former Verizon) Superpages.com, said he didn’t want to return to the IYP space, but rather wanted to get back into local search. Marshall characterized Yellowbook.com’s current position as more in the IYP business but said the trajectory is gradually moving toward local search.

Yellowbook.com is looking for partners right now primarily in three categories: infrastructure, traffic and inventory. Marshall gave some pretty specific direction on what Yellowbook.com will and will not consider in terms of potential partners and literally offered his e-mail address for the attendees looking to work with one of the fastest growing IYPs in the U.S. today.

More specifically, this is what he said:

1) Infrastructure - A potential partner must bring Yellowbook.com a business plan and provide a compelling argument as to how it can increase revenue, lower costs or provide a more competitive offering in the market.

2) Inventory - Marshall very directly said a potential partner must be willing to “put some skin in the game.” Why will the inventory be good for Yellowbook.com’s customers?

3) Traffic - A potential partner must bring a qualified audience to provide meaningful users to Yellow Book’s customers.

Marshall joined Yellow Book in July 2007 and while he can’t be given full credit for helping the Yellow Book Network grow its unique visitors (per comScore data) 137 percent from Q4 2006 to Q4 2007 and increase its share of IYP searches from 4 percent to 8.6 percent for the same period, he certainly can share in some of the credit. Going forward new advertising campaigns that will debut in the coming weeks will focus specifically on the various digital components of the Yellow Book business and future online growth will be credited to Marshall and his team.

In a session called “The Online City: Close Up on Seattle” here at Drilling Down on Local, The Seattle Times’ Patricia Lee Smith reiterated a point made earlier by the LA Times’ Rob Barrett, which is that online newspapers cannot compete on technology. The only way for newspapers to carve out a unique position online is to leverage not just unique local content, but also unique local understanding. 

“We at the newspaper co have a uniquely local lens. we can’t compete in technology, but we offer a uniquely local perspective,” Smith says. “At any given time, people in two newsrooms in Seattle are asking what information matters most to people in this community.” 

Through NWsource.com, The Times has created a hyperlocal site that seeks to understand the local consumer, and combines professional and consumer-generated content. 

Smith told the audience that NWsource, while generating less traffic than The Times’ other online brands, produced three times the clickthrough rates as the main Seattle Times site, because of its relevant content that drives to the neighborhood level. 

Matt Berk from Marchex talked about how his company, which operates more than 150,000 local domains, described a much different approach to a similar objective, using content aggregation and sophisticated technology to build a very relevant experience for a consumer looking for information in Seattle. For example, Marchex has aggregated about 32,000 local business reviews in the Seattle area from a variety of content partners.  Berk acknowledged it is still early days in creating and monetizing the optimal hyperlocal experience. “We are at the beginning of learning what it means to target locally.”    

The Drilling Down on Local conference kicked off this morning with a presentation and conversation with Rob Barrett, the LA Times’ VP of Interactive.

The underlying theme was how the Times is reengineering its online product to be … an online product. What it is now, Barrett admitted, is mostly a “dump” of the content that appears in the print paper (similar to the model we see at most online papers). This not only fails to take to heart the way online users consume content, but also has a geographic scope that isn’t differentiated.

In other words, the LA Times, like The New York Times and other major metro papers, has a national and international focus. But online national news has become a commodity given its saturation and accessibility. So online, the strategy should be to focus on the uniquely local stuff that can’t be replicated by The New York Times, Google News, Yahoo! News and the like (as argued in the past).

Work in Progress

In Barrett’s three-year tenure, he claims, the majority of things he’s worked on haven’t been seen yet. But we’ll start to see almost monthly product launches from now until the end of the year, involving various local mashups that are relevant to the 800 neighborhoods in the L.A. area, as well as the topics germane to the area.

Barrett names these as entertainment, car culture, the environment and immigration. Others are the key verticals that exist everywhere but for which there is a need for specifically local coverage and community, such as parenting. For all these topics, the plan will be to tap a combination of paid and unpaid editorial resources (staff reporter blogs) community experts and UGC.

Barrett’s goal for this new product is for online to drive half of total cash flow by 2011, when compared with print (amounting to 20 percent of total revenues). The higher engagement of locally and topically specific content, he predicts, will also make the LA Times’ local page views surpass national page views (as measured by topic) by 2009.

Optimizing for Local

One example of the many local mashups he gave was a photo site called Backlot, which is essentially an online forum for Hollywood news and gossip, whose centerpiece will be the photos taken by a prolific Hollywood photographer who has spent years developing a trust relationship to gain access to every major Hollywood studio. He previously supplied the back-page photos for Premier magazine but will now be the primary source for Backlot — photos which will be fed back into the print product.

These photos, according to Barrett, will be optimized for search engines — an implicit nod to the universal search trend whose name is hardly mentioned in the same room as newspaper people. After his first mention of SEO, I kept a running count that reached nine by the end of the presentation. The combination of good optimization practices plus sticky content and a trusted local name is hoped to be the winning combination.

“If you see our content, it’s probably because you Googled something,” he said, “and hopefully in the future you’ll see it because you went there directly.”

Mixpo today announced a new platform that brings together video production, editing and tracking/analytics.

The production dashboard has drag and drop functionality for ad creative including existing still images and a library of stock footage, and Mixpo’s signature call to action overlays. This also integrates with the reporting dashboard that allows companies to track the success of their video ad placement — whether it be on their own domains or distributed.

The VideoAd, a dynamic video advertising player that businesses can easily embed into in-banner video ads, search engine landing pages, Web pages, or blogs. Each VideoAd includes interactive triggers, designated areas where users click to request more information or reach the business directly, generating highly qualified and measureable leads.

The Studio, where companies can easily create high-quality VideoAds from existing video, photo, and audio files, from a broad range of stock media options, or through the services of Mixpo’s video production partner.

Ad Rotation, a Mixpo feature that allows companies to test and compare different versions of a VideoAd for effectiveness by running, or rotating, the versions simultaneously.

The Dashboard, where clients measure how a VideoAd is performing by tracking the number of impressions and views, playthrough and conversion, viewers’ geographic locations, and referring sites.

Automatically generated landing pages for each VideoAd, providing the search terms and other meta data to maximize exposure to more than 100 video sites powered by a range of search engines, including Google, Yahoo!, AOL, and Blinkx.

The company also today announced a series of partnerships in the real estate vertical — one that’s shown a particular affinity for online video at the medium’s early stage. Most notably, real estate social network ActiveRain will integrate Mixpo’s platform into its platform. This gives the company access to 80,000 real estate professionals — a qualified, self-selected sample whose ActiveRain membership is telling of their early adopter status.

Real estate has been a key vertical for Mixpo, shown by the partnerships announced in conjunction with this product launch (which also include Miller Condominium Marketing and Realogics/UrbanCondominiums.com). But the company will target most other verticals, and the versatility of the platform suggests it will be salable as such.

Mixpo President Anupam Gupta will demo the product in the last session today at Drilling Down on Local in Seattle. If you’re at the show, come check it out. Also check out an abridged version here.

Alibaba, is China’s answer to Google and Yahoo!. The online site is 39 percent owned by Yahoo and recently entered a strategic partnership with Infomedia, the second-largest Yellow Pages publisher in India.

The agreement with Infomedia provides Alibaba access to the second-largest population in Asia. The deal with Infomedia opens the opportunity to sell online advertising to its more than 750,000 advertisers and leverages Infomedia’s sales force of 650 that can immediately begin to access a wider array of India’s SMB base.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “[Alibaba’s] move into India is part of its strategy to grow globally, as a large chunk of its revenue comes from domestic trade listings within China.”

As Google, Yahoo! and MSN continue to struggle in Asia and China in particular, homegrown Alibaba and Baidu continue to prosper in Asia. By tapping into population-dense countries, both Alibaba and Baidu have set themselves up for tremendous growth as both China and India’s middle class grows at exponential rates followed closely by the rapid adoption of broadband, mobile Web access and more stable business environments.  

MediaNews Group, the fourth largest newspaper publisher with titles such as The Denver Post and The San Jose Mercury News, has teamed up with TauMed to launch a video-centric health vertical. The vertical launches this month at four of MNG’s smaller papers. It will eventually be incorporated across the chain. Other local media partners are also being lined up.

TauMed, which is privately funded and has 12 employees, is the brainchild of Tauseef Bashir, a former executive with FAST Search and Transfer, the search company recently acquired by Microsoft. FAST’s influence is readily apparent in the service’s intent to make every action searchable. (MediaNews Group is also a FAST client.) “All the information is search driven,” says Bashir.

As with other health portals in the marketplace, the service isn’t focused on local information other than directory content featuring doctor and hospital search. More local content will come in a second phase, says Bashir. The local effort will be aided by the promotional, sales and editorial capabilities of the local syndication partners. Ratings and reviews are probably the core of the local experience, he notes. The site will also be mobile enabled.

Yelp announced a series of tools today for businesses to interact with local reviewers and have more of an active voice.

New features for SMBs include:

• Message customers who have reviewed their business
• See how many prospective customers viewed their business page
• Update business information instantly (i.e., hours of operation, categories)
• Receive new review e-mail alerts

Yelp and other local social search sites have always had elements of local reputation management engines for small businesses. The new tools make it easier for SMBs to utilize Yelp in this way. Like a lot of other local marketing tools for SMBs, Yelp’s offering will face adoption challenges in its requirement for businesses to self service (registration required). But Yelp’s local traction and sheer volume of reviews will make it an easier sell. The company is meanwhile stepping up local sales efforts with recent funding.

By getting more businesses involved in using Yelp in this way, the company hopes they’ll realize its value as a local ad medium — especially given the analytics features. In that way, these features could be a hook for the various placement upsells, on which Yelp’s monetization scheme is largely based. Though the messaging happens behind the scenes, this could also give businesses more of a sense of control over how they’re portrayed on the site — the lack of which could have previously scared them away from being paid advertisers.

We’ll see if these features have a financial impact for Yelp. This is a step in the right direction and essentially throws a bone to businesses after the site’s history of being mostly user-centric. Now it’s more of a two-way street.

As promised in a post a few weeks ago, VideoBloom has completed an index of NASDAQ companies that have video on their Web sites. The DJIA version of the index was shown in the last post as one leading indicator of online video adoption.

As expected, smaller cap NASDAQ companies — though including many media companies — are decidedly behind the video curve. VideoBloom CEO Antoine Toffa points out how there is a general lag in adoption from big companies to smaller cap ones, which is supportive of expected growth in online video adoption for SMB and mid-market companies. From previous post:

“Like a lot of other technologies, online video has started with large companies, but then there is a lag before it reaches smaller companies,” said Toffa. “Next we’ll do the same index for NASDAQ companies and see what the results show.”

This trickle-down effect indicates the opportunity still to come for SMB video advertising. This is closely related to the democratization of online video pointed out in last week’s conversation with PixelFish. This will continue to happen as a result of broadband penetration, cultural shifts around things such as YouTube, and a developing online video ecosystem.

More about the VIEW index is below, in the press release, and on the VideoBloom site.

• Among the NASDAQ 100 companies, 48 have online video on their Web site: 16 have online video only one click away from the home page, 10 have online video two clicks away from the home page, and 22 have online video three clicks or more away from the home page.
• Many of the NASDAQ 100 companies that use online video are in the media, Internet, games and software industries.
• Many of the NASDAQ 100 companies that do not currently use online video are in the pharmaceuticals, semi-conductor and computer hardware industries.
• 26% use online video in an advanced manner: contextual integration of videos, variety of video players, call-to-action tied to the video, etc.
• 12% have built a sophisticated video center, i.e., a video management system geared toward end-users.
• 7% give access to such video center directly from their home page (one click away).
• 10% display video ads for their products in the site; 5% display video ads on their home page.
• 7% offer a full-fledged “video center” comparable to a corporate TV channel.
• 15% offer a full-screen video option.
• 24% open video in a new browser Web page.
• 4% use a pop-up window to display video.
• 3% display online video with a closed captions options.
• Video formats: 34 companies use Flash video, 28 use Windows Media Player, 8 use QuickTime, 7 use Real Player
  (some companies use two or even three formats, this explains why the totals do not add up to 48).

__________

Related: NewTeeVee reports that $461 million in venture funding was put toward online video start-ups in 2007.

Here is a recap of posts from the last week in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.

Eniro to Be an Online First Business in 2008
The Nordic directory publisher Eniro announced somewhat disappointing results for the first quarter, with weaker than expected print results not fully offset by online revenues. Eniro President and CEO Tomas Franzén noted that the first quarter is seasonally weak for its online business. In 2007, Eniro generated 54 percent of its revenues from online. This year, Franzén says the business will generate a majority of its revenues from non-print sources. (read more…)

Local Matters Lightens Up
Local Matters announced it will launch a new local search platform called Destination Search LE (Lite Edition). This essentially brings the concept behind its flagship Local Search platform to smaller players. It will be a hosted and SEO-friendly platform that takes some of the guesswork out of the equation for startups in the local search space (or anyone looking to boost their existing functionality). (read more…)

Day to Give Up CEO Post, Assume Truvo Chair
Truvo announced today that CEO Andrew Day will step down June 1 and assume the role of chairman, allowing current Truvo Belgium Managing Director Donat Retif to take over as CEO. Retif has been with Truvo since 2005. He previously served as vice president of sales for Idearc, working in both the United States and Canada. Before that, he worked briefly in the VNU Promedia operation, which later became Truvo Belgium. (read more…)

AdReady Focuses on SMBs; 9,000 Take Premade Creative
Search has its limitations for local businesses. In fact, many would just as soon place media rich display ads, but for the expense and creative challenge of developing the ads. That’s the hurdle being addressed by AdReady, a venture-backed Seattle company that has created hundreds of ready-made ads that can be selected on a self-serve basis. (read more…)

KP-Backed SpotMixer Enters Fray for SMB Video
The market to produce, distribute and/or enhance small-business videos has intensified in recent months, as TurnHere, Denver MultiMedia, DMC, Spot Runner, Mixpo, BuzzSpot, EZ Show, Spotzer and others have competed (often via third-party Yellow Pages and city guides) to land accounts. Now comes Redwood City, California-based SpotMixer, which has raised $8 million from Kleiner Perkins and others. (read more…)

Closer Look at Topix (Plus, New Partnerships)
Late last year, Topix redefined itself as an aggregator of ZIP code level news and community forums. As recently argued from the ups and downs in hyperlocal sites, the right formula has to be found and sometimes it’s out of your hands as a function of the direction users take it. Topix has mostly found the right formula in its new model, as evidenced by a 2x year-over-year increase in page views in March. (read more…)

Yahoo! Local Lets Users Draw Circles
Yahoo! Local just integrated a drawing tool that lets users specify a radius within which to filter results. AskCity has a similar drawing tool (with additional shapes), and Urban Mapping has a platform that does this. On the advertiser side, AdWords and a few other SEM platforms allow marketers to specify where to serve their ads (by IP address). (read more…)

Local Distribution Deals Keep Rolling: Marchex Taps New Vertical Partners
There seems to be no shortage of announcements from local players that wish to increase incoming content and distribution. In the past few months we’ve seen Citysearch feed content and ads to Local.com, AOL and Marchex; Idearc do the same with Marchex and Local.com; and Yelp feed 2 million reviews to Local.com (to name a few). (read more…)

Placecast: A New Kind of Geotargeting
The whirlwind that is AdTech San Francisco has come and gone and as the dust settles and my notes are organized, a few companies stick out with new ideas. Of the thousands of companies at the show, only a handful were explicitly in the local space, including Where2GetIt, ZVents, Local.com, NearbyNow and Ripple (see post last week). (read more…)

Stubbs Departs Yellowpages.com
Charles Stubbs has left his position as president of Yellowpages.com (a unit of AT&T) to become CEO of Atlanta-based Primedia, which publishes a variety of print and online vertical consumer guides, including Apartment Guide and New Home Guide, ApartmentGuide.com, NewHomeGuide.com and Rentals.com. (read more…)

The Nordic directory publisher Eniro announced somewhat disappointing results for the first quarter, with weaker than expected print results not fully offset by online revenues. Eniro President and CEO Tomas Franzén noted that the first quarter is seasonally weak for its online business.

In 2007, Eniro generated 54 percent of its revenues from online. This year, Franzén says the business will generate a majority of its revenues from non-print sources.

Group wide, Eniro posted first-quarter revenues of SEK1.38 billion, a 2 percent decline over Q1 2007. Online grew 13 percent, while print was down 14 percent (that’s organically), led by an alarming 24 percent organic print decline in Norway, largely due to the publication of the Oslo Yellow Pages.

And some of the weak print results were made weaker by the publication of big city Yellow Pages directories (such as Gothenburg in Sweden and Oslo in Norway) and fewer of the better performing local directories. Online results in Denmark were made weaker as well by glitches in integrating the Kraks online directory operation acquired last year. Generally, the company expects print to decline at a lower rate and online to grow at a faster rate for the full year 2008, with online growth more than offsetting print declines.

One interesting revelation from the call was that in 2009, Eniro will switch to a smaller format print Yellow Pages directory in both Norway and Sweden as part of a broader program to try to stabilize declines in print Yellow Pages.