Here are this week’s highlights from the TKG blog, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.

Stepup Alum Launches DriverSide, a Car Maintenance Site
There is a sudden glut of sites that allow people to register their cars and get specific service information and recommendations about them. First, there was Autobytel’s MyRide. RepairPal launched last week. This week, it is DriverSide, which is being developed by Jad Dunning, an executive with StepUp through its acquisition by Intuit, and Trevor Traina. The site, which has 20 staffers and is funded by Catamount Ventures, is designed to meet consumer needs between purchases and simplify automotive ownership. (read more…)

Idearc Discontinues 28 Independent Titles
Idearc Media has made the decision to discontinue 28 competitive directory titles in Florida, Tennessee and Texas, and has eliminated 200 positions as a result. The company will also close nine sales offices, each associated with the independent directory titles being discontinued. The company remains in the business of publishing independent directory titles and continues to publish them in 34 markets around the country. (read more…)

New Palore Data: Top States for Local Reviews
The latest nugget of data from Palore examines the average number of restaurants by state that have reviews written about them. Looks like Massachusetts takes the cake (sorry, bad pun). This is somewhat binary as it looks at restaurants that have at least one review. If a restaurant has one review or 100, it is counted as having reviews (the only alternative being no reviews). So there are lots of possible drill downs such as what states or sites lead in average volume of reviews per restaurant. (read more…)

Local Online Video Market to Reach $1.5B by 2012
Many market forecasts have attempted to size the U.S. online video market, which consists of ads that are tied to a growing subset of online music, sports and entertainment clips. These forecasts project the market will grow to between US$4 billion and US$7 billion by 2012. A TKG forecast released yesterday specifically breaks out the local portion of this. (read more…)

What Is the Opportunity With Geodomains?
In two weeks, Associated Cities will host its annual GeoDomain Expo at the W Hotel in Chicago. It will be produced by The Kelsey Group, and we hope to have a good presence at the show and learn more about the geodomain opportunity and the growth potential still to come in the space. (read more…)

The Huffington Post Goes Local
The Huffington Post has a certain glamour about it and is able to attract an “A” list of contributors. There is always something interesting on it, and its readership is apparently between 3 million and 8 million unique. Now it is going to go local, with a launch in Chicago this summer, and at least a dozen local sites in all, per founder Arianna Huffington in an audio interview by The Guardian. (read more…)

Canon Crosses the Pond, Joins Yell Group
TKG has learned that local online industry veteran Mark Canon has accepted the position of president-new media at Yell, the U.K.’s leading directory publisher. He will start in July and take over for the retiring Eddie Cheng. Canon brings a varied background to Yell, having been an Internet Yellow Pages pioneer at Switchboard, with subsequent stints at AOL and Autobytel. (read more…)

Yahoo!’s AMP Network Set to Launch for Newspapers
Yahoo! is set to place contextually relevant display ads with its newspaper consortium, which now represents 40 percent of all newspaper circulation. The new AMP program for newspapers begins by the end of 3Q at the San Jose Mercury News and SFGate. (read more…)

Location Awareness: It’s Not Just for Mobile
There is lots of talk this week about the next generation browser, now that Firefox 3 has launched. On Friday I got the chance to meet with Ryan Sarver, Skyhook Wireless director of consumer products, who has some notable efforts in progress to bring the company’s Wi-Fi positioning technology to the browser. (read more…)

There is a sudden glut of sites that allow people to register their cars and get specific service information and recommendations about them.

First, there was Autobytel’s MyRide. RepairPal launched last week. This week, it is DriverSide, which is being developed by Jad Dunning, an executive with StepUp through its acquisition by Intuit, and Trevor Traina. The site, which has 20 staffers and is funded by Catamount Ventures, is designed to meet consumer needs between purchases and simplify automotive ownership. “We want consumers to make good decisions wherever they are in the cycle,” says Dunning.

DriverSide is geared around mainstream drivers rather than high-end enthusiasts. It also has focused on localized needs, such as servicing. “We engineer around each brand on the road. “If you have a 2005 Camry with 45,000 miles in Emeryville, you will need advice on when you need typical repairs and where to go,” says Dunning. “You may have specific questions about Camrys. We build communities around each model.

“Not everyone loves their car,” Dunning adds. “But everyone has a relationship with their car.”

In addition to providing car-specific information, the site also provides editorial content that it is developing in-house, as well as syndicated content from Car and Driver, Road and Track, CNET and ZPinions. Its editorial leader is Jon Alain Guzik, Yahoo! Autos’ former editor in chief. User reviews and feedback are also being solicited. “We took a page from Yahoo! Answers,” says Dunning.

Dunning acknowledges that there are some similarities with other car sites, but he says DriverSide was uniquely developed and isn’t as oriented around enthusiast stuff or selling leads. Users are encouraged to do a variety of things on and off the site. “In our research, we found that the major sites are focused on helping you buy and sell. Once they get you in the funnel, they never want you to leave.”

But leads are a big part of the model, in addition to advertising. To Dunning, “the service leads are even more important than sales leads.” Relationships are being formed with local dealers, independent shops, parts and accessories vendors, and manufacturers. He also expects to sell ads to such auto ecosystem players as insurance companies, financial companies and oil companies.

Idearc Media has made the decision to discontinue 28 competitive directory titles in Florida, Tennessee and Texas, and has eliminated 200 positions as a result. The company will also close nine sales offices, each associated with the independent directory titles being discontinued.

The company remains in the business of publishing independent directory titles and continues to publish them in 34 markets around the country. Idearc reports that in 2007 it published 1,200 distinct directory titles, including more than 1,100 in incumbent markets and more than 150 titles in markets where its former parent company, Verizon, is not the incumbent.

“We are very aggressive in our sales efforts, and these markets did not meet our expectations. Smart companies stay nimble and aggressively respond to market conditions, and that is what we are doing,” said Idearc spokesperson Mary De La Garza.

Total distribution for the titles that were discontinued is 7,607,729, according to Idearc. This is a fraction of the company’s 134 million total distribution. The sales offices closed are in Austin and San Antonio, Texas; Nashville and Knoxville, Tennessee; and Jacksonville, Hollywood, Homestead, Orlando and West Palm Beach, Florida. The company says it will continue to offer online products in non-franchise markets through adjacent incumbent directory sales offices.

The independent line of business accounted for about 3 percent of Idearc’s print revenues. In 2007, Idearc reported print directory revenues of US$2.9 billion, which placed the independent line of business in total at US$87 million. Therefore, the financial impact of this decision is relatively minor.

From a perception standpoint, the decision may have a somewhat bigger impact.

First, it suggests Idearc is taking action to eliminate underperforming assets and reduce its costs, which is widely seen as necessary given the company’s difficult financial position. However, De La Garza pointed out that the decision to discontinue these titles was in the works well before current CEO Scott Klein took over June 2.

The closing of the 28 titles also may reflect what will be a wider shakeout of independent directory titles throughout the industry. This may be particularly acute in regions like Florida, California and Texas, where there is a lot of competition and economic conditions are poor due to the foreclosure crisis. This will be a painful process, but it may ultimately benefit the industry, including Idearc.

The incredible rise in the number of competitive directory over the past decade has always seemed unsustainable, particularly given that competition doesn’t really grow the number of small-business leads generated in a market. Too much competition risked diluting the ROI any one publisher could offer its advertisers. This is doubtless more of a concern as economic conditions deteriorate. Less competition in a market will be the equivalent of opening a valve and releasing pressure. Those that remain in the competition will benefit, even if the discontinued revenues go to search engine marketing or to cover the small-business person’s rising cost of gas rather than to the publishers themselves.

The latest nugget of data from Palore examines the average number of restaurants by state that have reviews written about them. Looks like Massachusetts takes the cake (sorry, bad pun).

This is somewhat binary as it looks at restaurants that have at least one review. If a restaurant has one review or 100, it is counted as having reviews (the only alternative being no reviews). So there are lots of possible drill downs such as what states or sites lead in average volume of reviews per restaurant.

Such is the nature of Palore’s strategy to whet the market’s appetite for the decidedly more granular “custom jobs.” In the meantime its freebies have been interesting. More data and background on Palore in our past coverage.

Some details have been released about Praized Media’s Local Conversations Organizer. Praized is a Canadian start-up launched by YPG vets Harry Wakefield and Sebastien Provencher, and Sylvain Carle, a longtime industry vet. Its tagline is “Trust Your Tribes.”

In a teaser announcement released today, Praized said its platform will be used by Yellow Pages Group in Canada and Yellowbook in the U.S. It will be powered by YPG data in Canada and Localeze data in the states. The announcement said Praized will integrate with all types of editorial content and social tools. One idea from the company has been “Web 2.0 places” with recommendations.

Many market forecasts have attempted to size the U.S. online video market, which consists of ads that are tied to a growing subset of online music, sports and entertainment clips. These forecasts project the market will grow to between US$4 billion and US$7 billion by 2012.

A TKG forecast released yesterday specifically breaks out the local portion of this. The popularity of online video has trickled down to the local level in the form of small and medium-sized business video advertising that accompanies local listings and business profiles.

Specifically, opportunity exists in the increasing segment of video production companies targeting SMBs, and growing interest among Yellow Pages publishers in adding video to their local sales bundles. Here are a few examples of what this looks like:

New York Pizza

Chicago Aquarium

California plumber

Bronx Auto Glass Shop

Providence Restaurant

Reception so far has been positive, given the general appeal of video and its simplicity when compared with other forms of online advertising (e.g., pay-per-click). Local online video for small businesses also combines the traditional appeal of television advertising with the distribution efficiencies and advantages of the Internet. For users, video in the local search environment complements listings and is watched in “lean forward” mode, as a way to assist purchase decisions and add color to listings.

Demand for video at the local level will drive Internet Yellow Pages to execute tighter sales and fulfillment. The medium’s favorable margins will further compel publishers to embrace it as a means to offset print revenue declines. For Yellow Pages publishers, it also represents an opportunity to appeal to a new set of advertisers they haven’t traditionally reached — the better part of the addressable market of 15 million SMBs in the U.S.

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Related: A local video session is slated for TKG’s September Directional Media Strategies conference:

The Online Video Opportunity
Video is fast advancing as a key element of the local online advertising mix, and Internet Yellow Pages providers are jumping in with their own products. This session will explore the emergence of online video on IYPs and examine its potential growth trajectory.

Inhabiting a small but potentially valuable corner of the local search world are geodomains — sites like Boston.com whose intuitive URLs give them a leg up in direct navigation traffic and branding.

Boston.com might be a bad example because it is the online home of The Boston Globe and a darling of the online newspaper world. Generally geodomains are positioned more as city-guide-like sites that contain varying volumes of local listings and advertising (though some are affiliated with newspapers).

Though it doesn’t like to characterize them as geodomains, Marchex’s extensive network of local sites also contains many geo-like domains such as Newyorkdoctors.com or 90210.com.

There is a wide range of quality with geodomains and some have been characterized as having wanting levels of diverse and unique local content. Associated Cities is an organization trying to change this perception and raise the bar for the industry. Through membership and events, the organization gives geodomain owners a venue through which to make contacts, share best practices and improve their sites.

The organization’s vice president and vice chairman is Dan Pulcrano, who is also head of Metro Newspapers and the Boulevards New Media network of geodomains. Pulcrano has an interesting history as a journalist and newspaper publisher in Silicon Valley, and was one of the first individuals to buy up a bunch of geodomains circa 1993. I had the pleasure of meeting and interviewing him on stage at TKG’s Drilling Down on Local conference in April.

One thing that impressed me about Pulcrano was his track record as an oddsmaker in the online local media world — long before there was an online local media world. Here is a quote from 1993, right around the time he bought his first geodomains:

“We will likely see a migration (to the web) of classified and personal advertising, along with the introduction of “electronic yellow pages” type services. The electronic medium offers several advantages to print: instant search capabilities based on predetermined criteria, direct placement of ads by readers, instant updating, and the ability to responds to ads electronically.”

Not bad for 1993. This was pre-consumer broadband and pre-Netscape Navigator — only after which the WWW was brought into the mainstream and lots of online business models were brought to light (many of which shouldn’t have been). Along with this has come Pulcrano’s general attitude toward online as a disruptive force for traditional media like newspapers, and the geodomain opportunity to be at the center of it.

In two weeks, Associated Cities will host its annual GeoDomain Expo at the W Hotel in Chicago. It will be produced by The Kelsey Group, and we hope to have a good presence at the show and learn more about the geodomain opportunity and the growth potential still to come in the space. If you’re interested in more information about the show go here and check out AC’s interview with John Kelsey. Hope to see you there.

The Huffington Post has a certain glamour about it and is able to attract an “A” list of contributors. There is always something interesting on it, and its readership is apparently between 3 million and 8 million unique.

Now it is going to go local, with a launch in Chicago this summer, and at least a dozen local sites in all, per founder Arianna Huffington in an audio interview by The Guardian. Presumably, local will be another button on the site, along with “Politics,” “Media,” “Business,” “Living,” “Entertainment,” “Green” and “23/6” (a news summary).

Local, however, is just one of many new verticals. “Books,” “International” and “Sports” are also planned.

Huffington says the HuffPo is “an aspiring newspaper.” In Chicago, the initial launch will consist of a single page, with “Chicago news, Chicago bloggers, Chicago food, Chicago crime, everything.” After some experimentation, “we’ll have a template which we want to roll out.” Huffington is raising money now to do this. “We have been incredibly good at not expanding too fast,” she says.

John Wilpers, who knows a thing or two about building local media after editor stints with The Examiner and AOL, warns local media companies in his blog that “with her clout and visibility, she may succeed at the aggregation game where others have failed or are struggling. She plans to grab YOUR content and the best local bloggers and citizen journalists – something we should have done long ago. (It’s not too late, but it’s ALMOST too late.) “And she won’t be blowing large amounts of investor money, either. One editor. One reporter. That’s it.”

Who knows? Maybe the HuffPo will serve as a better foundation for compelling local discussions than the local newspaper or standalone hyperlocal sites. Being disciplined/elitist about what and who is interesting is the quality it brings to the table. Or maybe Huffington will raise a lot of money and buy Outside.in or Topix. But the latter site, with its small market orientation, doesn’t appeal to the influentials that she has focused on reaching.

My guess is the “local” part of it might be like an alternative newsweekly column and find some readers. Then we’ll see if Huffington wants to build up local sales or not (probably the latter).

TKG has learned that local online industry veteran Mark Canon has accepted the position of president-new media at Yell, the U.K.’s leading directory publisher. He will start in July and take over for the retiring Eddie Cheng.

Canon brings a varied background to Yell, having been an Internet Yellow Pages pioneer at Switchboard, with subsequent stints at AOL and Autobytel. He offers a sharp intellect and the kind of insight that only comes from long experience in building compelling local search experiences.

Canon’s recent stint at Autobytel in particular rounds out his experience to include a deep understanding of how vertical search has become such a critical trend in the directional media space.

At Yell, Canon will find an online operation that has experienced stunning recent sales growth but needs strong leadership to make sure product development keeps pace with a very competitive U.K. online market.

Update (6/27/08): Yell formally announced Canon’s appointment today. Here is the press release.

Yahoo! is set to place contextually relevant display ads with its newspaper consortium, which now represents 40 percent of all newspaper circulation. The new AMP program for newspapers begins by the end of 3Q at the San Jose Mercury News and SFGate.

Yahoo! and the newspapers are banking big on AMP’s success. Indeed, it has been reported that Yahoo! has 800 people involved in some fashion with the consortium (something I’d like to learn more about).

Working with AMP’s behavioral capabilities, newspapers are hoping to double CPM rates, in some cases, and also see some new advertisers from Yahoo!. Analyst Ken Doctor notes in a blog post that many of the newspaper execs he talks to believes AMP is the most important part of the consortium deal.

But how big will it get? And at what point does Yahoo!’s ContentMatch search service, which is being beta tested at some newspapers, get commingled with AMP? It is hard to say. One thing that isn’t likely to happen is that Yahoo!’s search deal with Google boosts the revenue received by the consortium. Doctor, in his blog post, says the consortium deal already has a guaranteed level of revenues from ContentMatch.