Today, Yell announced its acquisition of Moonfruit, a United Kingdom DIY website and online shop builder, for approximately GBP 18 million, funded out of Yell’s cash reserves. Retention bonuses of up to GBP 5.2 million will be paid to key members of Moonfruit management after two years, provided that they remain exclusively employed by Yell. …

Business listings provider Localeze announced today that it will provide online business listings to Savvi, a savings network. Localeze business listings are standardized across its list of approximately 150 local search platform partners, including search engines, online directories, social networks, mobile apps and personal navigation devices. Savvi offers member-sourced and shared local deals in addition …

XAd, a mobile local ad network, released its Q1 2012 report today that shows growth in the local-mobile search category, particularly transportation-related search within the travel sector. We’re not surprised by the results, given our forecast of total U.S. mobile ad spend growth from $1.7 billion last year to $7.7 billion by 2016. This puts …

Verizon’s new Visual 411 app is designed to provide a more integrative user experience across mobile, FiOS TV and desktop devices. A common platform supports all three media. In addition, the free app lets users search local businesses and provides them with free restaurant coupons that can be shared with friends by email or Facebook. …

Google made up 66.5 percent of the U.S. market share in explicit core search in April, a 0.1 percentage point rise from the previous month, according to comScore’s qSearch analysis. Microsoft came in second at 15.4 percent and Yahoo rounded out the top 3 at 13.5 percent, slipping 0.2 percentage points.

ComScore excludes contextual searches from …

In our Investing in Radio Market Report, we reported that local radio stations saw a 15 percent increase to $439 million for total online revenues. Local radio stations are making significant strides to bolster their online activities, and it is generating noticeable revenues.

A good case in point is profiled in a recent NetNewsCheck article: “NC …

EXAI is a white-label solution for SMBs based in Israel with global resellers, that offers hosting, domain purchasing and website development. I caught up with CEO Gal Moran, who expressed one of the major challenges in selling website services to SMBs. According to Moran, only 35 percent of SMBs in EXAI’s market have a website. …

NBC Universal announced the launch of the Universal Games Network (UGN), a new platform that integrates NBCU’s gaming efforts across its television networks and online properties this week. UGN is a white-label solution that will aggregate NBCU’s most popular online, mobile and social gaming efforts around one platform that is customizable by business unit. UGN …

You can learn a lot about failure from a guy who lost 11 jobs in 12 months. Richard Keith Latman, an entrepreneur who also started 11 companies over a 20-year period, documents his stumbles in The Good Fail. I interviewed Latman about his work with local auto retailers, CRM software and what exactly a good …

Ambassador Media Group filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy Friday, citing debts of more than $10 million and assets of only $4 million. A Chapter 7 filing usually signifies a company’s intent to liquidate. With $4 million in assets and $10 million in liabilities, the company cites a deterioration of business as cause for the filing. …

Nearly 70 percent of consumers who watched this year’s NCAA tournament did so on both a television and mobile device, according to a new study from Millennial Media and the Interactive Advertising Bureau conducted by Harris Interactive. More than 2,000 U.S. adults were surveyed about how they engaged with mobile devices during the tournament. Among …

While pay-per-call usage is growing across all local search media channels, Telmetrics reports today that mobile advertisers and SMB programs are the real drivers of a more than three-fold growth in adoption. The call measurement solutions provider is tracking 348 percent more pay-per-call ads in Q1 2012 than in Q1 2011.
Mobile experienced the highest gains as …

Manta announced today that it received a $44 million minority equity investment from Silicon Valley venture capital firm Norwest Venture Partners. The exact proportion of the holding sold to the firm is undisclosed, but its minority stake puts the valuation of Manta at a minimum of $90 million. Jon Kossow and David Su of Norwest …

Localeze, a provider of business listings, announced a partnership today with Locationary, a local data management company, to simplify the exchange of local business listings. Localeze will use Locationary’s “Saturn” cloud-based data management and exchange platform to streamline the sharing of its customer data in real time. Localeze President Jeff Beard says it can now …

Tom Bates, Founder, Kudzu
Wiley Cerilli, CEO, SinglePlatform
Dave Galvan, President, Schedulicity
Randy Parker, President, SMBApps
John Vitti, Cofounder and CMO, Mobile Spinach
Which SMB solutions will stand out and make a difference in 2012? Our SMB SuperForum discussed some of these during our ILM East wrap-up moderated by Interactive Local Media Program Director Matt Booth and The Kelsey Report …

Juan Delgado, Managing Director, Americas, Perform
John McIntyre, CEO, Backyard
Randa Minkarah, Senior VP of Revenue and Business Development, Fisher Communications
David Simon, VP, Advertising Solutions, Local Corp.
Video is everywhere you look, from your smartphone to the back of a cab, and at your gas station. National advertisers understand the power of video as a compelling tool for …

Geoff Cramer, CEO of SocialMadeSimple
Adam Japko, President of Digital Sherpa
Mark Schmulen, General Manager of Social Media for Constant Contact
Neil Kataria, President of newBrandAnalytics
Catherine Tucker, Associate Professor of Marketing for MIT Sloan School of Management
Social Local Media Program Director Jed Williams kicked off the SuperForum with BIA/Kelsey data that show 40 percent of SMBs have a …

Eight billion dollars. That’s the total estimate of political advertising spend this year given by Andy Slater, vice president of digital agency sales at Katz 360, during our morning session of day 2 at ILM East. Of $8 billion, Slater predicts that online ad spend will be between 3 percent and 5 percent. Slater has …

“AOL has a huge bet on local and Patch in particular,” said Mark Josephson, senior vice president of revenue at AOL Local during our afternoon session at ILM East. Patch hyperlocal sites reach 865 communities that Josephson describes as “under served” by traditional media.  Patch’s business model operates at local, regional and national levels. At …

Millennial Media released its Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting (S.M.A.R.T.) report today. Advertisers leveraging mobile to deliver locally relevant messages to target audiences were among the top trends. Mobile video ads became mainstream last year as advertisers shifted dollars to mobile from traditional media channels. As a result, developers benefited from higher eCPM …