AgendiZe today announced it will launch an API for Yellow Pages publishers to enhance the videos they are shooting for small businesses, and hosting on their sites.
The “video to action” API lets publishers create overlays for videos that bring up interactive calls to action when moused over. This is similar to functionality provided by Mixpo, …

Classifieds have made their way to video (See RealPeopleRealStuff). But how about video on mobile phones? That’s a new effort being tried out in Portugal, where high-speed 3G phones are prevalent, but less than 40 percent of the population has Internet access.
The video ads are being provided by Ocasio, a shopper publication with a print circulation …

Self-serve video ad provider Jivox announced a $10 million round today. We wrote about the company, which lets advertisers create short ads using stock video, a few months ago. It also distributes these ads through a publisher network, which has grown with today’s addition of WorldNow ExpoTV and AOL India. It claims $40 million viewers in …

Here are last week’s highlights from the TKG blog, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.
On How Many Sites Do SMBs Advertise?
The folks at Palore sent me a new data set they’re releasing tomorrow. You might remember, the company recently changed its business model to focus on all …

The folks at Palore sent me a new data set they’re releasing tomorrow. You might remember, the company recently changed its business model to focus on all the granular data it was scraping from local search sites.
Since then it’s been on a steady pace of releasing various data mashups to whet the market’s appetite. The …

Today The Kelsey Group unveiled a new name and brand for our September conference. What used to be known as Directory Driven Commerce is now Directional Media Strategies.
In most respects, nothing has changed. The conference is still Sept. 15-17 in Atlanta. The program has not changed from what we posted on our Web site a few …

New auto repair information resource RepairPal went live today. The site steps into an undeserved market segment by providing information about the user’s specific car and its maintenance needs.
One central use case, for example, is to check what a particular repair should cost to make sure that an estimate you received is fair. The site …

Following Steve Ballmer’s comments last week that print newspapers will be dead in 10 years, Seattle PI columnist Bill Virgin retorts that it will be Microsoft’s weakened position that is more evident. He uses Vista’s weak reception, the Wii’s dominance over the Xbox, and MSFT’s failed takeover of Yahoo! as artillery, among other things.
By 2018, …

Lots of talk about the 3G iPhone this week. We’ll see lots of local applications developed that make use of faster speeds and GPS capability, as speculated. The $199 price tag will also make it more mainstream friendly than before.
One example of a local application we’re hearing about is the Yellowpages.com local search app. This …

Ran across this interesting piece via Topix that was produced by the local ABC7 affiliate here in the Bay Area. The story uncovers a nervousness among local SMBs that the Internet is increasingly having an impact on their business outlook.
I have watched this firsthand since I live in San Anselmo, and it is clear that …

Rich Barton — Mr. Vertical — has added a new recruitment-oriented vertical to a lineup that now includes Expedia (sold), Zillow and Avvo. The new effort is Glassdoor.com, which provides recruitment-related information. It solicits and publishes detailed salary and bonus information by position and company, as well as in-depth reviews about company culture and views …

The New York Times is set to recruit small-business advertisers via a deal with AdReady, the Seattle-based ad agency that provides a choice of 600 free templates for banners, customization tools and usage reports.
The Times will recruit its own advertisers via in-house promotions. Advertisers will have a choice of 14 sections of the site that …

Among the developers of iPhone applications is The Associated Press. Featured during the relaunch of iPhone 2.0 today, AP’s Benjamin Moss, director of mobile products, said AP developed an iPhone app for its Mobile News Network in “just a few weeks.” Consumers can use the iPhone to send in news and photos.
More importantly, AP’s 5,000 …

Yellow Pages Group New Zealand has announced the debut of “Yellow mobile” on the Telecom and Vodafone Live! networks. 
According to New Zealand’s Business to Business magazine:
“Yellow Pages Group Digital Media Director Blair Glubb said Yellow mobile will complement the company’s existing range of advertising solutions which already cover the print, online and voice (via …

Marchex has launched a new ad platform called Adhere. Essentially this brings together the company’s OpenList local content network with the premium publishers in its IndustryBrains network under one PPC platform.
The biggest driver for the new platform was to simplify Marchex’s ad buys under one roof. This basically means that advertisers can buy both local and …

Boston-based CitySquares, which just celebrated its second anniversary, is getting about 70,000 unique visitors per month and now has a base of 700 advertisers, averaging $1,200 per year, reports CEO Ben Saren. He believes they have even more potential via upsells such as video, sponsored/display ads, etc.
Roughly a third of the existing advertiser base is …

Consumers looking to map out a Saturday morning errand run or a Saturday night bar-hop — and find out about any special offers along the way — can now do so easily via MetroSeeq, a Portland, Oregon, start-up by Intel-vet Kevin Chen. The site was launched two weeks ago and has already had 40,000 visitors.
Chen …

Scott Wambolt has left his job as Yellow Pages Group’s senior vice president of sales, citing a desire to “pursue other career opportunities.” According to the press release announcing Wambolt’s departure, YPG will move to a flatter sales organization with the three current regional sales vice presidents — Paul Batchelor, David Toms and Paul Lalonde — reporting …

IAC has sold Entertainment Publications Inc., publisher of The Entertainment Book, to MH Equity Investors. The deal puts $135 million on the books for IAC, although MH Equity, an Indianapolis company, probably paid only a portion of that in cash. IAC paid $280 million for the property in 2004, but recently wrote down $100 million …

In a new WashingtonPost.com video, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer talks on a wide variety of topics, including the future of print. “In the next 10 years, the world of media companies will be turned upside down,” he says. “There will be no newspapers or magazines delivered in paper form. Everything will be delivered in electronic …