Dex Media, the newly minted company that was once SuperMedia and Dex One, is counting on a strategy of serving as the “outsourced marketing partner for small-businesses” as they wade into the complex and confusing world of digital media.
That was a key message from this mornings investor call to reveal the Q1 results of predecessor …

Companies that are successfully transforming their sales teams to serve a fast changing local and SMB marketplace tend to follow a common set of best practices. These include a focus on customer-driven key performance indicators, a heavy reliance on data to drive all aspects of sales, and sophisticated segmentation to maximize sales effectiveness and manage …

SuperMedia and Dex One completed their merger today, creating Dex Media, a company with annual revenues of approximately $2.6 billion (based on combined 2012 revenues), with about $500 million in digital revenue. The combined company also has 2,700 sales reps and roughly 665,000 advertisers.
The combined company is the second largest directory publisher in the United …

BIA/Kelsey recently rolled out the first in a series of reports offering very specific cuts of data from our Local Commerce Monitor research. LCM is BIA/Kelsey’s long-running study of how U.S. small business advertisers are evolving their use of media to acquire and retain customers.
The first of these “Spotlight” reports focuses on small business advertisers …

Solocal Group CEO Jean-Pierre Remy offered directory publishers a vision for print to digital transformation built on a strong focus on building content, vertical segmentation and a relentless focus on execution. Remy was the keynote speaker at the Local Search Association annual meeting in Las Vegas.
Remy has been at the helm at Solocal (formerly PagesJaunes) …

This morning at the Local Search Association conference in Las Vegas, incoming chair Bill Dinan and association president Neg Norton outlined how a changing marketplace in Yellow Pages and local search are driving the need for changes in the association.
The LSA, formerly the Yellow Pages Association, represents directory companies that are in midst of radical …

Over the past few months, BIA/Kelsey has been looking at various SMB-focused sales approaches among both traditional media players and digital pure plays. Our objective was to establish a common set of best practices. We discovered early on that the local sales organization that does everything right does not exist, or at least we were …

I am personally looking forward to Solocal CEO Jean-Pierre Remy’s presentation later this month at the Local Search Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas. Solocal, which recently changed its name from PagesJaunes, is the leading search and directory company in France. The company has developed a reputation for strong execution in building or integrating (often …

Yellow Media’s longtime CEO Marc Tellier is stepping down and the company is seeking a replacement who can lead it through a full transformation to digital. Tellier has been at Yellow Media’s helm since October 2001. He has agreed to stay on during the search for his replacement to effect a smooth transition.
Yellow Media like most …

This afternoon at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local BIA/Kelsey launched its version of the Shark Tank start up competition, the LOCAL Liftoff Awards, where three finalist companies gave a short pitch, followed by a brief grilling by celebrity judges Randy Parker, the co-founder of Constant Contact, and David Kidder, author of the “Start-Up Playbook.”
Conference participants can vote …

This afternoon at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local, David Kidder, serial entrepreneur, angel investor and author of the “Start-up Playbook” offered some tips that separate the truly great entrepreneurs from the also-rans. Some of his advice includes:
* Don’t do things you aren’t good at.
*Focus. Do a few things well, not everything poorly.
* Build pain killers, not vitamins. …

Today at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference, John Busby, VP, Marchex Institute, shared some compelling data about mobile calls and conversion rates. Busby kicked off the “Mobile Superforum” that capped off a busy morning here in Boston.
Busby shared that, somewhat surprisingly, male mobile callers stay on phone for 7:23, while female mobile callers hang on the …

This afternoon at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local, Neal Polachek, board advisor for vSplash, offered an analysis suggesting local independent pizza owners must get more sophisticated online or the rest of us will be stuck with a choice between Dominos and Poppa John’s.
Polachek was speaking on the session, “Focus on Local Strategies: Brands and National Retail.”
There …

Today’s BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference began with a pre-conference workshop on “Valuation and Funding in Local Digital Media.”
The workshop began with a rundown of BIA/Kelsey’s new M&A database, which includes an analysis of 598 deals, including 438 deals with values, totaling $16.75 billion in deal value, covering the years 2011-12. The database allows BIA/Kelsey to …

Dex One and SuperMedia have each entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a pre-packaged deal as the two companies moved toward merging by mid 2013. The prepackaged route was necessary because the companies were not able to convince all of the senior debt holders to go along with the credit amendments necessary for the …

The London Evening Standard is reporting that an attempt to engineer a buyout of Hibu’s U.S. operation (Yellowbook) is behind the recent dismissal of two senior Hibu U.S. executives.
In an internal memo last week, Hibu CEO Mike Pocock announced the termination of Yellowbook President Jim McCusker and Chief Publishing Officer Mark Cairns, citing conduct “that …

The French search and directory company PagesJaunes Groupe has launched a new corporate brand along with its 2012 earnings announcement. The company is now called Solocal Group, an obvious play on SoLoMo (social, local, mobile).
The new corporate brand coincides with an initiative called Digital 2015, designed to accelerate the company’s transformation from a traditional to …

Two global directory companies at different stages of transformation reported their 2012 earnings this week. Eniro and Yellow Media both reported deep print declines, as well as progress in repairing balance sheets burdened by debt. Mobile development was a high point for both companies with strong customer and usage growth. Both companies similarly experienced their …

Seat Pagine Gialle, Italy’s leading directory publisher, has announced it is insolvent and unable to meet its debt obligations. Specifically, the company was not able to meet its 2013 debt obligations totaling 200 million euros.
Seat will now seek protections from Italian courts while it tries to restructure its debt. The company went through a debt …

In keeping with tradition, BIA/Kelsey released its annual “Picks and Predictions” report this week, offering a collective view on the events that will drive the 2013 agenda in our local media coverage areas — directional, interactive, mobile, social, vertical and video.
This year’s predictions are an eclectic collection, covering everything from mobile ad revenues to cloud based …