Local/social leaders from Facebook, Yelp and Twitter took the stage at IAB’s Annual Leadership Meeting in Carlsbad, California, this week to discuss what IAB President Randall Rothenberg called “the mobile/social local real-time medium that does not have a name.”

Facebook’s Tim Kendall, director of monetization, said Facebook has essentially introduced “marketing on the social graph” by tracking its unique information, such as “pages,” “events,” “like,” “share” and “connect.”  “We’re getting pretty good at showing you ‘who matters to me’ on news feed and topics,” he said.

Advertising on the site is now in full play. “We have created a social marketing experience that we think it the most interesting social advertising on the Web,” he said. And Facebook’s advertising success is demonstrably strong. “Our click to conversion rate is two to three times other sites. Social wins every time.”

Kendall added that Facebook’s effective CPM ends up being “a couple of dollars,” but that advertisers also come in via the service’s self-serve advertising, which is priced on a flat rate basis.

Jed Nachman from Yelp estimated that the site’s effective CPM was $200. One example, Little Star Pizza in San Francisco, for instance, had 1,500 looks (and presumably pays $300 for the ad). Nachman also noted that on average, Yelp users look at 2-4 reviews before making any decisions.

Meanwhile, Twitter is preparing to launch its first ad product next month, according to Anamitra Banerji, who is “Product Management, Monetization.” Banerji said his prior experience at Overture told him to “innovate really, really quickly before anyone else comes up with it.”

Banerji added that people should “be focused on what you are doing and not worry about what people are doing around you.” He also noted that Twitter is a distributed product. “We don’t see ourselves as a Web site,” he said.

Weighing in on social during a separate session at IAB was MySpace Co-President Jason Hirschhorn. Hirschhorn noted that MySpace is refocused on entertainment and music. “We’re not jettisoning our roots as a social network. But our fans want to be entertained. Not everyone is a publisher.”

Hirschhorn spoke admiringly of Facebook, which has basically deposed MySpace as a leader in social media with almost four times the traffic — 128 million uniques versus 400 million uniques. “The media community itself has its social graph on Facebook,” he said. “But there is a completely different behavior and mind-set you are tapping into when you are a brand marketer.” He noted that MySpace still has information on 13 million bands, and a “16-34 type audience.”

Serial Web entrepreneur Mark H. Goldstein  has been the founder of such sites as Kmart’s BlueLight and Impulse Buy. More recently, he invested in green ecology-based ventures, but he grew bored and came back to ecommerce with Loyalty Lab and  Home-Account.com, which matched homeowners with mortgage brokers, competing with the likes of LendingTree , Bankrate.com and Zillow’s Mortgage Marketplace (whose free to the consumer model is similar).

Today, Goldstein launched a sister site, Refinance.com, which is using the same engine as Home-Account to match refinance prospects with the lowest “TrueCost” loan over time.   Both services rely on a matching system developed with Jack M. Guttenberg, better known as “The Mortgage Professor.” They also collect recommendations and reviews, marrying social networking with leads.

Goldstein contends that the free matching service is far superior to lead generation sites such as Lending Tree, which provide consumers with lists of five or six brokers.  That doesn’t help consumers much, he argues. They’re almost as poorly informed as when they started.

“We’re getting rid of the ‘last mile human being’ and pinpointing exactly the right product,” says Goldstein, noting that consumers will still have an option to self-select their brokers. “They don’t have to take the first one, the second or third.”

The site is currently launching local and regional lenders, with hundreds of lenders ready to sign on.  Goldstein’s timing, however, would appear to be shaky, with many banks still very conservative in their lending practices, post TARP mode.

But  Goldstein contends  “they do want to lend,” and notes that real estate has been in recovery for the past six months. Lending Tree has been doing good business, for example. And Bankrate.com was just taken private in October for $700 million.

“There are very specific people they want to lend to,” says Goldstein.  “What we do is make you look as good as possible before the lender picks up the phone. “

While retailers are reducing their brand advertising, along with store inventory and head count at their headquarters and stores, promotions, local events and direct marketing efforts are getting a big boost, says TNS Retail Forward Executive VP Dan Stenik, who was speaking at the NAA Annual Convention in San Diego.

Quoting an ancient Chinese proverb, Stenik says “there is an opportunity riding on dangerous winds.” The wildest opportunities may be with specialty stores inside malls, who have been forced to boost their own marketing as the malls themselves lose favor. But they’re going to have a hard time.

More ready opportunities might be with retailers that are in tune with the depressed times, which have brought in a mood of “conscious consumption” rather than “conspicuous consumption” (think green). “They equate frugality with morality,” says Stenik.

The new consumer is into responsible purchasing … things that are “unique, genuine and local,” he says. “They want good, safe sustainable foods. They want ‘limited editions,’ ‘insider information.’ ”

“Local is a luxury,” adds Stenik. “It is not common. The relevance today is in ‘value, values, and being valued.’ ”

Whole Foods, for instance, is state-of-the-art in driving the value of local. The new Venice, California, location has local produce, assortments, a chocolate island, artists, jewelers and designers selling goods inside the store. They have also commissioned murals from a local (and world-renowned) artist.

“Their focus is on the local shopper,” says Stenik. “The common denominator is on ‘relationships,’ ‘trusts’ and ‘collaboration.’ ”

Another hot trend in retail are “pop up” stores like The Bullseye Bodega from the likes of Target and TJ Maxx, which are selling their private-label goods in temporary locations, often around the holidays. “These stores need to centralize and process a lot of advertising over a few weeks,” notes Stenik.

Given these trends, consumer electronics and appliance stores, apparel and shoe stores, drug stores, building/hardware stores and supermarkets ought to do the best in the next couple of years. Home furnishing stores, furniture stores, discount department stores and department stores will have a harder time.

The successful companies will be those that sell lifestyle items that make living fun. Not the products themselves,” says Stenik. “You see retailers getting in to services … drug stores and supermarkets with in-store health clinics. They are building their entire business around it.”

Longtime U.S. independent publisher White Directory (owned by Hearst Corp.) has launched a complete rebranding, dropping the old “Talking Phone Book” in favor of “LocalEdge.” The company says it plans to phase in the new brand over the next 12 months.

In our view, the rebranding is way overdue. “Talking Phone Book” is a brand that harks back to the days when audiotex was a popular value added feature. Those days are long gone, so the brand was a bit old school to say the least.

The phone is quickly advancing as a means of pushing out ad-sponsored content that mimics some of the popular mobile advertising features.

Greg Webster of VoodooVox, at ILM:08, debuted some of the new features of the company’s In-Call Media group, demonstrating additional marketing opportunities via on-hold messages, “pre-call” messages when using calling cards, and distribution over a network of telephone audio outlets such as 1-800-FREE-411, radio stations and major call centers. Many of the major functions include sending information to your mobile phone and being able to push a button to get extended information beyond a typical :09 message now utilized on the network. The ICM interface allows advertisers to set up their own campaign, direct it to specific states and even defined DMAs.

Two case studies clearly showed the power of this emerging media. One study involved the promotion of an event aimed at Hispanics by Food4Less, which utilized “pre-call” messages on calling cards used in identified Hispanic communities. The net result of this campaign was a 40 percent increase in awareness, a 15 percent increase in attendance and a 35 percent increase in new customers. Another approach used by Buena Vista International targeted radio station on-hold messages to promote a limited release movie aimed at teen girls.  The real aim of this new media approach is to take advantage of lost sales opportunities while customers are on hold with messages that are more relevant and appealing rather than simply playing “Muskrat Love” or “your call is important to us.” Much like mobile phone advertising, in-call media aims to provide a more intimate connection with customers to drive specific actions or to raise awareness. 

Jim Hail, president and chief operating officer of Hagadone Directories and chairman of the Association of Directory Publishers, outlined what he believes has been a systematic decline in the brand value of the Yellow Pages at this year’s ADP Mid-Year Convention in San Antonio.

Prior to the break-up of AT&T there was strong support for promoting the Yellow Pages category via the industry’s “Let Your Fingers Do The Walking” campaign. “After the break-up, the incumbents and the Yellow Pages Association stopped promoting the category in favor of the incumbent publishers promoting their own brands,” said Hail. The reason given for walking away from an industry campaign has often been attributed to the incumbents, which said doing so would essentially be funding and helping the other publishers.

Not pulling any punches, Hail said, “The industry, mainly the incumbents, have let the brand become tarnished with little effort to help build back the industry, and this has put everyone in the Yellow Pages at risk. We will continue to work with and push YPA and the incumbent publishers to reconsider this position.” 

While independent publishers’ revenue share and usage share have continued to increase, their ability to affect the industry as a whole has been hindered since they are often overshadowed by the financial challenges of the incumbent publishers, which are more globally recognized and often control the perception of the industry.

The reality is that both ADP and the Yellow Pages Association need to work together to find common solutions to revitalize the brand and deal with the bad PR. Given the current challenges a coordinated effort would seem to have a stronger impact.

Hail concluded by saying, “No matter if you are a large incumbent publisher or an independent publisher, we need to have a common voice to help level the playing field in the local media space.”

In an opening session of the Association of Directory Publishers‘ 2008 Mid-Year Convention in San Antonio, YP Talk Publisher Ken Clark gave a close-up view of how negative PR in print and online is eroding the perception of the Yellow Pages industry. Describing these sites as “slowly chewing away the credibility of the industry,” Clark described them as “paper termites who are slowly eating away at the industry’s credibility with murky research, hearsay and the replication of misinformation.”

Over the past 12 months, the level of bad press has far outweighed the good press on what Yellow Pages companies have done. Recent coverage on TheDeets.com and Tracy Coenen’s “Top 25 Things Disappearing from America” are just a few highlights of the impact bloggers can have on the reputation of the industry when they place themselves in the role of majority thinkers on U.S. print Yellow Pages.

According to Clark, this altered perception of the industry is creating a credit crunch in the financial market and the misconception that the product is rubbish, a danger to the environment, a yellow supporter or a smart green consumer. The question is, what if anything is the industry doing to correct this or take the lead in how it is being perceived? Clark set out a challenge for the ADP attendees to:

One of the things that dawned on me after listening to the many speakers at our recent DMS ’08 conference in Atlanta was that a fundamental aspect of the Yellow Pages business has been lost — exclusivity. During the days before the Internet and the massive sharing of data with Google, Yahoo and others, the content and data of the Yellow Pages were exclusive to the print directories or their online counterparts.

While U.S. publisher Internet Yellow Pages sites bemoan the fact that they do not enjoy healthy traffic levels, when we look to the new breed of local search players like Yellowbot, Yelp and Brownbook and listen to search platform developers like Exalead, they clearly understand the value of exclusivity. The online world, and certainly local media in general, is driven by information and particularly uniquely aggregated information. The power local search sites hold is in the amount of aggregated data they have either uniquely developed or have aggregated into a convenient package for site visitors. IYPs remain in a position to become the end all and be all of aggregated local business and service information, but the window of opportunity is quickly closing due to the efforts of Google, Yahoo and a variety of aggressive local search sites.

With the vast amount of local company data that is continuously updated and enhanced each year, directory companies own a gold mine of local information that companies like Google, Yahoo and local search sites covet — which is why they continue to strike deals to gain access to this information. Collecting and updating local business and service data is an expense that search engines and local search players are not willing to pay. Pick any vertical and you can bet that in most cases the Yellow Pages database has more business listings and content than any other source. 

European players have understood this advantage and have shared far less with the search engines and vertical sites. They have enjoyed more organic traffic levels because of their cautious nature, desire to keep the deepest local content exclusively within their IYP sites and willingness to promote their brands. While some of their advantage lies in Europe’s more closed information sharing practices, publishers in Europe have made a decision to share less with search engines than their U.S. counterparts in order to build their brand.

The print Yellow Pages product has definitely lost its relevance worldwide to a large segment of its once loyal users. If the print book could again become a source of vital local information that was exclusive to its bound pages alone (not even to its IYP site), that would certainly build relevancy and a desire to use the product. The industry needs to get busy with the task of figuring out what demographic groups it wants to own, figuring out what content and user features those customers want in both print and online, and then implementing and heavily promoting those exclusive features and user benefits. These are the steps critical to winning new print and IYP users, enhancing the relevancy of the product line and increasing the ROI for advertisers.

Yahoo announced today from the ADWEEK conference that it will launch a new ad platform called APT. It is meant to be a one-stop shop for media buys across Yahoo’s growing sources of localized inventory. This includes its own network as well as that of the growing list of partners (782) in its newspaper consortium.

Unlike Google’s more long-tail base of advertisers, Yahoo has appealed to more national brand advertisers and agencies with graphical display ads. But one barrier preventing their true understanding of the online local opportunity has been its complexity and fragmentation. APT is a move toward making this less daunting with a single point of entry to a wide swath of localized ad inventory.

APT also applies some of the self-service components and geotargeting capabilities of search marketing to display ad campaigns. According to Warren Kay, Yahoo director of emerging products, this could involve additional features for advertisers in the future like more granular data about their local store locations or even item inventory — in line with the growing awareness around the ROBO phenomenon.

“If I’m looking for a car or a lawn mower and I want a particular make and model, I want to know the closest place to buy it,” said Kay. “Even the simple concept of where is my nearest insurance agent or target store, one level up in the consideration phase, could give our advertisers a more compelling capability.”

User behavior hasn’t evolved in a mass market way to motivate advertisers to ask for this just yet. But the wheels are turning in terms of demand for better search tools. This could motivate advertisers to adapt and Yahoo and others to provide the tools. Early movers like Krillion and NearbyNow have started to educate the marketplace, but it could take the broader reach of someone like Yahoo (300 million registered users) to really move the needle.

In the meantime, APT’s first order of business is to make it easier to self provision localized display ads. The newspaper consortium is a natural place to start given its momentum and existing content network. The first ones on board are the San Jose Mercury News and the San Francisco Chronicle, and more are hoped to follow.

“Our goal is to have all [consortium] newspaper publishers on that platform by the end of Q1,” said Kay. “It will be a one-stop place where marketers can come and buy inventory in up to 800 local newspapers. Then we will migrate Yahoo inventory through a similar migration plan.”

Yellow Pages Group New Zealand has acquired a majority stake in grownups.co.nz,  a Web site targeting the over 50s crowd, as reported on Stuff.co.nz. Voted as New Zealand’s best lifestyle Web site in 2008, this acquisition may well prove to be a smart move for YPG-NZ. According to Blair Glubb, Yellow Pages Group’s digital marketing director, “… there were good benefits to be reaped from combining grownups.co.nz with Yellow Pages, which publishes the Retirement Guide. He said grownups.co.nz had loyal existing browsers and Yellow Pages reached more than a million New Zealanders per month. Over 1.2 million New Zealanders are in this age group and 65 per cent of them use the internet daily.” 

In a recent post, I covered the economic impact people in their 40s and 50s make based on TVLand’s Generation BUY survey. In my post I wrote, “With boomers in the sweet spot of Yellow Pages’ current usage, the value of this audience is being overlooked not only by investors and pundits, but by Yellow Page organizations as well.”  

While I can’t take credit for guiding YPG-NZ in this purchase, it none the less is an indication that publishers are waking up to the notion that the real value of the Yellow Pages lies in the demographic groups it attracts rather than in sheer distribution or access to its data. Actively engaging this key audience, which appears loyal to both the print and online YP products, is a solid strategic move that plays to YPG-NZ’s strengths.