Here is an interesting item from the local CBS station in San Francisco. Apparently a 20 percent off coupon in a San Francisco Yellow Pages directory (the item doesn’t say which one) for the Rainbow Grocery in the Mission District is so popular that it has made the local book a hot commodity, at …

According to an article this week on Forbes.com, AT&T will launch a Yelp meets Yellow Pages site later this year. The new site will carry a new brand that does not invoke Yellow Pages, but something that appeals to the non-Yellow Pages crowd, namely people under 30 who rarely or never use the phone book …

Today I had the opportunity to catch up with SinglePoint Marketing Director Philippe Poutonnet. SinglePoint powers all the text-in response campaigns for Bravo (”Top Chef,” “Project Runway,” etc.), MTV, Viacom and other top networks. This usually involves “American Idol”-style voting for a variety of programming.
Users who text in are typically given a response that SinglePoint …

Jeff Zucker, president and CEO of NBC Universal, told paidContent that NBC’s TV station Web sites have transcended the TV medium to go local in a bigger way. That’s one of the reasons they’ve been rebranded for geo-qualifiers, rather than call letters. Goodbye WNBC.com. Hello NBCNY.com.
“We really changed the way people look at local television …

Apple’s much awaited iPhone 3GS has shipped and will be available in stores tomorrow. Some pre-orders have already been fulfilled, and the iPhone 3.0 software upgrade was released yesterday (compatible with previous version iPhones). Needless to say, the news media and blogosphere have been abuzz over the second coming of the iPhone 3G.
We’ve been light …

The extension of Yellow Pages’ reach via other media is well under way. We’ve seen versions of Yellow Pages advertising on the Web, CD-ROMs, billboards and interactive TV. And we’ve heard Yellow Pages advertising on various phone services as well.
Direct mail is good too. Last week, my “affluent” home received a SuperpagesDirect Card Pack in …

Today I had the chance to talk to Geodelic founder Rahul Sonnad, former Microsoft engineer and founder of thePlatform (acquired by Comcast in 2006).
Geodelic, founded in 2008 with funding from Clearstone and Shasta Ventures, is working on a somewhat novel approach to location-based mobile apps. Instead of just locating the nearest gas station or coffee …

TV and local social media are being integrated in “Prius Neighborhood,” a new “community-generated” TV program that will highlight the green sensibility of Toyota’s Prius hybrid. Gas pumpers will watch the program on pumpside TVs at more than 1,000 gas stations in over 100 DMAs. They can go to a Web site to submit local …

AdMob today released the latest in its string of data points of consumer mobile usage. Like many of the past data the firm has released, these are supportive of the opportunity to advertise on iPhones (mobile Web sites and apps).
Most notably, the data reveal that 40 percent of iPhone and iPod Touch users access the …

Niche networks make a lot of sense, given that local media sites are often under-delivering and reach similar audiences, and many blogs and sites really aren’t equipped to sell advertising. The newest niche network is the Voice Local Network, which is being rolled out by Village Voice Media, the publisher of 15 alternative weeklies (per …

MapQuest today announced the availability of its MapQuest 4 Mobile iPhone app. Its previous moves into the iPhone were limited to an iPhone optimized site, otherwise known as a Web app. MapQuest 4 Mobile is a native app, which can be downloaded in the App Store and has much more functionality.
The app itself is largely …

Here is a recap of posts from last week, in case you missed any. Click below to read each post in full.
More Evidence of Online Video Effectiveness
We’ve heard a few (admittedly anecdotal) claims of SMB video’s effectiveness in raising clickthrough rates and engagement levels from those that have begun to offer it. The numbers we’ve …

We’ve heard a few (admittedly anecdotal) claims of SMB video’s effectiveness in raising clickthrough rates and engagement levels from those that have begun to offer it. The numbers we’ve heard from the likes of eLocalListing, Weblocal.ca and Brownbook are that listings with video are seeing anywhere between 2x and 12x CTRs over listings that don’t …

Today I had the chance to talk with David Staas, newly appointed SVP of marketing at JiWire. The Panorama Capital-backed company has a network of 25,000 Wi-Fi hotspots through which it reaches 15 million monthly uniques. It serves targeted ads based on location and audience.
The way it works is that one ad is shown at …

John Brod, Patch.com
AOL reaffirmed its strong interest in local today, announcing that it is purchasing Patch.com, a 25-person hyperlocal service invested in by new CEO Tim Armstrong when he was still at Google, and Going.com, an events-driven social network and self-serve ticketing platform aimed at 20-somethings.
Patch.com is currently in five suburban New Jersey towns, with …

Bid4Spots, which has successfully played David vs. Google’s Goliath in working with radio stations to reverse auction off unsold airtime, is extending its service to local cable TV. The auctioneer will work with advertisers to let cable operators bid to place ads on networks. Cable systems generally have two minutes of inventory an hour.
As with …

Yesterday, Chris Cummings,Yellow Pages Association chair and Marquette Group CEO,   accepted our invitation to deliver a featured presentation at Directional Media Strategies ‘09. He will speak on the event’s opening day, Sept. 22.

Cummings joins a powerful list of directory company CEOs who will address DMS, which for the first time is being co-presented by …

IAC Chair Barry Diller, in an interview with paidContent, noted that organizing local information remains a series of “impossible tasks.”
“There are so many merchants, so connecting [local activity] into a service that gets you the things you want to know about all of those services in one place and then has the commerce relationships, the …

Local media consultant Mark Potts writes in his blog that “Yelp is doing the kind of fundamental damage to newspapers’ traditional local entertainment listing and reviewing role that Craigslist did to classifieds.”
For Potts, that means more bad news for newspapers. “The last really defensible franchise for newspapers is local news and information, and local entertainment, …

We often take a look at smartphone penetration in economic and technological terms — i.e., what will smartphone capability do for the growth of the mobile Web audience and for mobile local search?
The New York Times today examines smartphones from a psychological perspective. This has a lot to do with the need to be constantly …