Here are the highlights from the TKG blog this week, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.
Regulators Approve Netherlands Directory Consolidation
The Dutch competition authorities today approved the planned merger between the Netherlands operations of Truvo (Gouden Gids) and European Directories (DeTelefoongids). This approval clears the way for the …

The Dutch competition authorities today approved the planned merger between the Netherlands operations of Truvo (Gouden Gids) and European Directories (DeTelefoongids). This approval clears the way for the merger to move ahead.
According to an announcement from Howrey LLP, the firm that represented Truvo in the deal, the regulators were initially wary of the deal, based on the view …

 
With the recent acquisition of Get It Pages in Saskatchewan, Yellow Pages Group in Canada has now consolidated a national footprint in Canada. According to the New Brunswick Business Journal, Get It Pages publishes directories in the regions of Battleford, Prince Albert, Yorkton and Estevan. YPG will integrate these editions into its operations, and they …

Localeze biz dev head Gib Olander has a good piece in MediaPost in which he argues the need to refine local search marketing campaigns based on changing search behavior. In other words, the way people search and the terms they use need to be better recognized.
After providing some data that quantify the local search opportunity …

In what amounts to another vote of confidence from business and financial communities for self-serve video ad production, StudioNow has received $2.38 million in private equity. Funding came from existing investor Claritas Capital plus Clayton Associates. This adds to the $1.68 million it received last June, bringing its Series A round to a total of …

In addition to our own coverage last week, here are a few good selections from others reporting on the TKG local sessions, in case you weren’t able to be there:
Aim Clear Blog
Matt McGee
Search Engine Roundtable (here and here)

Comic strips such as Popeye, Terry and the Pirates, and Blondie marked the rise of the newspaper as entertainment in the early part of the 20th century, and the top comic strip artists prospered greatly, some earning the equivalent of $1.8 million a year. But the success of Peanuts and its characters was in a …

Auto dealers have ramped up their use of online lead providers, according to a new dealer satisfaction study by J.D. Power, which was conducted in May and June with 4,141 respondents. They’ve gone from an average of 5.6 in 2006 to 6.8 in 2008. In addition, more than half the dealers in the study said …

Just seven weeks after its introduction, the iPhone 3G will sell 7 million units. It took the first generation iPhone more than a year to reach that mark, and 3G models now surpass 2G model sales.
As we keep saying, the iPhone still only represents less than 1 percent of the U.S. cellphone market (in units sold), …

Newly launched automotive portal DriverSide announced today that it will acquire auto mechanic search site fairBenjamin.
The acquisition is hoped to improve DriverSide’s repair service data and estimates for common repairs, and possibly add new dimensions to its service based on fairBenjamin’s service model. This mostly involves anonymously shopping out repair jobs to mechanics who can …

 
 As an innovative way of promoting its Yellow Pages and Yellow Frontdoor, its magazine-styled directory focused on home improvement and decorating, Yellow Pages Group New Zealand is now the main sponsor of New Zealand’s largest home show as reported by New Zealand’s Thread Magazine. Within the environment of a slowing real estate market and the …

Bauer, a U.K. media company, is utilizing a classified ad platform in which users can text in their ads and send MMS photos. The platform is being used by Magic 105.4 and Magic Digital. It is a partnership of Mobiya, which processes the ads, and Oodle, which adds the ads to its broad base of …

Real estate advertising revenues will give way to transaction revenues, at least in SoCal, as the Los Angeles Times Media Group teams with several partners to launch Zetabid, a new site that will display and auction foreclosed homes and other properties. The other partners are London-based GoIndustry-DoveBid, an auction specialist, and CataList Homes of Hermosa …

The development of verticals is an obvious growth strategy for newspapers, Yellow Pages, search engines and as standalones. The Kelsey Group projects that verticals and classifieds will make up 25 percent of interactive local revenues by 2012.
But nothing happens overnight. And at this point, still early in the game, there have been some initial disappointments …

Here are the highlights from the TKG blog last week, in case you missed any posts. Click below to read each post in full.
Google Brings a Taste of Online to Traditional Media 
We’ve long known Google to be on a path towards facilitating media buys across a cluster of offline traditional media. A clearer glimpse into …

We’ve long known Google to be on a path toward facilitating media buys across a cluster of offline traditional media. A clearer glimpse into this vision was given yesterday by Meredith Papp, product marketing manager at Google, during TKG’s session at SES.
Papp, who works for the division that handles traditional media advertising strategies, presented a …

Today at SES Steve Espinosa, director of product development for eLocal Listing, stressed the importance of video to gain better search rankings and conversions in local search results.
Specifically, SMB videos on eLocal Listing have seen a 3.34 X increase in clickthrough rates. This is a combination of pages getting higher rankings because of the presence …

At a pair of TKG-run sessions at SES San Jose, the value of good local data was a pervasive theme. This relates to the ongoing online-offline challenge in local media and search. The problem basically comes down to the inability for search engines to inherently track the convoluted process that starts with a search query …

IBegin head Ahmed Farooq is shaking things up by publicizing Google’s take on top IYPs. Per Google’s methodology, Citysearch leads the way with 7.4 million uniques and a 3.2 percent reach. It beats Yellowpages.com with 6.8 million uniques, and Superpages.com with 6.2 million uniques. Next up are Yelp with 4.6 million uniques and Local.com with …

Since launching self-service EZ Ads in April 2007, Zillow.com has set a new standard for simple-to-buy, one-price ads, and 13,000 (mostly) local advertisers responded. Typical ad spends were about $50.
Now as Zillow begins to have its inventory sold to 282 members of Yahoo’s newspaper consortium, it is rebranding EZ Ads as “Showcase Ads,” a self-serve …