A couple of stories caught my attention today. First, Reach Media Group (RMG), a digital out-of-home company that we’ve previously written about, signed a deal to push New York Times content to its network of 800 coffee shops, cafes and eateries in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and San Francisco.

According to the press release, RMG’s digital place-based network (formerly known as “Danoo”) has been entirely re-envisioned to emulate the familiar, trusted design of NYTimes.com. We think this move will add considerable credibility to the fledgling network. It can offer a more compelling content experience (assuming you find the NYTimes content compelling) and ultimately, a more legitimate advertising sales proposition.

For some time now, we’ve said that digital out-of-home or digital place-based advertising models will develop rapidly over the next five years. But this scenario relies on the consolidation of the market, more standardized advertising options, and more targeting and mobile content connectivity.

We think we’ll get there. The potential for consumers to view condensed content on a screen and then connect to www.NYT2day.com for the full story offers advertisers a proxy for performance, and the user a simple way to more fully engage in the content.

The second interesting story today comes from The Omaha World Herald, which reports that New York equity firm CCMP Capital Advisors has made an offer to purchase Omaha-based InfoGroup — formerly known as InfoUSA. A deal like this has been expected since late last year, when the company hired an advisor to essentially find a buyer.

According to The World Herald, the sale of InfoGroup has been supported by Vin Gupta, the company’s founder and former CEO. While Gupta is no longer an officer of the company, he still sits on the board of directors. In our view, InfoGroup’s sale makes good sense for the company and the shareholders. Taking it private will enable the company to continue its re-branding process from InfoUSA to InfoGroup.

For years we’ve been asked by companies around the globe if InfoUSA or any of its competitors offered similar business listing information. Shifting the name to InfoGroup would certainly enable the company to expand it offerings beyond its current borders.

Should this deal be finalized, it would presumably be the end of Gupta’s involvement, active or passive, in the company he founded almost 40 years ago with $100 and the vision to compile, aggregate and verify the names, addresses and telephone numbers of millions of businesses in America. Certainly, it has been a difficult job. But Gupta and his pioneering colleagues can proudly take credit for delivering hundreds of millions of qualified leads to SMBs.

Today, BIA/Kelsey released its 2009-2014 U.S. local advertising forecast. Over the past two months, lead analysts Charles Laughlin, Matt Booth, Mike Boland, Peter Krasilovsky, Rick Ducey and Mark Fratrik have grinded through the process of forecasting local ad revenues.

This applies across 12 local media sectors and includes multiple layers of traditional and interactive revenues. The process engages the analyst team in a comprehensive look at U.S. local media both near term and long term.

We expect a further decline in total local advertising this year to about $130 billion. We believe the revenue floor will be reached by the end of 2010, triggered by both cyclical (recession) and structural (the accelerated shift to online media) factors.

Top-line revenues will finally begin increasing again in 2011. And in two years, we expect a bit of an acceleration in the rate of growth, and total local media revenues will reach about $144 billion by the end of 2014.

Though not part of the five-year forecast, our analysts expect revenues to reach the previous high water mark of $155 billion by mid-to late 2015. By then, digital or interactive revenues should account for nearly 30 percent of the overall pie.

BIA/Kelsey clients can log in to the home page to access the full report, and today’s press release is available here.

Yesterday at DMS, Truvo CEO Donat Rétif took direct aim at tradition by describing a brave new directory world.

Rétif, whose themes were generally aligned with those of many of the speakers at DMS ’09, made a compelling case that there is no going back to the environment Yellow Pages enjoyed for so many years. He presented this through the lens of Truvo’s current situation, where print revenues are declining at an accelerating rate.

He’s confident that in two years, 50 percent of his top-line revenues will be generated by digital products. According to BIA/Kelsey data, digital revenues average 25 percent of top-line revenues in Europe and about 10 percent in the United States. European publishers like Truvo and Eniro have led this charge over the past few years.

Rétif made it quite clear that while he hopes many of the current Truvo employees can transform and transition in due time, there will likely be turnover among the ranks of his organization. Importantly, he made it clear that it’s absolutely necessary to transform the cost structure of his organization as it goes through this transformation.

Today at EADP, I had the privilege of participating on an analyst panel with Peter Buxton, Jesper Simonsen and Jim Easton. The panel, moderated by Kimberli Lewis and Michael Oschmann, was a lively discussion of global trends in the directory industry.

I argued that in order for the industry to succeed in the next decade (yes, we will close the first decade of the 21st century in about three months), its key participants will have to reorient their businesses. This will require a transition from being print and online directory publishers to being marketing service providers to small and medium-sized businesses.

I suggested that the industry think of itself as being in the Directional Marketing Services business. What better time to reposition an industry than at the turn of a decade?

This morning at EADP,  European Directories (EDSA) CEO Cornel Riklin outlined the company’s strategy to be the top provider of lead generation to SMBs in its markets. The path to get there includes offering leading local search platforms to consumers.

EDSA generated nearly 850 million euros in the last reported annual cycle and delivered 285 million euros in EBITDA. The Netherlands alone represents 37 percent of EDSA’s revenues and just over 45 percent of its EBITDA. Core to EDSA’s strategy is gaining a larger share of customer ad budgets. Today, that share stands around 15 percent, principally from print and IYP. Twenty-five percent of the SMB ad budget is meanwhile allocated to Web sites, e-mail, direct mail and search engine marketing.

In order to gain a larger share of that budget, EDSA’s team is rolling out new products by purchasing or partnering with early stage tech companies (ee yesterday’s post). EDSA also announced at the conference that it has selected IT2media to implement sales force automation across its operating units in the Netherlands, Finland, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland and Gibraltar.

Clemens Riedl, CMO of VZnet, Germany’s largest social network (yes, larger than Facebook across all age segments) spoke at EADP today about the ups and downs of holding that market position.

The site counts 15 million unique visitors, with 80 percent active at least once per month and 40 percent active daily. Its core audience includes 5.4 million high school students, 5.9 million college students and 3.7 million college alumni. Riedl said the site generates 80 percent of its revenues from targeted display advertising and 20 percent from community or local advertising.

Most interesting is that VZnet has now entered agreements with traditional newspapers, which provide highly localized content for small communities. The company tracks the traffic that the newspaper delivers and then the newspaper sales rep can augment its overall reach.

VZnet then shares revenues from incremental traffic newspaper partners are able to drive. This offers considerable leverage for VZnet by adding highly localized and relevant content — which the newspapers are best at building — and deepening their ties to local communities.

Following up on yesterday’s post, days two and three from Prague continued with the march of thought-provoking presentations. Among them was Centrum Holdings, a Warburg Pincus-backed company that’s one of the few pure-play digital entities in Czech Republic and Croatia. It generated 35 million euros in the most recent year against a monthly unique audience of some 6.5 million visitors.

CEO Pavel Mucha sees tremendous growth potential coming from the transition of traditional branding dollars to digital or online branding. While the publisher has a stronghold in its markets in search, Mucha argues that the huge pile of branding money is ripe for the picking. During his tenure at Centrum Holdings, Mucha has had the difficult task of transforming the sales organization. This came with a significant number of sales rep terminations for those unwilling or unable to adapt to the changing market.

Next up was Phillip Snalune of Yell Interactive. When asked whether tradition is an asset or liability, Snalune argued that tradition is something that can be leveraged in pieces, not as a whole. He drew a picture that positions Yell squarely in the role of a marketing services company for SMBs.

While that is the aspiration and strategic goal, he was clear that there are many challenges ahead. This will happen as the company transforms from a single product, transaction oriented company to a multi-production marketing services provider.

Day 1 of the European Association of Directory and Database Publishers Congress being held in Prague, Czech Republic, was squarely focused on the pending and necessary notion of transformation. The congress was kicked off by EADP President and Mediatel CEO Kimberli Lewis. Lewis, no stranger to the industry, put forth a compelling argument that directory companies around the globe are at various stages of transformation and that the momentum is gaining as success stories become more transparent throughout the industry.

To set the stage, Julian Moore, head of media sector advisory for RBS, argued that while equity markets are on the rebound, the debt markets have not yet rebounded. As such, debt-laden media companies remain, in the eyes of investors, at risk. Furthermore, Moore posed the notion that print Yellow Pages has shifted into a quadrant that includes newspapers and magazines, which are more at risk because of both cyclical and structural conditions. That said, as many day one speakers suggested, print Yellow Pages is increasingly just one component or product of a multiproduct, multiplatform strategy.

YPA President Neg Norton followed Moore’s presentation with an “inside baseball” view of the industry. In Norton’s remarks, he noted how many of the North American publishers are pushing rapidly to reorient their sales strategy and organization from transactional to consultative. Norton offered to a few anecdotal examples where traditional print sales representatives are now behaving as media consultants offering advertisers an increased level of understanding and therefore confidence. Norton touched on the strength of the Yellow Pages franchise and the opportunities that lies ahead for publishers in North America and around the world.

Going Mobile

Neg was followed by Gilles Clouet des Pesruches, Director of Strategy and Innovation at PagesJaunes. Pesruches outlined PagesJaunes strategy very directly — maintaining and growing its leading position in France for connecting buyers and sellers. It is focused on the “deportalization” of the strategy so that consumers or buyers can find PagesJaunes content wherever and whenever the consumer is looking — be it at PagesJaunes.com or via any of its partners’ sites. Pesruches indicated that PagesJaunes has now sold more than 18,000 videos.

He also stressed the need to figure out the next generation of mapping and how monetization will work. PagesJaunes, like companies around the world, wonders if it will be sufficient to offer immersive panoramic 3-D mapping in just the largest population centers, or will it be necessary to offer this through France? In the mobile space, PagesJaunes is not resting: 50 percent of all iPhones in France –- some 800,000 — have downloaded the Pagesjaunes applications. The company is also on deck on Samsung devices, representing the top selling smartphones in France, and is ready with an Android application. PagesJaunes remains one of the industry leaders in managing transformation.

Next up was Rick van Boekel, CEO, search engine marketing and affiliate marketing for European Directories. Van Boekel outlined a number of EDSA’s recent partnerships and deals to affirm the notion that companies around the globe are taking the transformation agenda seriously. EDSA’s recent partnering with the Netherlands company Werkspot.nl moves it into the arena that ServiceMagic in the U.S. has staked out. Werkspot.nl is essentially a reverse auction whereby consumers looking for a home trade service –- painter, plumber, roofer -– can define their job and then have qualified service providers bid on the job.

EDSA’s newest play is something called Leadcentre.nl, which will go live next week, according to van Boekel. Leadcentre.nl is a self-service platform whereby SMBs can bid for hot leads from consumers. The service will also offer merchants an easy-to-use tool for launching an e-mail campaign from the merchant to potential prospects. All the services will be paid for via the merchant’s credit card. We’ll be watching carefully as this service rolls out. There remains considerable uncertainty about the willingness of SMBs to adopt “self-service” models.

Rebirth

Day one ended with Jeffrey Hayzlett, CMO of Kodak, taking the congress through the rebirth of Kodak. It is a compelling story of transformation. The statistic that stood out the most was that 60 percent of the current employees of Kodak had been with the company for less than four years. Hayzlett said his primary objective on a day-to-day basis is to create tension within the organization and that without the constant questioning of why and how things should be done, the company would not have made the progress it has in recent years.

Hayzlett is a big believer in the power of the social Web. He cited an example whereby Kodak named a new HD video camera using Twitter. Finally, Hayzlett suggested that every company should now have a Chief Listening Officer — CLO — to monitor, track and respond to discussions on the social Web. BIA/Kelsey has been suggesting for some time now the notion of reputation management as a key service initiative for industry players to launch.

Today’s New York Times ran a story about how both The NYT and The Wall Street Journal plan to launch full-fledged regional editions, beginning first in the Bay Area. According to the story, Bay Area residents could see regional editions as early as November.

For many years, we have anticipated this move and felt it was inevitable. Why? As the article points out, the current Bay Area papers — The Chronicle, The Mercury News and the Oakland Tribune — are perceived as under-serving the market. In addition, the Bay Area’s demographic profile (high income and education) is quite appealing.

If you dig a touch deeper, a couple of The NYT’s existing assets could make its initiative perhaps a bit easier. While the New York Times Regional Group is run separately from the flagship paper, it could theoretically provide synergies via several papers that it controls in the North Bay — the region north of the Golden Gate Bridge. These include The Press Democrat, the largest newspaper in Santa Rosa; and The Petaluma Argus Courier. In addition the company owns The North Bay Business Journal, which was purchased in 2005.

Recently, The New York Times Co. also launched the NY Times Wine Club (which  competes with the newly launched WSJ Wine Club). Funny, the North Bay includes some 700 wineries — and some of the most renowned wineries in the world.

I suspect that underneath the obvious, the real opportunity for both The NYT and The WSJ are the large online audiences. According to Compete.com, there are nearly 6 million unique visitors between The Chronicle’s www.sfgate.com  and The Mercury News’ www.mercurynews.com. While it is certain that many of these unique visitors also go to the NYT and WSJ sites, this represents a significant opportunity for them to attract new readers and advertisers.

As a local, I am eager to see what transpires. Will either of these companies actually hire local reporters, correspondents and columnists? Will they focus on local politics, entertainment and sports? If they do, will they raid the ranks of the local papers to transfer audience loyalty?

One of the real frustrations with the “extended” coverage that both The NYT and The WSJ offer today is that most of what’s local is really just the tip of the iceberg. It’s a rare occasion today that either of the papers offer a truly local sports story or entertainment coverage.

Sure, the opening of the San Francisco Opera or the winning of the Cy Young by a Bay Area player might warrant a deeper dive. But what most of us want to know about the Bay Area goes well beyond the obvious. What we really want to know is who wore what to the opening of the opera and when, if ever, will Tim Lincecum get a haircut. If either of the new entrants begin to offer us that deep of coverage, they might, just might transform the Bay Area news scene forever.

Wow — $245 is nothing to sneeze at. This past Saturday morning I was greeted with one of those — ugh — moments: The car wouldn’t start. So I fished out my AAA card and a couple of hours later a truck showed up with the necessary cables and new batteries. Too bad it wasn’t my battery that was dead.

So the next day we had the car towed to the local foreign car dealer and service shop. Yesterday, while I choked down my lunch and checked voicemail messages, I learned that the car required a new starter for nearly a grand. Wow. That stinks. So I quickly went to RepairPal, a site we’ve profiled in the past (also see yesterday’s related post) and run by a guy who worked for me two decades ago.

Less than five minutes later, I was on the phone with the service manager talking about the starter replacement. I simply said, “hey, I’ve been on the Internet and it says that a starter replacement job for my make and model should run $600 to $800. What’s up with the estimate for a grand?”

He quickly turned sheepish and asked if he could call me back in five minutes. Sure enough, a few minutes later he called back and said, “gee, I can get you the part at wholesale and knock a few hours off the labor and do the whole job for $755.”

So with the tapping of a few key strokes, I was able to use the power of the Internet to create some transparency and knock 25 percent off the quoted price. I can think of a few better ways to use 245 bucks; what about you?