Prompted by my writeup of Google’s new mobile pay-per-call program, I had the chance today to speak with the executive team at RingRevenue.
The company provides a platform for partners to monetize incoming calls. It private labels the platform for publishers to integrate trackable phone numbers into their ad units. This of course is nothing new …

One of the challenges of running conferences is keeping our analyst hats on and covering the world outside the venue walls. We’re still catching up on notable media and tech news items from last week.
But luckily there’s a fair amount of activity happening within the conference walls. This year’s Marketplaces conference hosted great presentations and …

As my colleague Peter Krasilovsky notes below, eBay has rebranded its global classified company Kijiji as eBay Classifieds. Parallel with that announcement, the company has launched two new iPhone apps and some projections about the merchandise value it expects to move this year.
First, the data: eBay believes the GMV (gross merchandise value) it will move …

More than a year after it became apparent that it would do so, eBay has finally killed the Kijiji brand in the U.S., and rebranded its efforts as “eBay Classifieds.” The rebranding, which does not affect more established Kijiji-branded sites in several international markets, is accompanied by a cleaner interface and some new features, including …

In the second “installment” of its quarterly report “State of Small Business Online Advertising, Search Edition,” WebVisible reports that its SMB clients increased their online search spending to an average of $2,149 in Q4 2009, an increase of some 30 percent over the Q3 level, and 111 percent over the level of Q4 2008. In …

Yellow Pages Group Canada announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Canpages for an estimated C$225 million. In addition, YPG has secured a deal with ZipLocal to essentially combine its U.S.-based Your Community Phone Book property with ZipLocal.
“The acquisition of Canpages will accelerate our business transformation to the digital world,” Marc Tellier, chief executive …

The Berry Co., the SMB sales giant with 260,000 SMB clients, has partnered with Yodle for Web site creation and search engine marketing and optimization. The deal gives Yodle access to Berry’s 42-state reach and 885 print publications. Yodle, which is in something of a horse race with SMB resellers such as ReachLocal, …

One of the most talked about presentations at last week’s Marketplaces 2010 conference was MojoPages CEO Jon Carder and his breakdown of game mechanics.
Characterized by Carder as “the new black,” game mechanics are behind the growth of lots of social products like Foursquare. They often involve competitions for certain designations (i.e., mayorships) or the exchange …

BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces 2010 conference has just ended after two-and-a-half days of fantastic presentations from 49 speakers; top-level research from our BIA/Kelsey team; and really great evening events from MojoPages and Acxiom/Moon Valley (we’re talking fire eaters and San Diego Bay cruises). Thanks especially to the 375+ attendees who came from 13 countries to San Diego …

One of the last sessions at Marketplaces 2010 focused on what local niche or media sites can do to better leverage opportunities to grow revenues. Sitting on the panel were Tony Lee of Adicio, Ken Kalb from Analog Analytics and Reed Brown from Matchbin, who all had similar views on how to help local media …

Groupon is one of those “cool” companies that come along every now and again with a good idea, and a certain intangible vibe that captures the industry’s imagination. This morning, the company’s founder told the Groupon’s story and answered questions about how it all works.
The session started with a video by Bobbi Loy-Luster featuring Kim, …

Jordan Glazier, CEO of Eventful, mapped out the company’s latest social, mobile and crowd sourcing efforts to the day-three audience here at Marketplaces 2010.
The company currently has 15 million users through online, mobile and partner channels. At this scale, it’s developed a behavioral targeting engine involving e-mail marketing and other personalized outbound promotions.
“We send out …

Serving mom-and-pop small businesses is a challenge in digital marketplaces. They want to be online, but they don’t know where as there are no huge, recognizable brands. It’s a challenge for them to know whom to work with in the absence of a “Google-like” brand in the local space. ShopCity.com’s president, Colin Pape, addressed these …

Citsearch CEO Jay Herratti, speaking at BIA/Kelsey’s Marketplaces conference, debuted the company’s new thinking and approach to how best to address the local online market. Herratti explains, “It has been increasingly difficult to reach consumers and advertisers at scale. This is the toughest challenge because there is increased competition from a variety of local search …

Urbanspoon, our pre-season pick for favored mobile loca app, has passed half a billion shakes (searches), according to CEO Jay Herratti during his keynote at Marketplaces 2010 today.
This comes almost a year after Urbanspoon was bought by IAC and integrated with Citysearch. The app has also been downloaded 9 million times and is the …

“People still underestimate what is happening,” Loopt CEO Sam Altman said of developments in mobile local search. His big message was that mobile is becoming far more infused into consumer behavior than the desktop Internet ever was, with location awareness and usage ubiquity being critical drivers of this rapid shift.
Altman gave a mini-keynote address to …

Content creators that seek to optimize millions of pieces of content for contextual vertical advertising were on full display at Marketplaces 2010 today in San Diego.
Luke Beatty, founder and president of Associated Content, noted that his company was “the first crowd-sourced media platform” and now attracts 16 million unique visitors. Research done for the company …

This panel, moderated by conference-meister Peter Krasilovsky, peered into the boiler rooms that power vertical search, with presentations by three leading players in the nuts and bolts of this space.
David Kidder, Cofounder and CEO, Clickable, presented a solid vision of technology and functionality behind vertical search, framed in common-sense idioms. Clickable provides SEM marketing and …

“What’s missing from online markets that offline markets have?” Jim Delli Santi from AlikeList sees that online markets need to develop better relationships, utility, transparency and establish ROI. Word of mouth drives trade. Consumers want to find the right business to address their need fast. Small businesses want transparency, trust and measurable ROI.
Ethan Anderson, Redbeacon, …

ServiceMagic CEO Craig Smith started off his keynote address this morning stating that the current recession has been a good thing for the industry. His controversial point was that prior recessions have spawned innovation. “I think we’ll see more innovation in the next two years than we’ve seen in the last 10 years,” said Smith.
Smith …