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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

Yesterday, I spent about three hours with Idearc Media CEO Scott Klein, who shared the vision he and his management team have for the company. Some of that vision is encapsulated in the rollout of SuperGuarantee, a major new initiative. Other clues are found in several enhancements to the core Superpages site. My biggest take-away: …

Ran across this interesting piece via Topix that was produced by the local ABC7 affiliate here in the Bay Area. The story uncovers a nervousness among local SMBs that the Internet is increasingly having an impact on their business outlook.
I have watched this firsthand since I live in San Anselmo, and it is clear that …

Dan Pulcrano closed out Day 2 of Drilling Down on Local ’08 with a presentation to expose attendees to the wild west of the geo-domain space. Pulcrano, owner of numerous city sites such as Seattle.com and SanJose.com, argued that the geo-domain sites are poised to become a much more powerful factor in the local search …

During yesterday’s afternoon session focused on Auto at Drilling Down on Local ’08, the panelists nearly universally said U.S. automaker giant General Motors was the furthest along in figuring out how to leverage the Web.
Mitch Golub, president of Cars.com, said that has not always been the case — Toyota used to be the leader OEM …

Since our founding, The Kelsey Group has been committed to delivering our unvarnished view of the dynamics of the ever changing and evolving local advertising market. We have been criticized by some in traditional media who suggested we have overstated the rise of the Internet. And we’ve taken shots from those pushing new media suggesting …

The recent hubbub over our “prediction” regarding print media usage — see my earlier blog — has created an exaggerated picture of the perils facing print Yellow Pages. While it is true print YP has some serious challenges, we often forget how well it still works for so many local businesses. Three recent personal experiences …

American Public Media’s Marketplace ran an interesting piece yesterday about the launch of NBC Everywhere, NBC’s foray into the expansive and growing out-of-home media market.
According to the piece, there are some 500,000 out-of-home display monitors delivering content and advertising into the aisles of large retailers, the seats of movie theaters and the gas pumps at gas …

The Kelsey Group has generated considerable attention (and some confusion) in the media and on the blogosphere from a statement that appeared in an Advisory issued by our Marketplaces program on Jan. 4 offering picks and predictions for 2008 (each TKG research practice issued a similar document).
The statement in question reads as follows (referring …

Witnessing the rain that has drenched the Bay Area over the past couple of weeks begs the rhetorical question — what could be more local than weather? Now with reports surfacing that weather.com is up for sale, one wonders if any of the major Yellow Pages publishers have their eyes on what is no doubt …

Earlier this month the Kelsey program directors — Charles Laughlin, Matt Booth and Peter Krasilovsky — offered up their predictions for 2008. These predictions present Kelsey clients a partial road map for navigating what could be a stressful and challenging 2008. Most economists are now debating only the depth of a U.S.-led recession rather than the …

An interesting op-ed piece in The New York Times on Sunday looked at the importance of “word of mouth” in defining individuals’ candidate preferences. The essence of the article was that voters are swayed much more by what an acquaintance or friend says about a political candidate than a television ad.
The op-ed piece reported that …

The concept of localized e-commerce was discussed at one of the breakout sessions this afternoon at ILM:07. The essence of the question is how soon will SMBs be part of the growing trend that helps consumers find out where brand name products can be bought locally? Increasingly, local retailers will have to be able to …

According to new research released by British Car Auctions, used car buyers are apparently quite content. According to the research, nearly 96 percent were “very and/or quite” satisfied with their used car purchase.
The survey of 2,900 drivers indicated that “word of mouth” is the most popular way of finding a buyer:

36 percent relied on word of …

I ran across the new (to me) site EcoMetro, which is attempting to build an advertising business around green. This from its Web site:
At the core of EcoMetro is the idea that many people want to buy green products and services, and we want to make it easier for them to do so by:

unbiased information …