Attendees at The Kelsey Group’s ILM:08 conference received a multinational view on what is working in the “new” business directory space. The panel included iLocal CEO Pieter Grasdjik (Netherlands); Chris Smith, Sensis’ general manager of online search and directories (Australia); Insider Pages’ Eric Peacock (United States); and My Virtual Paper’s Manoj Verma (Canada).
Here’s a  glimpse at …

This just in. Canada’s Yellow Pages Group has announced a deal with My Virtual Paper, a start-up that has developed a process for extracting and indexing deep content from SMBs’ offline business papers — brochures, fliers and so on.
CEO Manoj Verma is speaking on a panel this afternoon at Interactive Local Media 2008 in Santa Clara, …

This morning’s session at ILM:08 on Leveraging Traditional Media Online was an eye-opener in many respects. It was striking, for example, how aggressively NBC is embracing the idea of following the audience wherever it can get its attention — at the gas pump, at the gym, as well as on the couch with a soda …

In-game placement is getting to the point where it’s more than just early adopter advertisers that can target gamers, according to Larry Olevitch, NBC Local Media Group’s senior vice president of local media sales. The benefit, as we’ve mentioned, is that it’s targeted marketing in front of key demographics that in some cases get repeated …

We’ve often pointed out that despite the iPhone excitement throughout the market, the device only makes up 1 percent of the mobile devices out there. This is still true, according to comScore VP of Marketing Solutions Brian Jurutka, who just spoke at ILM:08, but the device made up 3 percent of devices sold last month.
“As those …

Citysearch has just completed a full revamp of its product and strategy that it hopes will position it in the long-term battle for local. Elements of the revamp include a more intuitive interface, an embrace of social media, a major focus on video, some new twists in mobile, and the development of a full-fledged local …

Kicking off the small-business “Super Forum” at Interactive Local Media 2008 here in Santa Clara, California, Jeff Stibel, CEO of Web.com (overachiever alert, he is also a brain scientist), laid out some more ugly facts about the economy — small-business earnings not just down but way down, unemployment climbing, credit frozen, don’t even mention the Dow …

Mark Canon, president of U.K.-based Yell.com (part of Yell Group) kicked off Interactive Local Media 2008 today with an insightful, and at times esoteric, presentation that challenged much of the conventional wisdom that has driven organizations making the transition from traditional to digital.
Canon covered a lot of ground, but the headline was his assertion that …

IAC Vice President Kara Nortman, speaking at Interactive Local Media 2008, provided both a dose of reality and a glimmer of hope about where media companies in the local marketplace are headed. Nortman’s view of what is working well included sites that are building great organic traffic rather than relying on paid traffic, offering a unique …

The Kelsey Group’s Matt Booth kicked off the Interactive Local Media 2008 conference here in Santa Clara, California, with a focus on SMBs’ perceptions and actions related to their media spend. To help frame the discussion, Booth used examples from psychology, in particular the “herding effect,” making the point that oftentimes SMBs base their advertising decisions on what others are …

Following up on last week’s post about YouTube’s launch of new overlay ads, I finally saw one today. I managed to get a quick screen shot before it disappeared (see below). It was an ad for Mystery Science Theater’s Star Wars Episode, shown during a YouTube clip of “Chad Vader — Day Shift Manager.”
This seems …

Angie’s List, the premium, user-paid directory of local business reviews, announced today that it has raised $18 million in new capital from Lighthouse Capital Partners. The site has now raised $66 million in total, including $13 million in 2006 from Battery Ventures, White River Ventures and Aquent, a Boston-based staffing firm. In 2008, the site …

Yelp is often dismissed as a bar and restaurant site for recent college grads in San Francisco. But site usage released by the company suggests it has rather broad usage and shouldn’t be so readily pigeonholed. The site also says it had 15 million uniques in October, up 200 percent from the same period in …

We’ve written before on how media and blog coverage of Yellow Pages can’t seem to find a fair balance between Pollyanna and Chicken Little. OK, in fairness, there aren’t many Pollyannas writing that Yellow Pages is shipshape with not a worry in the world. But there is no shortage of Chicken Littles declaring that the …

We’ll be in Santa Clara, California, all week for the Interactive Local Media 2008 conference, which starts Wednesday.
We’ll do our best to cover the world outside the conference walls, but most of the blogging here will be about the things we’re doing and seeing at the conference. Check back here periodically for show news, updates …

There has been a certain degree of pent-up excitement for Google’s new voice search functionality on the iPhone. It comes in the newest version of the already existing Google Mobile App. It was supposed to launch on Friday but was reportedly delayed until today.
The application processes speech into text and sends it along to Google …

AT&T Advertising Solutions has announced a partnership with Hispanic publisher Seccion Amarilla to sell Hispanic advertising into select Seccion Amarilla directories.
“AT&T is always focused on enhancing our directories to best serve our business and residential customers in the diverse communities we serve,” Carlos Salinas, executive director of strategy and business development at AT&T Advertising Solutions, …

Local Matters’ city guide platform Guidespot (profiled here) has built a local guide for next week’s Interactive Local Media conference. It includes lots of things to do, see and eat in Santa Clara (when you’re not completely engaged at the show of course), and a bunch of practical maps and travel info as well. Check it …

YouTube has just announced from the NewTeeVee Live show here in San Francisco that it will offer advertisers a new platform to place ads within video windows. These will take up 20 percent of the overall video window and will link to advertiser Web sites or landing pages. If they aren’t engaged after 20 seconds, …

BIA Advisory Services held a webinar to discuss the state of local radio, and the steps the industry needs to take to revitalize itself. BIA President and CEO Tom Buono set the stage with some daunting figures that show radio’s depressed revenue growth as compared with retail spending over the past 40 years.
Using retail sales as a …