We’re back from Atlanta after a successful DMS conference. A roundup of internal coverage is in the works. In the meantime, here are a few links to others’ coverage.
Praized
LocalSEOGuide
LocalBizBits
Small Business Commando
ReelSEO

AT&T Advertising & Publishing CMO Ken Ray, speaking on a panel at Kelsey’s DMS ’08 event this week in Atlanta, said print books have plenty of life in them but that publishers have got to work to make them relevant with “URLs, e-mail, texting … using cellphones as a transactional device … a whole set …

Local voice search advertising is already getting promising results, with widespread reach, and high clickthrough rates, according to V-Enable CMO Craig Hagopian, who was speaking at DMS ’08. V-Enable is a San Diego-based mobile voice search company with 65 employees. It partners with Superpages.com, Yellowbook, and AT&T’s Ingenio and Yellowpages.com.
Hagopian said the company is …

The “Deconstructing Internet Yellow Pages” panel at DMS ’08 revealed a number of areas in which IYPs need to evolve. Based on Kelsey’s IYP research, conference chair and TKG Program Director Charles Laughlin said, “IYPs appear too conservative and unwilling to do what it takes to win in the local search space.”
One of the …

Former Citysearch President Briggs Ferguson, who took the helm at Idearc Internet and its Superpages.com flagship about five months ago, said there is tremendous potential for the Yellow Pages industry. Speaking at DMS ’08 in Atlanta, he opined that “it should be much bigger than it is today. At the very least, we get past it …

Yellow Pages Group of Canada, which is widely considered as one of the best positioned Yellow Pages companies in the world, will continue to focus on manning its sales channel, resisting efforts to rely too heavily on self-serve solutions, according to President and CEO Marc Tellier.
“Search engine companies will privately admit self service isn’t working,” Tellier …

My brother recently had a “vertical experience” in the Disneyland “Twilight Zone Tower of Terror.” A 150-foot drop in a rickety old elevator. Three times, in fact.
But Disney’s vertical engineering legerdemain is less ambitious than that of the diverse “vertical” providers who spoke at the “Building Online Vertical Experiences” panel this afternoon at Directional Media …

Sami Kassab, analyst on the European Media Research Team at Exane BNP Paribas, gave a data-laden, insightful perspective on the many of the world’s largest Yellow Pages publishers in “The Financial View” panel at Directional Media Strategies 2008.
Highlights of Kassab’s remarks (presented ticker style):
… Directory publishers have underperformed the broader media sector in both absolute and …

Three Yellow Pages organization represented on a panel this afternoon at Directional Media Strategies 2008 agreed that more transparency and investment in the product, particularly in the form of advertising, were keys to managing through time economic times.
Speaking on the panel “Selling in a Down Economy,” Mike Boyce from R.H. Donnelley acknowledged that the print …

 
Voice search has been put on the map over the past few years with the advent of free directory assistance service providers, not to mention Google (Goog411) and Microsoft (Tellme) entering the space. These services are increasingly educating the U.S. mobile market that there is a better alternative to paying $2 for a carrier-delivered DA call.
“We’ve …

A group of print Yellow Pages executives speaking at Directional Media Strategies 2008 challenged the notion that print usage and revenue growth are no longer realistic objectives. Jo Lynne Whiting of Sensis in Australia and Mike Brugman of Local Insight Media gave presentations that made similar points — print is still used, and there is …

To follow up on the news item this morning that Spotzer has partnered with MerchantCircle, I was able to catch up with CEO Andy Klein here at the DMS conference.
The deal will most notably bring ready-made video ads to MerchantCircle’s base of 600,000 listings (about 7,000 are currently paid advertisers). Prepopulated videos will include simple …

Yellow Pages sales forces are greatly aided if they have comprehensive profiles of businesses ready to go. This can now be accomplished by Web crawling for company info, trademarks, logos, articles, management bios and other content, said 3L System Group CEO Joakim Richter during his keynote at The Kelsey Group’s DMS ’08 conference. “It is …

Today sees a couple of more announcements in the local video space, both involving companies with a big presence here at The Kelsey Group’s DMS conference.
First off, local search platform provider Innovectra has partnered with Digital Media Communications to bring video capability to its ActivImpact platform used by IYP publishers.
European video production company Spotzer also …

President and CEO Frank Jules, who has held the top slot at AT&T Advertising & Publishing for a year, laid out a prescription for Yellow Pages growth during a keynote at Kelsey’s Directional Media Strategies conference in Atlanta, noting at the top that his business is “changing dramatically.” Jules’ prescription is heavily dependent on the success …

The theme of actively evolving local ad sales forces, touched upon by Charles Laughlin this morning, continued at DMS in a session titled “From Perception to Performance: The Sales Channel Revolution.”
“Multi-product selling is becoming a means to survival,” said Kelsey Group Analyst Michael Taylor. “SMB expectations are changing. They’re wanting sales reps to be more …

If you’re here in Atlanta covering the DMS show, add the tag “DMS ‘08″ to your posts and articles. I’ll scrape and aggregate third-party coverage in periodic round-ups here on this blog.

To kick off DMS, Charles Laughlin, Kelsey Group program director and conference chair, presented a general state of the industry and the main issues it faces.
First and foremost on this list is a general move toward evolving the local ad sales bundle and adding more ROI-based products. The expectations in the market and the conditioning …

TKG’s Directional Media Strategies conference kicked off this morning, and we’ll blog most sessions here.
There was an interesting session run by Michael Taylor throughout the morning to kick off our local sales training series. Direct local sales is a vital part in realizing the massive local advertising opportunity and the Yellow Pages industry has the …

The online video space is crowded these days, so having a clear point of differentiation is critical. One of the more interesting players in this burgeoning field is Spotzer, which is trying to bridge the gap between quality content and scalability with a “ready to air” model emphasizing quality content.
Earlier this week I spoke with …