Local search platform provider Local Matters has announced it will acquire mobile search platform provider mobilePeople for a combination of cash and stock. In a nutshell, this will extend Local Matters’ publisher partners’ ability to sell mobile and DA-delivered voice advertising in addition to print, IYP and a growing media bundle.

We’re seeing lots of talk and lots of development of the mobile industry on the consumer side, as the iPhone and other factors are bringing advanced mobile features — including local search — further into the mainstream. As this penetration grows, advertiser interest will follow and mobile search query volume (inventory) will increase.

To fulfill this advertiser demand, ad serving products will have to be developed that are easy to digest — especially those that target SMB advertisers. Like paid search, geographically targeted mobile ad buys that are bundled on to existing media buys, such as Yellow Pages, will probably be most salable (and scalable).

Local Matters has been smart in the moves it has made to provide much needed online functionality to Yellow Pages publishers, and its global partner/client list speaks for itself. The mobilePeople acquisition follows this trend and shows that the company is ahead of the curve in getting ready for an uptick in demand for mobile ad placements (and voice search) in the coming years.

This also comes weeks after the launch of its new social media-driven city guide platform, which similarly broadens its capability to serve local media publishers. Local Matters and mobilePeople have an existing relationship and also work with a lot of international Yellow Pages publishers (mobilePeople’s list here). More to come after we’re able to talk with Local Matters later this week.

The current distribution of the AT&T’s Real Yellow Pages produced by Dex (R.H. Donnelley) will no longer include the Chicago Metro Residential White Pages.

According to the release:

“Local residential listings are already included in the Chicago Neighborhood directories that we deliver in August, on DexKnows.com(TM) and on YELLOWPAGES.COM, so we felt it was better for consumers if we discontinued delivery of a standalone Chicago Metro Residential White Pages directory,” said David Kelly, director of marketing, Dex. “However, people who still wish to receive the Chicago Metro Residential White Pages can contact us and we will happily supply them with a complimentary copy.”

While this strategy has been in practice with Canada’s Yellow Pages Group in select major cities, this is the first such instance where a major U.S. publisher has opted not to deliver a residential White Pages edition while offering consumers and businesses the option of requesting a copy. With a high focus on the environmental impact of directories, this is an interesting move given no formal opt-in movement has been instituted in the Chicago market. It will be interesting to see if this is a leading trend with publishers as a self-imposed means of addressing public concern.

Update: It’s worth clarifying that R.H. Donnelley has not eliminated residential White Pages. It is eliminating (except by request) the stand-alone metro-wide residential White Pages book, while continuing to deliver business and residential listings via community directories. R.H. Donnelley publishes 13 such community books in the Chicago metro area and their combined coverage exactly matches the metro book, according to a company spokesperson. So while this approach seems like an opt-in plan, technically it is not, since an opt-in plan would give consumers the clear choice between receiving or not receiving residential listings.

Here is the week-in-blogging from TKG, in case you missed anything. Click below to read each post in full.

Google’s Street View Cameras Go Offroading
Google announced today that it has expanded its coverage of six cities in Street View, and has added 13 more. These cities map well (no pun) to Forbes’ recently released list of top U.S. cities for businesses and careers. Along with this launch, Google has also freed the Street View API for publishers to embed street views directly into their sites or applications. (read more…)

PagesJaunes se Porte Très Bien, Merci
One of the most significant announcements in the past year about the Yellow Pages business was made by PagesJaunes. In order to get in front of the faster migration from print to online that is occurring in France’s major cities, the publisher reduced print advertising rates in Paris by 20 percent in 2008. (read more…)

YouTube Offers Insight to Video Producers
YouTube launched a series of new analytics features today, known as Insight. The product gives video producers more detailed information about where and when their videos were viewed. For now this drills down as far as state and country (using IP address) and day of the week. Future versions could get more granular with ZIP code level reporting and day parting. (read more…)

More on Loladex: A Conversation With CEO Laurence Hooper
If Facebook is really the next marketing platform, the guys at Loladex will have guessed right. The new rating and review company, formed by two alumni of AOL Search and Yellow Pages, had initially been incubated as a destination site that enables user reviews, business listings and third-party content from sites such as OpenTable.com and ServiceMagic.com. Sometime last year, the decision was made to build specifically for Facebook. (read more…)

Loladex Launches Today
Local/social search product Loladex launched this morning, currently built exclusively around a Facebook application. The application will specifically seek to tap into the trust inherent in a group of Facebook contacts, as a source of information on, and interaction around, local business information. (read more…)

Google Adds LocalTel to AdWords Network of Resellers
Lawrence, Massachusetts-based Yellow Pages publisher LocalTel has partnered with Google’s AdWords program to sell keywords on Google and Google Maps, and for ads to appear on partner sites within Google’s AdSense network. (read more…)

Krillion Research: Users Look for Products, Then Stores
The balance between merchants and brands is being shifted by the increasingly common use of enhanced “product locators,” which adds store locations, maps — and frequently promotions such as coupons — to the mix, says Lauren Freedman, president of The E-Tailing Group in Chicago. Freedman has just completed a round of shopper behavior research for Krillion. The results, not surprisingly, reinforce Krillion’s mission of providing brand information, and now actual store inventory, to local shoppers. (read more…)

Slifter Brings Local Shopping Search to Mobile
Last week at SES New York, I had the chance to catch up with Alex Muller, CEO of new mobile shopping search product Slifter. The mobile application allows users to search for products that can be found in local stores, including how many are on the shelf. To do this, it works with big-box retailers such as Best Buy to pull in their retail feeds and make them searchable in a mobile application interface. (read more…)

Does the Economy Hold a Silver Lining for Yellow Pages?
I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the Easter holiday talking with friends and family about the economy and how they are dealing with the budget crunch we are all experiencing. One of the common threads of all these conversations has been the need to stay close to home, combine shopping trips and call ahead so you don’t waste time and fuel going to multiple stores. (read more…)

Google announced today that it has expanded its coverage of six cities in Street View, and has added 13 more:

Albuquerque, NM
Anchorage, AK
Austin, TX
Cleveland, OH
Fairbanks, AK
Little Rock, AR
Madison, WI
Nashville, TN
Rockford, IL
Richmond, VA
Spokane, WA
St. Petersburg, FL
Tampa, FL

These cities map well (no pun) to Forbes’ recently released list of top U.S. cities for businesses and careers. Along with this launch, Google has also freed the Street View API for publishers to embed street views directly into their sites or applications. But perhaps coolest of all: Street view now also covers Yosemite National Park.

One of the most significant announcements in the past year about the Yellow Pages business was made by PagesJaunes. In order to get in front of the faster migration from print to online that is occurring in France’s major cities, the publisher reduced print advertising rates in Paris by 20 percent in 2008. Overall print directory revenues in France were essentially flat in 2007, while online service revenues grew 15.1 percent. This traces primarily to Pagesjaunes.fr, which averaged 10.7 million unique visitors per month in 2007, an increase of 22 percent, the sixth most visited site in France.

One notable figure here is that print Yellow Pages and White Pages together account for only about 61 percent of total PagesJaunes revenues in France. We expect print to increase in coming years due to an announcement that was made this week under the headline, “Lawyers are allowed to advertise in the Yellow Pages, says the French Supreme Court.”

From Advertising|France (Tues. 25/03/2008):

“In a judgment of 6 December 2007, the French legal Supreme Court (”Cour de Cassation”) has recognized the right for lawyers to advertise in the Yellow Pages. This has been done against the judgment of the Appeal Court from Bourges (second instance court) who had stated that “an advertisement in the Yellow Pages, be it on paper or on the Internet, was contrary to lawyers’ professional rules.

“The judgment of the Cour de Cassation paves the way for new possibilities for advertisements for regulated professions in the Yellow Pages.”

In the U.S., the attorney category accounted for 9 percent of publishers’ total print revenues in 2005. The opportunity for other “regulated professions” to begin advertising both in print and online offers PagesJaunes strong potential for growth. At the same time, the company anticipates its online share will continue to grow and projects that its margins will also be higher.

It appears that Yellow Pages in France continues to be a very healthy business. In the past two years, PagesJaunes’ number of total advertisers has grown 7.5 percent, and its retention rate is strong at 86 percent. PagesJaunes, like Yellow Pages Group and other Yellow Pages publishers, has shown that this can be a growth business.

YouTube launched a series of new analytics features today, known as Insight. The product gives video producers more detailed information about where and when their videos were viewed. For now this drills down as far as state and country (using IP address) and day of the week. Future versions could get more granular with ZIP code level reporting and day parting.

The reasons behind this are clearly to drive more commercial appeal in YouTube and its monetization efforts, which so far include contextual ad overlays to videos. With more knowledge of who is watching your videos and when, advertising becomes more attractive and measurable. But for those that aren’t purchasing ad overlays, or for those not participating in AdSense for video, this can still be valuable.

Local merchant video, for example, isn’t content that includes advertising; it is the advertising. As we’ve argued, this content has value for users in providing a richer local search experience, and it has clear appeal for advertisers interested in local branding. Though a majority of this local video advertising has happened within IYPs and local search sites (for good reason), there is also the opportunity to utilize YouTube as an auxiliary (and free) distribution tool.

The universal search trend enhances this opportunity, as we’ve examined. Insight now makes this even more attractive for SMBs to experiment with video advertising and track its performance and local relevance. But like it is with search, self provisioning will be a sizable impediment to wide-scale SMB adoption of YouTube and Insight. Third-party local SEM and SEO players will therefore be the ones to utilize these tools the most, on behalf of their clients.

Few of these firms, including eLocalListing, are tapping into universal search opportunities by offering video to their SMB clients, but more will follow. IYPs — currently offering video that is distributed only within their domains — should also come around to utilize YouTube as a means to get their SMB advertisers’ videos in Google search results. Now that performance can be measured and reported back to local advertisers, the benefits come closer into focus.

If Facebook is really the next marketing platform, the guys at Loladex will have guessed right. The new rating and review company, formed by two alumni of AOL Search and Yellow Pages, had initially been incubated as a destination site that enables user reviews, business listings and third-party content from sites such as OpenTable.com and ServiceMagic.com. Sometime last year, the decision was made to build specifically for Facebook.

The key advantage of the Facebook-only strategy? Leveraging Facebook’s discrete social and geographic groups, and growing user base. It is something that destination sites such as Yelp, Kudzu, Citysearch, YellowBot and Boorah don’t easily do. When was the last time you looked at a review and wondered whether the reviewer had similar tastes? The idea here is to stick with established friends.

But there are risks. Facebook could compete directly against the site, marginalizing Loladex as a little used “application” (like six other applications I have that are already shunted to a side menu). Or maybe Facebook never really becomes a universal platform, and users find themselves shut out of the larger universe.

That seems possible. Facebook may be a little stratified between the college/post-college crowd, and an older professional set. There is little in-between. And the professional group of friends on Facebook may not have common tastes in restaurants (or gyms).

But Loladex founder Laurence Hooper is gungho on the Facebook tie — which is one-way. The company doesn’t actually work with Facebook. “Some people believe it is on the verge of being abandoned, but I believe the opposite,” he says. “Facebook has enormous potential, and the serious applications are just starting to arrive. Products like Loladex will help people realize that Facebook is useful, rather than just entertaining.”

In any case, it isn’t really about Facebook. In July, the site will launch a broader site based on the new “open social” standard that Yahoo!, Google and others are participating in. What Hooper and fellow AOL YP alum Dan Goodman are looking at is a social network that is “fully portable” and “scales easily. Don’t ask people to do the work” of exporting their friends — and their friends’ content — from one network to another, he says.

Local/social search product Loladex launched this morning, currently built exclusively around a Facebook application. The application will specifically seek to tap into the trust inherent in a group of Facebook contacts, as a source of information on, and interaction around, local business information.

Social media is quickly becoming the new local word of mouth. Yelp is testament to this, and Facebook’s Pages and Ads products are also steps in this direction. Few companies have specifically built Facebook apps to tap this potential, but we expect to see more.

For this to be useful to the average Facebook user, there will have to be a critical mass of participants (network effect) who add it to their Facebook account and actively participate in local recommendations. Review generation on social/local sites like Yelp face a similar challenge.

One of the benefits of Loladex’s strategy is that it taps into existing Facebook contacts and doesn’t require building a new profile or network of friends. This is one of the impediments to the social networking world continuing to grow: The average online user only has a certain amount of mind share for numerous social networking accounts and logins (Yelp, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Digg, etc.). At some point, a certain social networking fatigue sets in.

Loladex seems to sidestep this issue by building on Facebook’s popularity. The company will focus initial promotional efforts on the D.C. metro market, but it expects to quickly roll out other platforms and geographies, as it learns in that test bed. More to come later from Peter Krasilovsky, who had the chance to talk with founder Laurence Hooper about the “road map.”

Lawrence, Massachusetts-based Yellow Pages publisher LocalTel has partnered with Google’s AdWords program to sell keywords on Google and Google Maps, and for ads to appear on partner sites within Google’s AdSense network. According to the press release, “ Through a new strategic relationship with Google, LocalTel has become a Google Adwords authorized re-seller allowing businesses of all types and sizes to easily and effectively advertise on the largest search engine on the web.” 

As independent publishers struggle to build their own online revenues, partnerships with major ad serving networks are key alliances. Using strong local brands combined with the brand appeal of Google allows smaller publishers to build online revenues without relying solely on their IYP properties.   

The balance between merchants and brands is being shifted by the increasingly common use of enhanced “product locators,” which adds store locations, maps — and frequently promotions such as coupons — to the mix, says Lauren Freedman, president of The E-Tailing Group in Chicago.

Freedman has just completed a round of shopper behavior research for Krillion. The results, not surprisingly, reinforce Krillion’s mission of providing brand information, and now actual store inventory, to local shoppers.

The research’s key finding is that shoppers want to “see everything” and will look at multiple sources on the Web to find it, says Freedman. They especially want to shop online and pick it up at the store. She finds that merchants benefit from store pickup because consumers invariably add more to their shopping cart once they’re inside the location. On average, for instance, Circuit City brings in an extra $154 from such “cross-channel” shoppers.

Cross-channel shopping is increasingly being enabled by big-box stores, she adds. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Sears, RadioShack, CompUSA each launched in the past six months. Increasingly, it is also having an impact on Main Street stores as well. Fifteen of 75 retailers surveyed, or 20 percent, now have a product locator on their site. A similar number had store pickup. “It is growing really fast. No one had it 18 months ago,” she says.

Freedman’s research also found that ratings and reviews are increasingly important, especially as the “local component” of the shopping experience. Generally speaking, women have especially seized on reviews, while men are more tied to the search engines.

“What people really want to know is the service element,” says Freedman. Besides price and inventory, “it is the only differential” at the local retail level.