Norwegian-owned Interinfo was purchased by BaltCap, the leading private equity investor in the Baltic states. Interinfo represented the last directory holding of Texas Pacific Group, previous owners of Norway’s Findexa, now owned by Eniro. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. 
Interinfo’s Yellow Pages operating properties are located in Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia with an …

Is there still a role in local search for a “niche” provider like Gannett’s Planet Discover? The question comes up after Boston.com VP of Product Bob Kempf said there really is no substitute for a major search engine tie, and that alternative solutions would be “second rate.”
Planet Discover CEO David Lenzen certainly thinks there is …

When I read the article in The Boston Globe today that yet again chronicles the woes of big city Yellow Pages directories (full disclosure alert: I was interviewed for the Boston Globe article but not quoted), several thoughts came to mind.
The first thought is that directory publishers need to gain more control over this issue, …

U.S. independent publisher Yellow Book announced a distribution and co-branding deal with Cox Communications in which Yellow Book directories in key Cox markets will carry Cox branding and information on Cox products and services in the front of book. The deal currently involves Yellow Book directories in Providence, R.I., Pensacola, Fla., and Oklahoma City, Okla., but may …

The small-business advertising arms race has gotten hotter in recent weeks, as companies eye a chance to add Google and Yahoo! search solutions, and other services to small-business marketing budgets once totally contained by Yellow Pages.
First we had ReachLocal’s $305 million valuation based on a $55 million round of financing, sparking the whole marketplace. …

Today Yellowpages.com, a subsidiary of AT&T, announced a multiyear distribution deal with Microsoft. In April, Yellowpages.com’s local listings and advertisers will begin appearing across Microsoft properties, including, MSN Yellowpages, MSN Search, Live Search and Maps.
Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Typically, however, these distribution deals involve a minimum guaranteed payment in exchange …

Marchex has released a report today that profiles the local search space. It essentially takes a deeper dive than the report the company put out in September, which sought to explain the local opportunity to those unfamiliar with the space. This report characterizes local as the fifth online consumer facing “mega trend” (others are communications, …

Here is a quick recap of posts from the past week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.
Local Media Survival Skills in a Down Economy
S&MM online columnist Robert Grede shared some interesting insights in a recent article on how local advertisers can survive in a down economy and what …

Since our founding, The Kelsey Group has been committed to delivering our unvarnished view of the dynamics of the ever changing and evolving local advertising market. We have been criticized by some in traditional media who suggested we have overstated the rise of the Internet. And we’ve taken shots from those pushing new media suggesting …

S&MM online columnist Robert Grede shared some interesting insights in a recent article on how local advertisers can survive in a down economy and what local media sales reps should be communicating to their advertisers and prospects. While many of these items are not surprising, it is surprising how local media reps can get so …

Neal Polachek and I had the opportunity this morning to sit down with Mike Galgon, cheif advertising strategist for Microsoft. Galgon was brought on board as part of Microsoft’s $6 billion acquisition of aQuantive, which he cofounded in 1997.
The $6 billion price tag was was roughly 2x premium at the time of purchase, 10X revenue, …

It was interesting to see the Yellow Pages Association release its usage data showing print usage was stable at 13.4 billion and IYP usage had increased to 3.8 billion in 2007. While the overall usage figure is a 3 percent increase from 2006, which is encouraging, zeroing in solely on usage may be taking away …

In an unexpected move, AOL has acquired social network Bebo for $850 million. A move into social networking is interesting for AOL given that portals have traditionally dropped the ball when it comes to social networks (albeit, mostly homegrown ones).
It’s also an interesting development in the wake of Google’s comments that monetizing social content has …

Last week, we wrote about The Seattle Times Co. and its new “Network search,” which is powered with FAST. This week, we are covering The Boston Globe’s Boston.com and its new “Federated” search solution, powered by Google.
Federated and Network search are different names for pretty much the same thing. But even as the respective …

To follow up on the recent post about Yelp’s funding, I was able to sit down with Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppleman yesterday at the company’s San Francisco headquarters.
The company is moving in some interesting directions and the $15 million it just received will provide the fuel. Much of it will be put toward sales and …

Local.com and Idearc Media today renewed their relationship that distributes Superpages ads on Local.com. Superpages advertisers get premium placement on Local.com, while Local.com gets more content in its network and a rev share.
According to the release:
Under the renewed agreement, Superpages.com’s performance-based advertisers will continue to receive preferred placement on the Local.com website. Performance-based advertising products …

Since so many opinions these days seem to be based on anecdotal evidence, let me add another anecdote to the mix.
I am sitting in a coffee shop near where I live doing e-mail and so on. In walks a very stylish young woman, no older than 30. She gets a coffee, sits down and …

SMB-focused video ad platform Jivox launched today, along with a $2.7 million seed round led by Opus Capital. Jivox joins the hot local merchant video advertising space with a self-serve ad creation and placement engine for SMBs. This includes ad creation and reporting dashboards and the ability to customize ads from a bucket of stock …

U.K. directory publisher Yell has launched a new syndication product called netReach, which serves search contextually relevant results from Yell.com onto a network of syndication partners. The product is launching with a half-dozen partner sites, including the Manchester Evening News, Multimap and Genie Knows. The three companies participated in a trial of netReach from November 2007 …

The future of real estate agents is a special cause of mine, since my wife is with Century 21. So whenever I hear someone has bought or sold a house, I always ask them: “How was the agent experience? What did you do online?”
So when I saw (on Facebook) that my pal Gib Olander …