The Wall Street Journal reports on AT&T’s announced management restructuring today that puts wireless division chief Ralph de la Vega in charge of a broader consumer markets division. This division will encompass television (U-verse), telephone, wireless and broadband services.

This seems in part like a move toward a more unified bundle of products, and the eventual goal of “continuity of services.” This basically means content and advertising that is served across devices (see TKG quad-play report). De la Vega’s position at the top of the heap could make wireless a key differentiator in this bundle.

Indeed, the primary competition is cable, which has an edge in broadband speeds (cable vs. DSL), but doesn’t have the direct wireless assets to build a more holistic product bundle. Telcos also have an underlying architecture advantage when it comes to the IP-based delivery of television (IPTV), and all that will allow. Those advantages will take a while longer to reach the market though.

Read more of de la Vega’s views on bundled services, IPTV and AT&T’s overall product direction in this past post.

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Update: New study from CFI shows consumers prefer telco-delivered triple-play packages over cable by a margin of almost 2 to 1.

After some disappointing metrics coming out of the contextual ads it places on MySpace, Google has begun to look at other ways it can serve ads in online social communities.

This could essentially involve a more granular look at not only what content is on the page but also the dynamics of the social graph itself. People’s influence on one another for example, could be added to the equation to determine ad placements that have the greatest likelihood of engagement.

This influence could be measured and assigned to individuals in the same way that it’s currently applied to Web pages and publishers. People, in other words, become the units of ad networks — or the basis for a page rank — rather than sites. An interesting concept.

Those with lots of friends and frequent interaction on social networks under this setup, would be the most valuable targets. If Google develops this concept, its Open Social initiative meanwhile makes it more feasible to track and monetize these factors across a number of sites.

This reminds us of what BuzzLogic is doing throughout the blogosphere — influential bloggers on certain topics are identified for brand advertisers in those areas. We could see this concept develop further and manifest in other ways and venues, including local.

In a social environment like Yelp, it could have implications for local advertising, where the most influential discussions are happening around neighborhoods and cities. Topix and others are also positioned around the UGC that could be the basis for this new form of “influence tracking” in local.

Through this, national advertisers and agencies could begin to see opportunities to support their local branches (which they don’t do very well in large part) by placing ads where and when the conversations are happening that have the most influence on local buying behavior.

It could take a while for something like this to materialize though — and just as long for Madison Avenue to catch on.

Zvents, which is seeking to transform the events category to a broader “what, when and where” category that encompasses local entertainment, organizations and businesses, has announced $24 million in new funding from AT&T (i.e., wireless and Yellow Pages), Nokia Growth Capital and NAVTEQ.

The funding is on top of $7.2 million previously raised from Vantage Point Venture Partners and Red Rock Ventures, both of which are also participating in the new round. A third early funder, Net Services Inc., isn’t participating in the new round.

The massive unding for a company pulling in $220,000 per month suggests a major bet by the companies. The bet is in several things swirling in and around the events category, but not yet mastered by Zvents (or rival Eventful, for that matter).

These include taking a lead role in mobile searches for events, which is a top use for mobile phones; selling ads to the likes of Home Depot and REI for promotion-based events; the development of an ad network that would allow Zvents to place media from one partner site to another; and the ability to fully leverage Zvents’ network of 250-plus local sites, focused largely on many key newspapers.

All this is very ambitious. But te move of a hefty portion of events-oriented search to mobile is real, especially with the increased presence of smartphones. Advertising-wise, it makes more sense for some categories than others. The Dinosaur Show at the Milwaukee Arena that is coming to Chicago makes sense. But isn’t it a little off center to think Home Depot’s caulking workshops translate into a high CPM advertising opportunity? That’s going to take a major evolution of thinking at the agencies.

Our interpretation is that buried somewhere in this is a strong vote of confidence in local mobile as a targeted ad platform; the globalization of search; and in the compelling vision of Zvents Founder Ethan Stock. It isn’t a sure thing, but we like where it is going.

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

EADP Conference: Thoughts on Pricing Strategy

Among the interesting sessions here at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress here in Athens, I thought I’d share a few takeaways from a presentation regarding pricing strategy. The speaker was Mark Billige of Simon-Kucher & Partners. The issue of pricing also came up in some subsequent presentations, in particular a talk given by Müller Medien CEO Michael Oschmann on creating efficiencies through sales force automation. (read more…)

Jivox Claims 600 Web Sites in Network

Earlier in the week, Jivox grew its publisher network where it distributes the self-serve videos that small-business advertisers create. Like a growing crop of local video producers, these are stock videos that are customized with text and logos. I just got off the phone with CEO Diaz Nesamoney, who claims the network now consists of more than 600 Web sites. This includes a number of radio, TV and newspaper sites (San Francisco Examiner, Denverpost.com, etc.) that promise locally relevant traffic. (read more…)

MySpace Kicks Off Self-Serve Advertising

Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace is seeking to jump-start local and small-business advertising by launching a homegrown Self-Serve Ad Service. Initial advertisers are likely to be rock bands — the first major segment to have adopted MySpace itself — but the service hopes to move up the food chain as time goes on. (read more…)

European Directories’ Riklin: ‘Our Business Is Lead Generation’

I’m here in Athens this week at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress. Nice line-up of speakers thus far, many of whom are echoing the themes that we heard emerge at The Kelsey Group’s DMS ’08 conference last week in Atlanta. European Directories CEO Cornel Riklin was one of the keynote speakers to open the event today. Among his key messages to the group of mostly European directory publishers and vendors was not to look at their businesses as just print or online, but instead to view them as focused on generating leads for their advertisers. (read more…)

Yahoo’s New Self-Serve Ad Platform: A Conversation With Warren Kay

Yahoo announced today from the ADWEEK conference that it will launch a new ad platform called APT. It is meant to be a one-stop shop for media buys across Yahoo’s growing sources of localized inventory. This includes its own network as well as that of the growing list of partners (782) in its newspaper consortium. Unlike Google’s more long-tail base of advertisers, Yahoo has appealed to more national brand advertisers and agencies with graphical display ads. But one barrier preventing their true understanding of the online local opportunity has been its complexity and fragmentation. APT is a move toward making this less daunting with a single point of entry to a wide swath of localized ad inventory. (read more…)

Web.com Partners With MerchantCircle

Web.com announced today that it will bundle its Web creation and hosting services with MerchantCircle’s online product suite for small and medium-sized businesses. This will include analytics and search engine optimization services for Web sites that SMBs create. This represents another move by MerchantCircle to beef up its SMB offerings. It seems to further the strategy that began with the company’s August launch of its own Web site development tool, although it’s unclear how today’s move affects that program. (read more…)

IYPs, National Advertisers Adopting MediaTraks’ One-Stop Ad Platform

Placing and managing national ads on different Internet Yellow Pages sites in different regions has been too difficult. It is one reason why more national advertising probably hasn’t flowed to local sites. But now Superpages.com, DexKnows.com and several other sites have embraced a one-stop local online marketplace developed by Miami-based MediaTraks. The platform acts as the sole intermediary between the IYPs and certified marketing reps and ad agencies handling national or regional accounts. In theory, the CMRs can, in fact, retire the Excel sheets and e-mails that have long been the norm for national orders. (read more…)

Hispanic Yellow Pages of America Ceases Operations

Hispanic Yellow Pages of America has ceased operations, according to a notice distributed on Monday via ELINC, a Yellow Pages Association’s electronic newsletter providing updates on the directory industry to the CMR community. Chicago-based  HYPA had grown primarily through acquisitions since its inception in 2004. According to The Kelsey Group’s Global Yellow Pages 2007 report, HYPA had 22 directory titles in Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin with estimated revenues of US$2.7 million, and until recently it employed 100 people. (read more…)

Android Arrives in Style

After more than a year of speculation about a “GPhone,” the Google-powered G1 phone was unveiled today in New York. As we reported last month, this will be a T-Mobile phone (built by HTC), and it will be available to T-Mobile subscribers for $179 starting Oct. 22 (two-year contract). It features a touch screen that slides up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. It also has a 3-megapixel camera, on par with that of the iPhone, and it will bundle a suite of native Google applications, including Street View’s first appearance on a mobile device. (read more…)

Comcast Teams With Mixpo in Push for Online Video

Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV company, is set to upsell its vast body of video advertisers via a new deal with Mixpo, the Seattle-based venture-backed company dedicated to making video “actionable” across multiple platforms. For Mixpo, the deal represents its first foray into cable. It already has deals with several newspapers, including The Houston Chronicle and Freedom Newspapers. (read more…)

Among the interesting sessions here at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress here in Athens, I thought I’d share a few takeaways from a presentation regarding pricing strategy. The speaker was Mark Billige of Simon-Kucher & Partners. The issue of pricing also came up in some subsequent presentations, in particular a talk given by Müller Medien CEO Michael Oschmann on creating efficiencies through sales force automation. 

Billige gave the audience some food for thought on achieving price elasticity in their directory products and encouraged the group to move beyond making “back room” pricing decisions. Moreover, he acknowledged that discounting is very much engrained in the culture of the sales process, but suggested smarter discounting. For instance, providing discounts for rewarding customer behavior such as on-time or upfront payment. Billige’s research indicates that those advertisers receiving the highest discounts are most likely to churn. For instance, advertisers receiving 50 percent-plus discounts have a 35 percent churn rate. So, the argument of “If I didn’t give them the discount we would have lost them” is, per his research, not the best or most accurate defense.   

Billige also made the case for better tools for sales reps, which was highlighted in the Oschmann presentation noted above. Oschmann’s reps at Müller Medien now all carry tablet PCs, which enables them to have advertisers sign contracts on the spot on the PC, move ad copy and alter a current ad design on the fly, update content and the like. However, in the context of pricing and commission, the sales reps can see through the software package immediately what their commission will be from the sale. Therefore, if they decide to give a discount, they can see what that action will do to their take on the sale. The idea is that it is a motivating factor to not discount or discount as heavily.  

Here are a few additional takeaways from the Billige presentation: 

• Establish an environment that requires thoughtful price strategy, price setting and price implementation. 
• Embrace price differentiation, but make it scientific, not gut-based. 
• Use smarter discounts. 
• Use tools that will help show/measure pricing consequences — i.e., sales force automation tools that instantly show the sales reps their commission based on the discount given. This in itself can be a motivator. 
• Get the sales team involved from the start and get buy-in on pricing decisions.

Earlier in the week, Jivox grew its publisher network where it distributes the self-serve videos that small-business advertisers create. Like a growing crop of local video producers, these are stock videos that are customized with text and logos.

I just got off the phone with CEO Diaz Nesamoney, who claims the network now consists of more than 600 Web sites. This includes a number of radio, TV and newspaper sites (San Francisco Examiner, Denverpost.com, etc.) that promise locally relevant traffic. Beyond geotargeting, ads are contextually placed based on the page content within these sites (home & garden section, for example).

The network overall is distributed fairly evenly in terms of geography and has a national footprint, says Nesamoney. Its sales outreach is primarily toward advertisers in the S.F. Bay Area (where it’s headquartered) and New York. But about 90 percent of its advertisers sign up on their own and are likewise geographically distributed.

The goal going forward will be to add more targeting features to its ad creation dashboard (day parts, specific site placements, etc.) as well as growing its publisher network. The latter will be more important in the long run as distribution will be a vital proof point for local video ad providers.

Though the ad creation engine has unique features from the perspective of an analyst, many SMBs will see the flood of self-serve stock-based video creation engines as pretty much the same. Getting the video out there in front of targeted local audiences is therefore where value will be proved. Jivox has an interesting approach in this respect, given that it is pushing video out into an ad network of local destination sites.

The alternative is what most other SMB video plays are trying to do: work with channel partners such as IYPs to place video within their listings (plus some additional distribution on YouTube and search engines). The benefit here is that video meets users at the point where they’re doing a local search and where their buying intent is proved to be higher. It’s more of a pull than a push, in other words.

Jivox could start to go down this road as well. It’s already putting videos on YouTube and optimizing them for Google Maps. The next step could be the creation of landing pages for its advertisers which not only give the video a place to live in a local search context, but can also be a hook for the many SMBs that don’t have Web sites. This would be similar to eLocalListing’s strategy, minus the search marketing services.

The company could also begin to take on larger advertisers such as mid-market or regional companies that wish to support their local branches. This is an opportunity that’s largely been lost on a lot of national brand advertisers and agencies that are more comfortable with the demographic targeting at the DMA level that they’ve been doing for years. But regional chains could be more likely to see the value in a video ad network that is targeted toward local traffic in the areas where they have locations.

It’s still early days for local video. But the conversation is evolving beyond who shoots the video to the arguably more important question: Where does it go? We’ll continue to see lots of experimentation before that question is answered — and of course there will be more than one answer.

Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace is seeking to jump-start local and small-business advertising by launching a homegrown Self-Serve Ad Service. Initial advertisers are likely to be rock bands — the first major segment to have adopted MySpace itself — but the service hopes to move up the food chain as time goes on.

Fox is making several dozen templates available for do-it-yourselfers. In this regard, it is similar to AdReady, which provides white-label service to The New York Times Co. and WhitePages.com. Advertisers can also use their own artwork. Targeting is available by gender, age, region, city/state and interests.

Newly released Kelsey Group research shows that 41 percent of small businesses say they would like to use self-serve in lieu of salespeople. But professional local ad sellers — especially on the Yellow Pages side — remain skeptical that people would actually be willing to use self serve for renewals, upsells, etc. (I think they will.)

I like all the services using LinkedIn as their platform for social networking. The local implications haven’t really come into focus yet, but the latest publisher to put something out is BusinessWeek, with its Business Exchange.

Developed by former PowerOne Media tech guy Isaac Sacolick, Business Exchange uses LinkedIn profile information as a base, crawls the Web and leverages BusinessWeek’s audience to create, track and contribute topics and posts on any given subject — such as “Newspapers,” which is actually a pretty big subject.

Sacolick says people are always thinking they already organize their info with RSS. But the reality is that RSS is very ad hoc. “BX is organized by topics, already aggregates the top news and blog sources, and leverages the wisdom of the crowd to prioritize the most important topic,” he says. “It’s a simple way for business professionals to build up their online persona and should be really useful for business professionals, small-business owners, managers, MBA students and contractors who want to establish or promote their expertise.”

I’m here in Athens this week at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress. Nice line-up of speakers thus far, many of whom are echoing the themes that we heard emerge at The Kelsey Group’s DMS ’08 conference last week in Atlanta.

European Directories CEO Cornel Riklin was one of the keynote speakers to open the event today. Among his key messages to the group of mostly European directory publishers and vendors was not to look at their businesses as just print or online, but instead to view them as focused on generating leads for their advertisers.

Riklin used a variety of statistics from his company’s operations in eight countries to make the case for his overall key messages, which included the following:

• “Our business is lead generation.”
• Strategy and execution: Good execution can grow print usage/stabilize print growth, and aggressive strategic direction can grow online.
• Directory publishers can compete effectively: Strength and differentiators are the sales force and multimedia product offerings.
• Consolidation will strengthen the industry.

Riklin followed speakers that included David Smith, economics editor for The Sunday Times, and ABN AMRO’s Julian Moore, who painted a less than positive view of the global economy and media industries. Riklin, however, shed some light on how his sales force of 2,500 and total employees of 5,000 are executing on his key messages in eight diverse countries (and Gibraltar) that achieve revenues approaching 800 million euros and EBITDA of about 300 million euros.

Riklin allows print operations to be run locally while online is run from the center or corporate side of things. He sees daily how competition is increasing in key markets such as the Netherlands and acknowledges that “the industry is under siege.” He remains incredibly upbeat about the industry’s prospects even in an environment that he believes has experienced a polarization of share price performance and overall financial performance of directory publishers around the world. Riklin concludes: “It’s all about execution.”

The CEO’s vision includes a 50-50 distribution of revenues by 2011 between print and online and overall revenue growth. In an effort to achieve such growth he has rolled out a more specialized sales force that offers more packages or bundles and does so aggressively. He echoes sentiments we heard at last week’s DMS ’08 conference that get to the heart of a consultative or one-stop-shop multi-product sales approach. Consolidation, too, is part and parcel of his plans, although there were no hints of the publisher’s next target. European Directories, of course, has its hands full as it integrates its most recent acquisitons — Ditel in Poland and Gouden Gids in the Netherlands.

Riklin’s presentation was followed by U.S.-based Local Insight Media CEO Scott Pomeroy, who provided a similar message about his company’s “relentless focus on execution.” As the company’s chairwoman, Marilyn Neal, noted during her presentation at DMS ’08 last week, Local Insight Media is one of the few major publishers in the world experiencing print revenue growth. Pomeroy, too, cited economic forces, but noted key differentiators for his company such as its investment in and management of its sales force. Local Insight Media is trialing new ways of doing business, such as pay for performance, and working with new digital platforms that help set it apart.  

OK, we’ve got the format(s) and “best and brightest” speaker roster set for Interactive Local Media: Extending Local Channels, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, California, next to San Jose.

At the top of the list is Angie Hicks, “the Angie” from Angie’s List, and Rodney Rice from ServiceMagic. They’ll tell it all during one-on-one interviews.

More excitement is to be found on a financial panel with Kara Nortman from IAC, and the “Transition to the Internet” sessions with Kevin Cuddihy from Comcast, Larry Olevitch from NBC Local, Lem Lloyd from The Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium and Meredith Papp from Google’s Traditional Media team.

For some people, Interactive Local Media is all about the ad nets. If that’s the case, we have three of the leaders in the vertical and local space: Russ Fradin from Cox’s Adify, Shawn Riegsecker from Centro and Jason Tafler from Gannett’s PointRoll.

And we’ll have plenty of “Community” with Mark Josephson from Outside.in, Mike Orren from Pegasus News, Dave Galvan from Topix and Seb Provencher from Praized.com. We’ve also zeroed in on new business directories in the U.S. and abroad with Chris Smith from Sensis and Eric Peacock from Citysearch/Insider Pages. Watch for some additions there, to be announced shortly.

We are also looking forward to new directions in mobile with Greg Wester from VoodooVox (Greg, of course, is one the smartest analysts to come out of the Yankee Group). We’ll have a lot of other local mobile-related things at the show, including leading-edge local iPhone and Google Android demos.

We’re especially proud to land Mike Liebhold from the Institute For the Future to give us a sense of how mobile, GPS and mapping technologies will affect the future of local media, community and society. Mike is a longtime tech industry leader and visionary at Apple, among other places. All this will be rounded out with some great comScore data on multiplatform local usage from Brian Jurutka, a great presenter and analyst.

What will really make this conference stand out, however, are the multi-paneled “SuperForums” on SMB marketing and video, which we hope will be complete with audience “voting” via laser pen (if we can figure out the logistics with 600+ attendees). The SMB SuperForum is now largely in place with Paul Ryan from DoneRight; Josh Walker from CityVoter; Court Cunningham from Yodle; Todd Crandall from Metrix4Media; Darren Waddell from MerchantCircle; and Mike Englehart, the new CEO from LiveDeal.

On the video SuperForum side, we’re kicking things off with a mini-keynote from Brad Inman, CEO of TurnHere (and founder of HomeGain and InmanNews); great demos; and many top speakers to be announced shortly. Here’s The Kelsey Group URL for where to sign up. (But don’t delay. Prices go up shortly.)