BuzzLogic has been generating some attention for its buzz tracking technology that pinpoints where conversations are happening throughout the blogosphere on certain topics. As we’ve written, this can be an attractive tool for PR professionals or online marketers to home in on the right places to target their messages. Integration with AdWords’ work flow recently brought this capability to the next level.

The company has announced that it will acquire blogging software company Activeweave. I got to speak with BuzzLogic CEO Rob Crumpler at AdTech last week after his panel discussion/debate on Web 2.0. He contends this acquisition brings BuzzLogic the capability to more effectively track where people are going and what they are doing with blogs, to better qualify users and target ads. According to the release:

The acquisition will add new dimension to how BuzzLogic’s algorithms analyze online influence, enabling the company to strengthen and grow its Conversation Targeting advertising solution. Launched in the fall of 2007, Conversation Targeting surfaces connections between influential blogs and other social media as a means of predicting where to target online ad campaigns for its customers.

Blogs often see a very specific and qualified form of online viewership, which opens up lots of opportunity for targeted ad placement. The acquisition should help BuzzLogic continue to build this capability using Activeweave’s BlogRovR browser plug-in that passively tracks users’ blogging habits as part of a recommendation engine for relevant content.

Activeweave’s core product, the BlogRovR browser plug-in, was launched in 2007 and allows users to view relevant content from their favorite bloggers as they browse the Internet. The application works as a personalized search engine; every time a user views a Web page, BlogRovR fetches content from a list of pre-selected bloggers. If those bloggers have written about something similar, relevant content is displayed via collapsible tray within the browser. BlogRovR currently counts more than 180,000 registered users and monitors approximately 200,000 blogs.

Opportunities for local also start to come into focus when you consider local blogs or forums (Topix, Outside.in, Placeblogger, etc.), as well as community or user-generated content that happens around local listings (Yelp, Angie’s List). The company isn’t going down this road just yet but in the past has expressed to me that it could be of interest, given the increasing amount of user-generated chatter in the local space, and the size of market that surrounds it.

There has been lots of talk at search marketing conferences about social media marketing (SMM) and social media optimization (SMO).

This involves everything from starting a blog to optimizing your content with link bait and other hooks to get exposure on Digg, StumbleUpon and other socially driven news sites and discovery engines. SEOmoz is a leading voice in this area, as is frequent SMO panelist Neil Patel.

This conversation usually relates to large brand advertising, but there is still some applicability for SMBs and local search. Search Engine Guide today poses the question “Should You Start a Blog,” including a checklist of business goals and abilities that should be considered first.

For some local businesses, this can be a way to augment a print and online marketing campaign by generating buzz about a topic that is close to your trade (think “how-to” blogs for home improvement).

The very real challenge, however, is the resource constraints of the average SMB that is too busy fixing people’s sinks to be a power blogger on the subject of fixing sinks. There is also a scalability issue in being able to reach a local audience that — by definition — is only so big. With locally focused blog aggregators such as Placeblogger and Outside.in, this opportunity comes closer into reach.

But for now, the majority of SMM activity will remain with larger companies with budgets to apply to full-time bloggers and marketers. The problem is these two roles (blogging and marketing) meld to the point where some companies miss the point entirely and end up with thinly veiled “advertorial” content.

The largest culprits have been those such as Sony and Wal-Mart that tried to completely disguise their promo blogs as the work of independent bloggers. After the flak they received, most brands have been more forthright in disclosing their involvement.

One recent example is Kodak’s blog “A Thousand Words.” My first reaction was, ‘great, another venue for shameless brand peddling.’ But it’s actually entertaining stuff about photography (see post on “Milk Sploop Phorography”), which does a good job avoiding the temptation to plug its products egregiously. It almost has the feel of a real blog, though it loses points for trying to make a big stink today about hiring a “Chief Blogger.”

The other big blogging news today is the launch of Craigslist’s blog, which is an even better spin on its namesake, in the spirit of SMM (not to be confused with S&M, which is an entirely different staple of the Craigslist community). This includes politics, glimpses of its eclectic user base and the nuances of online trade. Like the site itself, the blog has a decidedly spartan look, meant to appeal to its quasi-underground user base. Others that come to mind as relevant forums around a brand include Marchex’s LocalPoint blog.

Challenges will continue to exist in walking the fine line between promotion and objectivity/credibility (readers are very good at sniffing out promotional intent). But if done correctly, blogging and SMM can be powerful tools.

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Related: Classified Intelligence released a report today expecting the 25-person Craigslist to achieve revenues of $81 million this year.

The CBS-TV owned and operated stations are making a pitch to local bloggers and hyperlocal sites to add value to their sites with various news headline and video widgets, and take a share of ad revenues.

The CBS effort to land bloggers and find a way to compensate them is part of a growing trend among traditional media sites. Several newspapers and social sites are also looking at ways of incorporating (and paying) bloggers.

Mostly, the CBS package is designed to extend CBS’ local (and vertical) reach on the Web. That is a key thing for CBS and other local sites that don’t have enough premium inventory to go around, but still tend to under-perform on the Web due to lower online rates.

The CBS deal has been put together by SyndiGO, an arm of Seevast — an ad services holding company that is a direct descendant of Kanoodle. SyndiGO already has local deals in place in various markets with AT&T, Honda dealers and Liberty Mutual Insurance. Examples of participating bloggers include Urban Spoon, The Landry Hat and David Eisenthal.

Seevast exec Jaan Janes (who I consulted for when he was with NFL.com), says the new network takes all the pain out of putting ads on blogger sites. Built on Doubleclick’s backbone, the network recruits the sites, automates the service and provides customer service. It also screens blogs and other sites for suitable content — an important consideration for TV stations.

Another important thing about SyndiGO is it takes care of all payments, and provides a much higher CPM than the networks, according to Janes. He estimates the CPMs will climb above 50 cents –far higher than small local sites would receive from national ad networks such as Advertising.com, Blue Lithium and ValueClick. These sell remnant advertising for CPMs as low as 2 cents.

In our estimation, some sites are likely to get pretty good money from this that may go beyond subsistence. The vast majority of local sites, however, receive little traffic and would get less than $100 a month.

Janes adds that Martha Stewart has gone the same home grown route for Martha’s Circle (although that was done by Adify, a competing ad service). Looking forward, he expects to be working with a wide range of vertical sites in addition to local sites. He is specifically focusing on health, financial services and travel.

Back in April we wrote about BuzzLogic, a San Francisco-based company whose web based app finds out where particular topics are being discussed throughout the blogosphere and online news media.

This takes form in a dashboard that includes an overhead-map-like interface, showing all the inbound and outbound links to various sources of authority on a given topic. The goal is to show users who are the top “influencers” in a given topic or product category so they can join, or advertise near, those discussions.

For the better part of the past few years, the company targeted PR firms and other entities that wanted to know where conversations were happening around the products and companies they represent. But as we predicted eight months ago, the company recently integrated SEM campaign management. The idea is that you can use the buzz tracking as a starting point to target contextual ad placement around influential bloggers.

Bringing Google Into the Mix

To do this, the company integrated Google AdWords’ API directly into its own work flow. So after determining where conversations are happening, advertisers can create text ads that will land in those locations. This can also include tracking conversations about competitors.

“Let’s say your Microsoft and you’re marketing the Zune [portable music player],” posed BuzzLogic CEO Rob Crumpler, whom I met today at the company’s hip SOMA headquarters. “You can find out where discussions are happening about scratches on an iPod screen, and then target your advertising in those places.”

This of course requires that the blogs in question have Google ad inventory (if they are AdSense members), but the system filters out those that don’t. To capture a greater share of the total SEM market, it will look to create similar integrations with the other major SEM platforms, according to Chief Product Officer Todd Parsons, such as YSM and Microsoft adCenter.

The target categories for BuzzLogic are things such as gadgets and consumer electronics where there is a clear interest on the part of advertisers to get in front of engaged users, and to which there is a great deal of “ink” devoted in the blogosphere. In the future, other avenues could include niche categories, according to Crumpler, where there are also engaged users (more qualified traffic), such as skiing, scrapbooking, fly fishing, etc.

Local Buzz

So what is the local opportunity here? Could there be a way to provide buzz tracking for SMBs interested in reputation management and ad targeting at the local level? To reach SMBs, this would probably have to be bundled with the products of a WebVisible, MatchCraft or Marchex, each of which offers a different formula of local SEM services including geotargeting and campaign fulfillment.

This would also require pinpointing where the discussions that affect commerce are taking place at the local level. One answer is that they are packaged in a different form; instead of blog content, the buzz is scattered across various review sites such as Yelp.

This makes it harder for BuzzLogic to get its arms around sources of buzz in the way it does in the blogosphere. But given the size of the local advertising pie, it’s a challenge the the company is starting to think about.

It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an excellent partnership with SES.

Our next conference, April 30-May 2 at the Westin in Seattle, will be a highly differentiated affair. Stay tuned for what we are doing with that (but not for a couple of months, OK?).

For those of you who can’t get enough coverage, a virtual conference will be up with all the PPTs in a couple of weeks (but only for attendees). You can also order the DVD.

For immediate gratification, however, check out the posts from my talented colleagues on the Kelsey Blog.

I especially liked Michael Taylor’s write-up of our discussion with Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis. Michael is totally correct: “The long and short of Calacanis’ comments go to several of the key themes heard over and over again at ILM:07 — relevant content, deep content and engaging, passionate people are all needed to make a highly relevant and personalized search experience.”

In addition to the Kelsey write-ups, Mike Boland has captured links from the press and bloggers who attended our event. It was good to have them aboard. And Mel Taylor took some great pictures.

Here are easy links to Kelsey ILM:07 posts:

1. TKG Analysts Lay the Groundwork (Michael Boland)

2. Winebaum Provides a Fresh Look at Local Search (Michael Taylor)

3. Cash Is King for Local Search Investors (Charles Laughlin)

4. Herratti’s Citysearch: Social Media Video Partnerships (Bobbi Loy-Luster)

5. NCI: ‘We Can Work with Zillow’ (John Kelsey)

6. ILM:07 Spotlights mobilePeople (Stephen Marshall)

7. Stubbs Discusses AT&T’s Post-InGenio Vision (Michael Taylor)

8. TMP’s McKelvey Discusses Online/Offline Research Data (Michael Taylor, Michael Boland)

9. New West’s Weber and Independent Local Media (John Kelsey)

10. Marchex’s Horowitz: Bet on People Already Winning (Charles Laughlin)

11. Google’s Hanke: Maps, Mobile and Mashups (Michael Boland)

12. An Intuit-ive Approach to SMB Marketing (Stephen Marshall)

13. Injecting Social into Local Media (Michael Boland)

14. Taking It Home: The Final Panel at ILM:07 (Stephen Marshall)

ILM:07 was fortunate to have Jason Calacanis, CEO of Mahalo, as a speaker. Always a straight shooter and a prolific blogger, Calacanis is very outspoken about his feelings about search, social media, SEO and local search.

When asked about the Facebook phenomenon, Calacanis said “Facebook is the best technical social network who iterates faster than anyone else.”

As for the company’s valuation, he had a very different opinion. “Facebook is overvalued,” he said. “If it come onto the open market they would never have gotten the multiple they got from Microsoft. It is extremely difficult to believe social networks can monetize their traffic for advertisers because users are not there to spend money except for online dating. Putting an ad on someone’s page is not very effective since it must compete with their social life like where to go tonight, ‘Bambi’ the exotic dancer wanting to join his circle of friends, and their online poker habit. Quite frankly people don’t want to be interrupted in their social pursuits to be faced with an ad for something they are not in the mind-set to address — see me later!”

When asked about his new search portal, Mahalo, and its human search approach, Calacanis was quite frank: “Getting humans to skim the search results to pull out spam and irrelevant search returns offers users the best most relevant results. This is the best way to compete with Google. Our goal is to seek out people who are passionate about topics and can help create the best, most focused search results for users.” Calacanis agreed that “human level local search is a way to make local search more competitive since it is calibrated to the local market. We sit between Wikipedia and Google, and this is a logical competitive position to do battle with Google.”

Taking a crack at how to improve local, Calacanis’ response was: “Local is too hard to achieve because you have to reach out to too many people with a big sales force and it’s hard to maintain your costs. Automation could make local more attractive and generate better returns.” After a bit more thought, he added: “Local SMEs are getting more sophisticated and smarter about online.” In fact, his dog trainer surprised him with her “level of sophistication and understanding of SEO and online marketing, which may be an indicator of a more attractive SME audience who would be easier to approach and sell.”

TKG’s Peter Krasilovsky asked the now famous question about Calacanis’ feelings about SEO and his infamous quote “SEO is for losers.” Calacanis qualified his perception, saying “my impression of SEO is tainted by the raft of bad SEO guys who are losers. They give you traffic that you don’t necessarily deserve through bad tricks and dishonest approaches. It is more about content that drives organic traffic and gets your content picked up in search engines, Digg, blogs and other high-profile sites.”

As a former AOL alum, Calacanis was asked his opinion about the ability of AOL to resurrect itself. “They [AOL] have always had brilliant people along with a contingent of tenured dial-up people who were unwilling to change,” he said. “This caused a lot of inner conflict that was tearing it apart. They have a ton of opportunity with their new advertising platform. The purchase of Advertising.com was one of their best purchases because it helped them migrate toward an advertising network model. “Look, AOL has all the components to make them successful search, ad network and social networks, which AOL owns, that could give them the potential to really have a chance of winning. If they spin off from Time Warner, they could have the last laugh.”

The long and short of Calacanis’ comments go to several of the key themes heard over and over again at ILM:07 — relevant content, deep content and engaging, passionate people are all needed to make a highly relevant and personalized search experience. Mahalo and Calacanis are both worthy of watching, regardless of how you feel about either one.

(Pic by Mel Taylor)

Interactive Local Media: 07 is ready to roll Nov. 28-30 in L.A. That’s next Wednesday through Friday!

The show, which is being produced in partnership with SES Local, has attendees from all over the world. One exec told me he is coming on Wednesday, taking the red eye to New York that night due to a prior commitment, and flying back on Thursday night for the final day.

Attendance-wise, we have the biggest sign-up list for a Kelsey event since the mid-1990s. Almost everyone that we have slotted will actually be there. While the agenda has been tight for some time, with 70-plus speakers, here are some last minute adds:

• Christophe Maire, a cofounder of Nokia’s Location-Based Experience Development, is set for Day 3. HOT DISCUSSION TOPIC: Nokia’s $8.1 Billion purchase of NavTeq.

• Laurel Gilbert, from Microsoft’s Atlas division, is speaking on our localizing national advertising panel. HOT DISCUSSION TOPIC: How Microsoft will use Aquantative to transform itself into a true Web advertising giant.

• Doug Kilponen from MerchantCircle is speaking on the localized shopping panel. MerchantCircle just received a $10 million cash infusion from IAC and others. HOT DISCUSSION TOPIC: Best Practices for Signing up Small Businesses.

• Claudia Poepperl from mobilePeople is set to provide a demo of the London-based company’s cutting-edge social mobile technology.

We are also expecting a drop-in from a top executive of a company that’s been in the news, but we can’t say much more about it. And speaking of news, there are lots of interesting news announcements that will drop around the show as well. So, will we see you in L.A.? Here is the registration page.

Perhaps we have moved from a culture where small local publishers have gone from their own Web site to a blog to having a space on Facebook. That’s what Steve Gilberg at HappyHours.com has done. Steve — the most knowledgeable person alive about the spirits business and local bar culture and actually a fairly sober individual — mass-mailed his intentions to his Facebook community.

As an incentive to join his Facebook Group built “around drinks, cocktails and Happy Hours,” and to see how fast he can grow it, Steve has set up a contest. Currently, he’s got 95 members, but he’s hoping to get 500 by e.o.d. tomorrow. “If we do, one person from our group will be selected at random to win a $100 bar tab prize.”

“It’s easy to tell your friends about the HappyHours.com Facebook Group,” he writes. “Who doesn’t want to be invited to cool cocktail events or wine tastings? HappyHours with drink specials? We’ll have the best deals ANYWHERE. So, get your friends to join our group today!”

Steve notes that if “no one wins because we don’t reach 500 members by tomorrow at 5PM, he’ll boost the pot to “$200 if we reach 1,000 members by November 8th, 2007 at 5PM EST. Start spreading the word,” he adds. “Give it a shot!”

The numbers are looking very, very good for the Interactive Local Media:07 conference in L.A. Nov. 28-30. Internally, we think this one is a record breaker. Register and book the hotel while you can. The latter tends to sell out.

In recent weeks, we’ve been putting the final touches on the program. For instance, we’ve added Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya, who is VP of product marketing. Here’s a snippet about Chamath from Fast Company’s cover story this month:

“Palihapitiya, 31, is tall and whippet thin, with elegant manners and a ready smile. A former electrical engineer, born in Sri Lanka and raised in Canada, he ran AOL’s instant-message group, then jumped to the venture fund Mayfield. He is part Sand Hill Roadster and part freethinker.”

Other notable adds include ShopLocal CMO Bob Armour, Scott Ferris from Microsoft’s Atlas division, LA Times.com’s Robertson Barrett, and City Voter’s Josh Walker. There is also a brand-new Local Mobile panel, featuring Gary Roshak, who has migrated from Marchex to Yahoo!, Jeff Torgerson at InfoSpace, and Collin Holmes at V-Enable.

Also, take a look at the SES side of the show. Google Local head Eric Stein, Zorik Gordon from Reach Local, and Topix head Chris Tolles are just some of the great execs SES is bringing in. Kevin Heisler and Kevin Newcomb are moderating the SES panels.

The Kelsey Group also has its LinkedIn networking set up for the show. We’ve got dozens participating already. Once you register, you should sign in for that, too (even if you haven’t used LinkedIn for a while). See you in L.A.?

I’m a bit late to this, but wanted to offer a quick hit to point out industry insider Andrew Shotland’s new blog, localSEOguide.com. Andrew was formerly a key cog at Insider Pages — a company known for a certain degree of SEO prowess — and now does a lot of enterprise consulting work on local search optimization (the subject of the new blog).

SEO is becoming increasingly important on a local level given some of the price inflation and complexities in search engine marketing (see TKG forecast data). Andrew is a key voice on this subject; a nuts and bolts level analysis that’s a good supplement to the higher level, longer term strategic analysis you’ll find here. Check it out at the link above.