We have learned that Gannett is acquiring the parts of ShopLocal that it doesn’t already own from partners Tribune and McClatchy. ShopLocal’s stated mission is “to build community around shopping.”

ShopLocal’s efforts generally center around localized circulars, targeted emails, and “Smart Media,” which allows time sensitive localized promotions to be inserted into other media sites on demand. The Chicago-based company was valued at $85 million in 2006.

The acquisition of ShopLocal is likely to elevate the role that Gannett’s PointRoll plays with the Smart Media business. PointRoll initially partnered with ShopLocal for SmartMedia. More recently, however, ShopLocal has been working more with DoubleClick. Since Google has purchased DoubleClick, PointRoll has been openly coveting DoubleClick’s employees and accounts. Gannett Interactive head Chris Saridakis is the founder of PointRoll.

As speculated, Microsoft today announced the acquisition of natural language search technology developer Powerset. The acquisition is hoped to help Microsoft better serve search results, based on a natural language analysis of user queries, and better index of Web content.

These parallel goals come with the assertion that current search algorithms fall short in determining user intent by contextually matching individual words or phrases, rather than a deeper level of context around entire Web pages.

From the Live Search Blog:

These problems exist because search engines today primarily match words in a search to words on a webpage. We can solve these problems by working to understand the intent behind each search and the concepts and meaning embedded in a webpage. Doing so, we can innovate in the quality of the search results, in the flexibility with which searchers can phrase their queries, and in the search user experience. We will use knowledge extracted from webpages to improve the result descriptions and provide new tools to help customers search better.

This falls into the category of Microsoft’s recent efforts to differentiate Live Search from Google and Yahoo!, which lead the company in search market share. The general direction of this strategy was examined in a past interview with Microsoft Chief Advertising Strategist Mike Galgon, and recent moves to this effect include its CashBack and Search & Give programs launched over the past couple of months.

In related news, natural language search company Peer39 received $11.7 million from Canaan Venture Partners, Dawntreader Ventures and JP Morgan. The company is essentially an ad network that differentiates itself with ad placements that take into account natural language content in and around Web pages, such as user reviews.

This can come in handy in additional layers of context such as whether a page’s “tone” is positive or negative — a useful placement metric for some brand or product advertisers. The company claims it’s on track to hit a billion impressions by year-end, and that its advertisers are seeing 4X clickthrough rate improvements over previous placements methods.

Generally speaking, these products carry part of the concept behind the anticipated semantic Web — already being pegged by some as “Web 3.0″ (sigh).

Yahoo! is set to place contextually relevant display ads with its newspaper consortium, which now represents 40 percent of all newspaper circulation. The new AMP program for newspapers begins by the end of 3Q at the San Jose Mercury News and SFGate.

Yahoo! and the newspapers are banking big on AMP’s success. Indeed, it has been reported that Yahoo! has 800 people involved in some fashion with the consortium (something I’d like to learn more about).

Working with AMP’s behavioral capabilities, newspapers are hoping to double CPM rates, in some cases, and also see some new advertisers from Yahoo!. Analyst Ken Doctor notes in a blog post that many of the newspaper execs he talks to believes AMP is the most important part of the consortium deal.

But how big will it get? And at what point does Yahoo!’s ContentMatch search service, which is being beta tested at some newspapers, get commingled with AMP? It is hard to say. One thing that isn’t likely to happen is that Yahoo!’s search deal with Google boosts the revenue received by the consortium. Doctor, in his blog post, says the consortium deal already has a guaranteed level of revenues from ContentMatch.

The New York Times is set to recruit small-business advertisers via a deal with AdReady, the Seattle-based ad agency that provides a choice of 600 free templates for banners, customization tools and usage reports.

The Times will recruit its own advertisers via in-house promotions. Advertisers will have a choice of 14 sections of the site that are self-selected by advertisers (i.e., sports, international news, etc.). Alternatively, advertisers can simply choose Run of Site, or opt for self-service geographic targeting, since The Times is positioned as a national newspaper. The program is especially geared toward advertisers with “budgets under $10k.”

In a release, The Times makes a curious reference to serving “the long tail of online display advertising.” I am still pondering that one. It probably refers to the opportunity to serve advertisers that might have otherwise made a Google purchase, even though Google’s text-based advertising might be an imperfect match.

For AdReady, the white-label deal with The Times continues efforts begun with The Cobalt Group and Allrecipes.com. In other recently inked deals, AdReady acts as a media planner with a slew of ad nets, including Yahoo!’s Right Media, Advertising.com and Google.

Kate Kate from ClickZ has more here.

Yellow Pages Group in New Zealand announced two online partnerships geared toward extending visibility for its advertisers.

The first partnership is with realestate.co.nz, New Zealand’s largest online listing site, and the second is with shopnewwzealand.co.nz, the leading online store featuring New Zealand made products.

According to a Scoop Independent News article, the partnerships ”are the first in a number of deals which will increase the payback (return on investment) customers receive from advertising on yellow.co.nz. ‘The partnerships involve putting yellow.co.nz search functionality on the partners’ websites, each leaders in their own fields. This has the effect of increasing traffic to yellow.co.nz which will ultimately mean more sales leads for our advertisers,’ ” said Blair Glubb, YPG-NZ’s digital media director.

YPG-NZ has traditionally been quite innovative in its approach to developing the print product, and it appears to be taking a serious look at how best to leverage the online market as well. New Zealand’s Interactive Advertising board, according to Scoop, revealed online advertising increased 67.2 percent to a record NZ$45.9 million during the first quarter of 2008 as compared with the same period a year ago.

With the creation of a Digital Media Group and moving Glubb, its current marketing director, to lead this group signals a concerted effort to maximize the quickly growing online market in New Zealand.  

Sensis has announced the offering of online auctions on its Trading Post Web site. According to an article in The Sydney Morning Herald: “some two million people already use the www.tradingpost.com.au site to buy and sell goods and services. The company now aims to attract a share of the additional 3.4 million Australians using online auction facilities. ‘Sensis has taken decisive steps to return our classifieds business to growth,’ ” said Bruce Akhurst, Sensis’ chief executive officer.

One of the key issues prompting the launch was eBay’s decision to require use of its PayPal system rather than allowing other forms of payment. “Trading Post has been listening closely and is now providing auctions with a broad range of payment options for sellers to choose from. We’ve also made it easier to register, buy, sell, navigate, search and compare products online,” said Akhurst.

EBay has enjoyed exceptional growth and success in Australia owning 42.2 percent of the online shopping and classified marketplace compared with Trading Post’s 2.12 percent, as reported by Hitwise. Sensis has made a significant investment in the new online auction business, adding phone and e-mail based customer service, a mobile version for Telstra users, side-by-side comparison options and 524 categories. The site is powered Intershop and the FAST platform.

The mashing up of classifieds with directories and other directional media, such as eBay, is a logical path for Sensis as online auctions are another way to bring together buyers and sellers. To maximize its opportunity, Sensis will not charge for listings but will extract a fee when the product is sold giving it a piece of every transaction. Monetizing the transactional aspect of directional media has been a goal of most every directory publisher.

Sensis’ Trading Post property has had less than stellar results, so the move into online auctions with a purely Australian focus (sellers must reside in Australia) is a wise one. Increasing its classified market share while creating a new revenue stream will help push Sensis toward its 2011 target of A$3 billion.

Google and Office Depot announced a partnership where Office Depot will offer advice and teach small businesses how to use Google AdWords. Any small business that registers and makes an AdWords purchase on the Office Depot site will receive a $50 advertising bonus. Office Depot will also likely receive a portion of all sales made through its Web site. The partnership also promotes Google Apps and Maps as additional tools small businesses can use.

This is an interesting partnership for Google, which has been innovative in its approach to attracting small-business owners. Tapping into a retailer that has a close relationship with small-business owners is a new move for Google and if successful could become part of a wider strategy.  
  

Since the social networking phenomenon began, I have been an advocate of the Yellow Pages developing a platform for niche social networks. Directories cover such a broad array of content that can be related to highly conversational topics, such as travel, music, legal, weddings, new mothers, retirement, interior design and home improvement.

Social networking is certainly a topic The Kelsey Group has covered extensively over the years, and there are a host of experiments and partnerships under way. In fact, eMarketer is forecasting that social media marketing will top $1.5 billion in 2008, which explains why this segment is receiving a tremendous amount of focus and innovation. 

Providing a forum and platform on Yellow Pages-owned sites for niche social networks has the upside of creating ongoing site traffic by offering a multitude of topics to cover given the more than 5,000 headings and subtopics that could be created from them.

Social site owners could also take advantage of both the rich local Yellow Pages advertising content and its online advertising network agreements to monetize each niche social site in a broader network. Because they have such a large base of local advertisers and enhanced local content, Yellow Pages companies could reasonably deliver customized, highly relevant ad content within each niche social network site. 

Catharine Taylor, in her MediaPost article “What’s the Business Model for Niche Social Nets?”, points out that individually niche social nets don’t generate high revenue amounts, but in aggregation there is tremendous potential.

Social network site Ning clearly understands this business model and has even gone a step further by allowing niche sites to opt-out of carrying ads on their site for a fee, meaning they earn revenue whether or not ads run.

Jack Fairhall from Kwiqq, a social Web site builder, added this comment to Catharine’s post: “Niche social networks often won’t make revenue directly for their owners, but assuming their owners are businesses who have other revenue streams from the sale of their products/services, niche social networks can act as great traffic builders/reputation enhancers and lower customer acquisition costs.” 

This is yet another new business venture where forward-thinking Yellow Pages publishers could lead rather than follow or act as sub-agents for the larger portals and major social network providers. The huge number of people who interact with Yellow Pages and the broad base of local advertiser content available to niche social site creators are major advantages.

The real benefit to Yellow Pages owners would come in the form of increased traffic, narrow targeting opportunities for advertisers, additional revenue opportunities and leadership in the fast emerging social marketing space. Ning is certainly proving if you offer the platform for free and provide the necessary help to niche social network creators, they will find new ways to build traffic, create loyalty and ultimately generate revenues. 

Social media and particularly niche social networks are ideally suited for the local environment where Yellow Pages could play a major role. I’d love to hear what the rest of the local media community thinks of how they can own and leverage local social media and what business models might be the most effective.   

Ad network AdBrite has announced it will power a new ad management dashboard for concert promoter Live Nation. The eFan Finder application is an extension of the existing relationship between the companies that placed geotargeted event ads throughout AdBrite’s network of 50,000 sites. This now brings campaign management and reporting down to the band manager level.

“We’ve been working with Live Nation for a year and they want their local constituents to know how well all this stuff is working,” says AdBrite VP of Marketing Paul Levine (who previously ran Local for Yahoo!). “This works at the age-old challenge in local advertising of tangibility. We’ve built a system to have local marketers see where their ads are.”

This essentially plays off one of AdBrite’s differentiators as an ad network in that it offers site level transparency. In other words, beyond traditional analytics, its dashboard indicates to marketers the specific sites where their ads can be found. Too often in online ad campaigns (SEM and display), ads are fanned out to dynamic ad units ruled by whatever targeting metric is in play, but it’s difficult for advertisers to actually go and see their ad.

This is arguably more relevant for SMBs than national advertisers. The latter have dedicated marketing people who are happy enough with bottom-line analytics. But smaller local businesses sometimes need the intangible ROI that is the warm and fuzzy feeling you get from seeing your ad. This is another reason why online video is showing an early relevance to SMBs compared with SEM and other online ad media they’ve been pushed.

A full comprehension of local importance seems to be rare for ad networks. Placecast is doing some interesting things, and AdBrite has the benefit of Levine’s local perspective. Today’s deal is evidence of this, and it has good implications for similar deals in other verticals where there are national or regional entities with localized constituents (auto dealer groups, real estate agencies, hotel chains, franchise-based corporations, etc.).

“We have exclusivity with Live Nation in events but we’re interested in forming relationships in other verticals where this same kind of dynamic exists,” says Levine. “You can see the same thing in retail, insurance, auto, fast food or any of these categories where it’s a national organization with local interests. We’re having lots of discussions now.”

There are a number of new or re-energized hyperlocal efforts out there, trying to crack the code. New efforts are expected shortly from Outside.in and SmallTown. Ongoing efforts are being made with AmericanTowns, which counts Idearc as a lead investor, and Dallas’ Pegasus News, which is owned by Fisher Communications. CitySquares in Boston continues to build its model. Topix has also remade itself into an aggregation of local news and hyperlocal commenting.

And that’s just a rundown of the hyperlocal efforts that have regional and national aspirations. Some of the best hyperlocal efforts, of course (BaristaNet, WestportNow) are actually tied to specific communities. We also count some well-funded newspaper efforts in that category (LA Times, Boston.com, Washington Post, et al).

This week, The Online Journalism Review covers OurTown, a new hyperlocal chain based in Cincinnati. The site proclaims that it represents “America’s Local Websites. Neighborhood by Neighborhood. Local and Regional Content, Chat, Weather, Maps, Personal & Family Calendar and Community.”

OurTown’s primary business concept is that local editors will sell the local advertising, keeping most of the revenue; $100 monthly contracts for advertising are envisioned. The site will also have paid classifieds (but free classifieds for individuals).

In addition to local ad dollars, the editors will also get 40 percent of national ad dollars. It is suggested that local editors covering two ZIP codes can make between $45,000 and $60,000 per year.

Eventually, OurTown expects to charge a license fee to the local editors, but as a come-on, it is offering a one-year license for free to the first 1,000 takers. Seventy thousand sites are expected in Year One. The site is being advertised on Google, Yahoo!, Craigslist and other Web sites. While an illustrious advisory board of “top journalists” is claimed, there is no link to such a board on the site, or names of management, for that matter.