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 …

Jon Brod, executive vice president of AOL Ventures, Local & Mapping, gave attendees at Marketplaces 2010 a glimpse into the direction that AOL is moving in its local strategy, specifically with Patch.com, MapQuest, its content management system Seed, its LocalFund investment arm, the relaunch of CitysBest and the forthcoming launch of Patch.org.

Earlier this year Brod …

Being in the local media space, each New Year I reflect on my buying habits of the past 12 months and how I found local businesses. This year I realized that I used a wider variety of media than in the past to find local service providers including the following: Angie’s List for a housecleaning …

Aaron Finn of AdReady and Michael Barr of iPromote discussed the opportunity to serve advertisers interested in display advertising particularly in the self-serve environment. Finn noted that there are roughly 1.4 million businesses participating in search whereas there are only 44,000 businesses participating in display. He believes that there is scale for display and that …

Andy Sims of Skype shed some light on its new partnership with European Directories in which European Directories sells advertisers in its seven European countries a subscriptions package to deliver calls to that advertiser. Anywhere the advertiser’s phone number shows up on the Web it will be highlighted in blue and will indicate that by …

BIA/Kelsey has been promoting the development of reputation management for some time now and sees this area as defining the local space in the next three years. On a panel this morning BIA/Kelsey analyst Matt Booth hosted a discussion that included three players in the reputation management space: Matthew Berk of Marchex, Ben Smith of …

Just posted on Yellowbook’s Facebook page is an announcement that allows Yellowbook users to sign in to their Yellowbook page with their Facebook login. Additionally, the new feature allows users to sync their ratings and reviews to their Facebook page. More available here or search Yellowbook on Facebook.

In his keynote message this morning, one message Dave Swanson, chairman and CEO of R.H. Donnelley, relayed was that RHD is going to be investigating geo-specific vertical opportunities, essentially meaning evaluating specific categories in specific cities (i.e., attorneys in Orlando). Swanson’s glimpse into one of RHD’s future strategies provided an excellent segue to the …

Kelsey Report Program Director Charles Laughlin and BIA/Kelsey President Neal Polachek kicked off the Directional Media Strategies 2009 conference with a view of where the directory industry is currently and where it is going. Laughlin provided a variety of statistics from BIA/Kelsey’s Global Yellow Pages 2009-10 report showing how the global directory industry is evolving. …

Ambassador Media has filed a petition for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of New York’s Southern District. The publisher, which operates in the five boroughs of New York City and surrounding areas, published nine directory titles in 2008 with distribution, we estimate, of 3.5 million copies. Ambassador  relaunched its IYP platform via Canpages’ ImmersiFind platform in …

Today Telmetrics released data showing that combining a URL displayed within a print Yellow Pages ad increased the overall leads driven by print Yellow Pages by 78 percent. On average, the company reports, URL visits represented 44 percent of leads while calls generated 56 percent of leads. The data highlight the new extended offering Telmetrics …

Much of the discussion on this morning’s ILM:08 panel titled “Localizing the Ad Nets: Display Channels” revolved around discussion of what was to become of the display ad network environment in 2009. Panelists Shawn Riegsecker (CEO of Centro) and Russ Fradin (CEO of Adify) had differing views on this area. Fradin expects the display market to …

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 …

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 …

Web.com has been busy cutting deals recently. In the past two weeks, the provider of Web site creation and hosting services, search engine optimization and lead generation services to small businesses has announced it is working with MerchantCircle (see post here) and, as of yesterday, home improvement icon Bob Vila.
With regards to the Bob Vila deal, …

Among the interesting sessions here at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress here in Athens, I thought I’d share a few takeaways from a presentation regarding pricing strategy. The speaker was Mark Billige of Simon-Kucher & Partners. The issue of pricing also came up in some subsequent presentations, in particular a talk given by …

I’m here in Athens this week at the European Association of Directory Publishers’ annual congress. Nice line-up of speakers thus far, many of whom are echoing the themes that we heard emerge at The Kelsey Group’s DMS ’08 conference last week in Atlanta.
European Directories CEO Cornel Riklin was one of the keynote speakers to open the …

Zillow.com’s founder Rich Barton used the analogy of the explosion of verticals to the storming of the Bastille and the strong desire for consumers to take control of the decisions in their lives, especially those with big financial implications.
The visionary talked about his three pitches to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer in the 1990s when he was a …

In an executive interview today with the “Father of IYP,” Pat Marshall, Yellow Book’s chief new media officer talked about his re-entrance to the IYP space and what Yellow Book is looking for new business partners.
In all fairness, Marshall, who was previously head of Idearc’s (the former Verizon) Superpages.com, said he didn’t want to return …

Today we debuted a new polling feature on our Local Media Blog in an effort to provide another interactive way for our blog readers to comment on issues in the local media space. Our first poll asks about your take on SMB videos in 2008.  
The new poll feature ties with the launch of our Chief Executive …