Centro, the local and regional media service company, has branched off into Web-based support for ad management. The company today announced the launch of Transis, a new division dedicated to automating the “other 80 percent” of the display industry not served by cut rate ad exchanges and demand side platforms. Specifically, Transis has been developed to make it easier for agencies and media buyers to buy premium display advertising by helping everything in one place. This includes all their research, site selection, negotiation, planning and buying, campaign management and billing reconciliation.

In development since 2005, and built at a cost of $11 million, Transis represents a significant “phase two” for Centro, which now has 11 offices and 115 employees. “First, we were helping advertisers place locally,” notes CEO Shawn Riegsecker. “The second part is build media software that would help scale the business for agencies across the U.S.”

But Riegsecker thinks the risk will pay off big time. He notes that many agencies are currently charging a premium for online ads because, ironically, of all the extra labor involved. “The fact is digital is more complex and the digital budget is much smaller. It doesn’t scale very well when contracts are held in different Outlook folders. It takes a long time to process 15 Web sites. Imagine buying 100 Web sites. It just doesn’t happen,” he says. The addition of mobile,video, social and search complicates things even more.

Riegsecker claims that Transis, which provides full-service information for 50 categories, makes buying “26 [percent] to 46 percent more efficient.” He also says it will eliminate the “double and triple entries” that plague ad buyers today. Transis, very simply, opens the way for agencies “to place more creative buys than any opportunity in the past,” he says. “It moves us into a software supported services model.”

Centro, of course, isn’t the only company moving ads into an automated environment. Google last week unveiled DoubleClick for Publishers, which provides many of the same automated features for publishers on the selling side. It will likely complement Transis’ buy-side solution.

Google VP of ad products Susan Wojcicki told IAB’s Leadership Meeting yesterday that “the display industry is one of the most innovative parts of the Web right now,” and “will be one of the largest ad markets, if not the largest. It has to be,” she added. “Everything is moving online.”

Video, social and mobile will each play a major role for the growth of display ads in Wojcicki’s vision. “Every campaign will have desktop, mobile, video and social elements,” says Wojcicki, a core member of the Google leadership team since the company’s inception, and a leader behind the integration with DoubleClick, which was acquired two years ago for $3.1 billion. She also noted that all display should be integrated with other ad types across the board to boost yield management.

“Video….will be one of the largest industries for us,” adds Wojcicki. “It could be one of largest segments for display. And social too. Over time, everything is social. We haven’t even figured out how social will play in different ad segments across [the] Web.”

Indeed, Wojcicki notes that “ad models aren’t clear in the new online world.” But she expects volume for display to grow astronomically, in part, as Google moves buying to its auction process. Using auctions have boosted display sales by 130 percent, she claims. Ad syndication will also be vital for publishers, as we have seen with projects such as Citysearch’s CityGrid. “Rather than having everyone come to your site, it will be your content and your ads everywhere.”

Google is also working to create a seamless purchase process. “The buying process for display and online inventory is really difficult,” she notes. “Inventory should be frictionless when you are buying it. Everything should be online. All creative should be checked automatically. With these principals in place, “there should be hundreds of thousands of display advertisers,” she says.

Along those lines, DoubleClick has rewritten its buying program for publishers using Google technology. “It is one of the largest integrations between Google and DoubleClick,” adds Wojcicki. “It is faster and fixes a lot of issues.” The program has also been well tested, with more than 500 hours of User Interface time to “get it right,” she says.

The default strategy for many start-ups is to plan to be acquired by Google or Microsoft. But the M&A scene is much more complex than that. Jordan, Edmiston Group Co-President Tolman Geffs, speaking today at IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Carlsbad, California, joked that Google is set to buy Oregon, Washington and Canada “just to mess with Microsoft.”

Speaking more seriously, he noted that “we don’t need Google and Microsoft to buy everything.” Incumbent specialist firms would find higher value in a number of areas. These include marketing analytics, consumer data, cable and entertainment, Web delivery, infrastructure, major agencies, large display ad networks and performance advertising (such as Demand Media).

Geffs noted there is currently a vibrant deal environment, with 178 deals made in the second half of 2009 worth $13.3 billion. This was a major change from a “dead” first half when just 129 deals were completed, he said.

Still, there has only been a “partial recovery from previous levels for online plays. Classifieds is the only sector of advertising that was down,” he said. Especially hot areas include online media, interactive marketing, video and infrastructure plays.

A real “head scratcher” for Geffs is the $1 billion+ committed by Google ($750 million) and Apple ($275 million) for two mobile ad networks: AdMob and Quattro Wireless. “That’s the entire forecast for 2012 mobile ad revenue” he said, noting that the high prices have led to a stunning $211 million worth of investment in nine other mobile ad nets by VCs.

In fact, Geffs questions whether mobile is even a good ad medium. “They help consumers complete tasks,” he noted. But “is this a great promotional medium?”

Geffs, former president of IBS, a TV station Web site builder and advertising provider, is also critical of “vertically integrated” models that rely on content aggregation and search, such as Citysearch and ReachLocal. Costs are too high.

ReachLocal, for instance, is a vertically integrated play that only leaves 7 percent of its revenues to support its product and platform, after spending 55 percent on consumer traffic and 38 percent on sales and marketing.

He’s more excited about local companies that solve a problem and keep content, audience and sales costs low, such as Outside.in, Datasphere, Triton Media, MerchantCircle, Manta, Yelp and Angie’s List. “We are big fans,” he said.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, celebrating its 15^th anniversary, is holding its annual leadership meeting at La Costa in Carlsbad, California. The sold-out meeting, dubbed “Ecosystem 2.0,” has attracted 650 attendees, up 30 percent from last year: a further omen of recovery in the economy. Over the years, we have actively helped IAB develop its leadership tracks in local, so it is good to see the organization on very sound footing.

24/7 Real Media Chairman David Moore, in an opening keynote, noted that 12 percent of ad dollars are now online, but online share remains disproportionately low, considering that 25 percent of viewing time is spent online. The audience’s increasing fragmentation forces publishers to look for new revenue paths, he added.

The clearest path to recovery is to focus on building more premium content, even though it inevitably means that subscriber charges need to be added. “Totally free content is dead,” said Moore. But that isn’t the end of the world. In 1982, cable TV was beginning to add unique networks, subscriptions were $6 per month. Now they may be $100 a month.

If an “EZY pay” system were instituted for content at 10 cents per access, that would be like charging a CPM of $100,” Moore suggested. That would be far more lucrative than what most publishers are getting.

Moore also predicted that digital would be the No. 1 ad medium within the next five years, with online video advertising leading the way. But first, the industry has got to adopt real standards and simplify the workflow for agencies and concentrate on finding new ways to make commercials more interesting to the consumer.

“You can’t be afraid to be disruptive,” added Moore. “You need to be more aggressive. You have to interrupt the consumer experience with ads. But do it in a way that is interesting and targeted.”

IAB President Randall Rothenberg, in his opening comments, said the key to advertiser success was to focus on the year-after-year development of brand building, which is a synonymous effort with charging premium prices, i.e., BMW and Johnson & Johnson. “It is about being a part of, not apart from,” said Rothenberg.

The money is moving quickly into the third-party SMB reseller space. ReachLocal has applied for a $100 million IPO, which could go out this spring. In hopes of similar paydays, its rivals are raising hordes of cash. Yodle, for instance, has announced that it has added $10 million, boosting its total amount raised $38 million. And now WebVisible has announced a $20 million round, making its total amount raised $37 million.

According to paidContent, the new round was led by Adams Street Partners, a Chicago-based PE firm. WebVisible’s last round, for $12 million, was led by Sutter Hill Ventures, with previous backer Redpoint Ventures.

WebVisible CEO Kirsten Mangers tells us that she would certainly claim certain competitive advantages over ReachLocal. But Reach’s “explosive growth shows that the market is solid; it is really good green field. Local interactive is the emerging field in interactive,” she adds. “Wall Street will show its support of the business mode.”

While WebVisible doesn’t disclose earnings, Mangers notes that it had 113 percent year-over-year growth in 2009, and a client roster of 40,000 to 45,000 active SMBs. More than 100,000 accounts have worked with WebVisible at one time or another. Top partners include AT&T, Intuit and BT.

WebVisible has also greatly boosted its presence in its size and international presence, with operations in Europe and Australia. Several international deals are pending, adds Mangers. It is also investing heavily in its “Geneva” (i.e., neutral) technology platform.

With the rise of mobile, WebVisible has been especially focused on building “multi-media, multi-device and multi-persona” capabilities that can effectively reach users in different places and dayparts,” says Mangers. “Local is where the consumer says it is.” While mobile is still a minor piece of the puzzle, Mangers predicts “it will be a rather high percentage in the course of the next 24 months.”

But, she emphasizes,  it is important not to get too far ahead of the cart. “So many SMBs still haven’t tipped their toes into the search waters yet.”

What if consumers could personalize the ads and content they see when they open utility sites such as Google, or portal sites such as Yahoo? That’s the idea behind Optini, a new 12-person company based in Utah that has developed the concept of Optini Vu System “browser connectors.” These enable users to put Fandango listings in their Google page, or ESPN scores into CNN, etc.

The concept is not entirely new. Add-ons and extensions have been increasingly commonplace for tool bars and now Google’s SideWiki. But Optini President John Wright says that connectors enhance the concept, since they are available on an opt-in basis from the consumer end. They can also be integrated beyond Web browsers for use with iPhones, etc.

On a local basis, Wright envisions their use with Internet Yellow Pages and others. They can reach “an entire generation that never uses e-mail,” but relies instead on messaging and other insert media.

While popular sites such as Google or CNN may not like sharing their own pages (and advertising impressions), Wright says such sites really don’t have many legal options to fight it — in fact, Google’s Side Wiki has set its own precedent. It is really the consumer’s page, he says, noting that opt-in happens “after the dom,” rather than “before the dom,”  and no cookies or beacons are involved, so it is not any of the site’s business.

Of course, one tends to pause about a technology that allows a consumer to enjoy one publisher’s expensively produced content and/or search results, while displacing any chance that the publisher can get revenues from advertising. But then again, who is to say that a company like Optini couldn’t actually work with publishers to enhance their own sites?

Zvents, the events lister, is reporting 35 percent year over year growth with over eight million unique visitors, largely due to its powering events for 285 local media brands, including  major newspapers and the NBC owned-and-operated TV stations.

CEO Ethan Stock cites Quantcast data showing Zvents Media Network as the 250^th most used net on the Web, ahead of Citysearch (#267) and Local.com (#291). “We’re a very large local property by any measure,” he says.

The company, which has raised $32 million over its five year history, also claims it has been averaging 12,000 monthly event listers. These use the site to promote a wide range of local events and activities, including live music, performing arts, sporting events and community activities.

Of those listers, roughly 1200, or 10 percent, are now boosting their presence by taking out ads via self–serve – a percentage that Stock thinks will climb to 20 percent in 2010. The company also sells regional and national accounts via telemarketing and national sales, with top categories including major concert promoters, sports teams, casinos and  home and garden events.

High end shopping, with its sales-oriented events, such as Williams Sonoma cooking demonstrations, are also becoming more important to Zvents bottom line.  “There is a significant segment of consumers who perceive shopping as entertainment,” says Stock.

The key to the company’s future in local, however, is to stay away from the trap of focusing on directory-type advertising. Instead, Zvents will stay focused on events and shopping, he says, which have the most highly motivated advertisers. “They are also relatively concentrated in terms of the volume of advertising.”

Indeed, the company’s focus on events and advertising puts it most in competition with social sites such as Facebook and Google, rather than local sites such as Citysearch and Yelp, who may be more directory oriented, says Stock. Other events oriented companies include Eventful, and “new city guide” players such as Center’d and American Towns.

In hindsight, the company’s initial focus on teaming with newspapers “look like a very smart choice,” adds Stock. While newspapers are commonly disparaged in today’s climate for their declining circulation and advertising, “they have high repeat traffic. Much more than national partners.” Top Zvents newspaper partners include SFGate, the Denver Post, Seattle PI, Boston.com, the Dallas Morning News, the Atlanta Journal Constitution, New York Daily News, and the Orange County Register.

Stock also sees a major boost coming from renewed efforts in local from national partners such as AT&T’s Yellowpages.com, which has been an investor in the company ; and from MSN, where Zvents listings will be showing up in Bing, and trigger Instant Answers via Silverlight search.

The Berry Co. announced today new alliances with Yodle and Web.com that will add to the portfolio of online product and services Berry will offer its small-business customers. The deals are part of a new branded offering called Berry Leads that the company will roll out market by market in 2010.

The deals fit into Berry’s broader strategy of becoming less print centric and more about selling a wide array of local media solutions, supported by performance measurement. To achieve this, Berry is collecting a growing list of partners to deliver components of this strategy, Yodle and Web.com being the latest two. Berry already resells Yellowpages.com and Google, and it has formed a deep partnership with 3L Systems and Salesforce.com to create the systems to enable the company to sell and provision media across multiple products and platforms.

“Our goal is to ensure that our small and medium-sized business clients are generating local leads from the multiple sources and platforms that today’s consumers use,” said Scott Pomeroy, president and CEO of Berry, in the announcement today. “We believe that Web.com and Yodle will bring best-in-class products, fulfillment and digital expertise to our clients, complementing our client-focused approach.”

A year ago, we talked with Yodle after it raised a US$10 million round. At that time, the company reported 5,000 advertisers and 250 employees. Yodle, like rival ReachLocal (which recently filed for an IPO), deploys a direct sales force.

As we learned recently, SuperMedia CEO Scott Klein is open to the idea of companies like ReachLocal reselling its inventory. The Berry-Yodle deal has Berry reselling Yodle’s products. However, we wonder if the Berry-Yodle deal couldn’t be a two-way street, given Yodle’s direct contact with SMBs?

Neil Budde of DailyMe and Mike Orren of Pegasus News helped the ILM:09 audience understand what it takes to offer a truly customized news offering that is engaging and relevant.

One of the key takeaways both Orren and Budde discussed was the idea that not everything can or should be customized on the news site. Orren pointed out, “if we customize too much for the customer we take away those items they might stumble upon and become interested in following in the future.” Early days of customization meant sites were built and rebuilt for users as their choices and interests changed, requiring more administration and oversight to make things work effectively. One of the side effects of too much customization is that people were not aware of the level of customization, which took away from users promoting the value of the site to others.

Behavioral tracking is a necessary level of customization as people often say one thing and their behaviors might suggest another. Orren joked that “some people say they like champagne and opera then do searches on cheap beer and honky-tonks.” Without behavioral tracking the site would not have the flexibility to react and adapt to new interests. Budde added “there needs to be a mix of traditional editorial that is constant with personalized choices and behaviorally driven content to make it relevant and valuable.” Behavioral targeting is also valuable in advertising delivery not only for consumers to see items of interest but in more specific targeting for advertisers to reach those who might be more engaged in their products or services.

Orren pointed out, “the goal is to reach those consumers with high levels of interest and engagement to drive more value to advertisers in the way of sign-ups, redemption or attendance.”

Editorial content is one of the greatest drivers and one of the greatest cost issues for localized new sites. Data analytics is becoming a significant tool in helping to identify content trends based on what people are searching for and what they might be reading.

“DailyMe analyzes topics of interest and queries to determine editorial gaps to drive editorial focus or the need for additional freelance writer support to meet emerging needs,” Budde said. The reality of making a hyper-local news site work is a small dedicated editorial staff that not only creates new editorial but can be the aggregators of relevant news from other resources or local bloggers who are viewed as content experts.

The trend in news is definitely focused on delivering personalized content and local information in a single location to make it relevant and easy to access. The goal is to strike a balance between what consumers ask to be shown and what might be of interest either at the moment or what might be an emerging interest.

Promotional services that boost SMBs run the gamut from coupons to prizes. The most popular are free offers, discounts off total amounts, and prizes/free gifts, said Matchpoint CEO Peter Adams, who was speaking at Marketplaces 2009.

Adams noted that when companies are contacted by Matchpoint users, 25 percent respond with some kind of a promotional offer. “It is as high as 45 percent in certain categories,” he said. He also reported that the offers result in success, with more consumers considering purchases. Users, for their part, are seeking pricing and deals.

Services like Matchpoint are vital for SMBs to get engaged with promotions because they “lack time, tools and expertise,” said Adams. “They need help with offer creations. They need help getting the word out; they need help to work with their other marketing and advertising.”

Bogopod Founder and CEO Adam Leff, who was speaking on the same session, noted that online marketers have a strong chance of dislodging the $60 billion direct marketing industry. His company gives consumers “a different feeling than many directory experiences,” he said.

For businesses, Bogopod offers built-in loyalty systems, database development and integrated Web sites. Businesses can send “one convenient e-mail with hundreds of offers” — something he called “special offer optimization, or SOO.” “It is behavioral targeting with life-cycle offers.”