Wired on the iPad, via All Things D
Next month, Apple’s iPad comes out (and I will buy one). But what will be the impact of iPads and tablets from other companies on traditional media? Many are considering it to be the new magazine form factor. In theory, the iPad would make online ads compelling, and …

Jon Brod, EVP, AOL Ventures
Patch.com, AOL’s hyperlocal network, will grow from its tally of 30 sites today to “hundreds” by the end of 2010, per an internal memo read by Business Insider (and that we saw on www.netnewscheck.com). The memo sites AOL’s goals to be “the global and local leader in sourcing, creating, producing and …

Mobile social player Loopt has made lots of moves to evolve amid quickly changing market standards and user expectations. This has involved moving from a purely social tool to a more broadly defined local utility — recently including Foursquare-like check-ins, and a partnership with coupon provider Mobile Spinach.
Today the company continued this march with a …

Last week the Australian directory publisher Sensis released its half-year financial results, ended Dec. 31, 2009, which showed pretty strong resilience but nonetheless a meaningful decline in print revenues. For the half-year period, combined print and online Yellow Pages results were down 4.3 percent. Print Yellow Pages declined 8.7 percent. Including White Pages, the print …

Yodle, the third-party SMB reseller, has now divided its business into “Yodle Sponsored” and “Yodle Organic.” The formation of the latter division, which has been live for a month with 150 clients, is a recognition that SMBs are increasingly relying on organic search as much as paid search — and they need help driving exposure …

I had the opportunity to speak with Brad Reynolds, CEO of Mongoose Metrics, a Cleveland, Ohio-based call measurement and conversion analytics company. Reynolds was quick to point out that it is not simply a call tracking company, but rather it is dedicated to linking online and offline conversion so clients can better understand what leads …

The money is moving quickly into the third-party SMB reseller space. ReachLocal has applied for a $100 million IPO, which could go out this spring. In hopes of similar paydays, its rivals are raising hordes of cash. Yodle, for instance, has announced that it has added $10 million, boosting its total amount raised $38 million. …

Following a significant court decision, Yellow and White Pages content is not entitled to copyright protection in Australia. Assuming the case is upheld, any entity can legally copy the content from a Sensis directory, even to build a competitive local search or directory product, according to Australian press reports.
The decision is the outcome of a …

Canpages, the leading competitive directory publisher in Canada, appears to be making a play for the CanWest media properties, which would greatly expand and diversify Canpages’ operations. According to a story this week in the Globe and Mail, Canpages is one of two companies bidding on 46 newspapers owned by the financially troubled CanWest Global …

What if consumers could personalize the ads and content they see when they open utility sites such as Google, or portal sites such as Yahoo? That’s the idea behind Optini, a new 12-person company based in Utah that has developed the concept of Optini Vu System “browser connectors.” These enable users to put Fandango listings …

I recently had the chance to talk to JiWire SVP of Marketing David Staas about a report the company released last quarter that uncovers worldwide Wi-Fi growth metrics. As we’ve written, JiWire serves ads on public Wi-Fi networks, which has been shown to involve some favorable audience segmentation and ad performance.
The report goes into some …

Today I had the chance to talk with Crisp Wireless CEO Boris Fridman to get more color on the company’s recent launch of its AdHesion product.  In short, it’s a new format for mobile web ad units that are more dynamic than standard banner ads.
This includes unbolting ads from the fixed placement that pushes them …

The new breed of content aggregators is among the biggest bets in online media. These companies are assembling content from hundreds of thousands of contributors, optimizing it on the search engines so it is easily found and syndicating it.
Demand Media is probably the biggest company in the space. But others include Examiner.com, which has a …

Yell, the U.K.’s largest directory publisher, announced today that it will move 100 percent of its print directories onto a compact print format by the end of June this year. Yell bills the announcement as the “biggest design revamp for more than 40 years.”
Yell’s decision furthers a global trend to reduce the footprint of print …

Next month, BIA/Kelsey will hold its annual Marketplaces 2010 Conference in San Diego. As always, it will have a focus on evolving local online business models and vertical segmentation. Much of the attention throughout the conference will be on the related opportunities for mobile content distribution and advertising.
In addition, we’ll have a dedicated mobile focus …

A little over two months ago, OpenTable Senior Director of Consumer Marketing Scott Jampol told us that the company has served 1 million diners through its mobile products (apps and mobile Web). Now the company has announced the total has already reached 2 million.
Quantifying this further, it represents $100 million the company has driven into …

IAC’s ServiceMagic reported today that it saw a 51 percent boost in 4Q revenues, growing from $25.3 million in 2008 to $38.2 million in 2009. The boost was accompanied by 21 percent growth in the number of home and trade providers that pay for its leads and a 46 percent gain in service requests. The …

DataSphere, a hyperlocal enabler and sales agent for local media companies, says that Northwest TV and radio giant Fisher Communications has now sold more than 1,000 hyperlocal advertisers using Datasphere’s neighborhood-specific content and sales system. The system is now in more than 43 neighborhoods served by Fisher TV stations in Seattle, 40 neighborhoods in Portland …

Mobile bar code integrations with traditional media seem to be coming at us faster and faster. The latest is Sports Illustrated’s Swimsuit Issue. The annual institution of the sporting press hits newsstands today, filled with 2D bar codes that let users access mobile videos of swimsuit models.
The technology is provided by JAGTAG, a competitor to …

The dial has been turned up lately on mobile location targeting  — within social media, local search, and advertising contexts.  The latest news comes from mobile ad network MoVoxx, which has enhanced its location targeting with Useful Networks‘ PlaceWhere platform. From the release:
MoVoxx’s GeoSense™ mobile ad platform ingests location data from Useful …