Telstra, the parent company of Sensis, the Australian-based YP company, has acquired 55 per cent of Autohome/PCPop, which runs Autohome.com.cn, a Chinese auto portal, and Norstar Mediatwo, a Chinese CNET- like tech site.

The two properties complement Telstra’s 51 percent share in SouFun, China’s top real estate site. “Telstra now owns majority interests in three of the leading Chinese companies operating in the three key online advertising industry segments: real estate, auto and digital devices,” said CEO Sol Trujillo, in the announcement. “These acquisitions provide further high-growth opportunities for Sensis,” which is described as “our buy, find and sell business.”

Telstra, in its announcement, notes that online advertising revenues in the Chinese auto segment are predicted to almost triple by 2012, rising from US$230 million this year to more than US$690 million in 2012. New car sales in China are already almost half that of the United States, with 7.2 million cars sold this year. China is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest auto market in the next decade.

It also notes that the online “digital device” advertising market is expected to triple by 2012 – up from about US$235 million this year to US$700 million. Last year, 48 per cent of the Chinese population had access to a digital device. By 2015, that percentage is predicted to increase to 84.5 per cent, or 1.18 billion people.

There is a sudden glut of sites that allow people to register their cars and get specific service information and recommendations about them.

First, there was Autobytel’s MyRide. RepairPal launched last week. This week, it is DriverSide, which is being developed by Jad Dunning, an executive with StepUp through its acquisition by Intuit, and Trevor Traina. The site, which has 20 staffers and is funded by Catamount Ventures, is designed to meet consumer needs between purchases and simplify automotive ownership. “We want consumers to make good decisions wherever they are in the cycle,” says Dunning.

DriverSide is geared around mainstream drivers rather than high-end enthusiasts. It also has focused on localized needs, such as servicing. “We engineer around each brand on the road. “If you have a 2005 Camry with 45,000 miles in Emeryville, you will need advice on when you need typical repairs and where to go,” says Dunning. “You may have specific questions about Camrys. We build communities around each model.

“Not everyone loves their car,” Dunning adds. “But everyone has a relationship with their car.”

In addition to providing car-specific information, the site also provides editorial content that it is developing in-house, as well as syndicated content from Car and Driver, Road and Track, CNET and ZPinions. Its editorial leader is Jon Alain Guzik, Yahoo! Autos’ former editor in chief. User reviews and feedback are also being solicited. “We took a page from Yahoo! Answers,” says Dunning.

Dunning acknowledges that there are some similarities with other car sites, but he says DriverSide was uniquely developed and isn’t as oriented around enthusiast stuff or selling leads. Users are encouraged to do a variety of things on and off the site. “In our research, we found that the major sites are focused on helping you buy and sell. Once they get you in the funnel, they never want you to leave.”

But leads are a big part of the model, in addition to advertising. To Dunning, “the service leads are even more important than sales leads.” Relationships are being formed with local dealers, independent shops, parts and accessories vendors, and manufacturers. He also expects to sell ads to such auto ecosystem players as insurance companies, financial companies and oil companies.

To all the skeptics who thought that Zillow’s deal with newspapers would never roll out … next week, The Philadelphia Inquirer, San Francisco Chronicle, San Jose Mercury News and Richmond Times-Dispatch are selling featured listings for Zillow at the same time as they are placing their classifieds.

More newspapers will be added each week. The participating newspaper companies include Hearst, Journal Register, Lee Enterprises, Media General, MediaNews Group, Morris Communications, Paddock Publications, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, E.W. Scripps, Times-Shamrock and The Day Publishing Co.

A Zillow spokesperson reminds me that this is part of a broader partnership that includes mutual tool development and information sharing (i.e., open house listings from the newspapers, Zestimates and mortgage broker listings from Zillow). These features will be coming out later this year.

The frontiers of Web-based, self-serve advertising moved (a little) today, as Trulia introduced Trulia Pro, a new “starter” package for Realtors that provides unlimited “featured listings” and “Spotlight Ads” that Realtors use for branding. Trulia claims its featured listings capability boosts views by four to seven times.

Trulia Pro enables Realtors to place their ads on a “self-serve” basis, avoiding the need for a local sales partner. In addition, the service enables Realtors to mine up to 20 additional cities, neighborhoods or ZIP codes. Listings in exurban Riverside, for instance, could be marketed to people from Los Angeles without busting a budget. Current ZIP code marketing models are more limited.

Trulia Pro is being sold to Realtors for $39 per month, or $348 if they commit for a year. Trulia says the ads will be targeted to a base of 10 million users: 5 million of its own users and 5 million from its extended network. The service replaces Agent Featured Listings, which had been previously discontinued. Prime targets for Trulia Pro are expected to be the 85,000 agents who participate in Trulia Community Voices.

Classifieds have made their way to video (See RealPeopleRealStuff). But how about video on mobile phones? That’s a new effort being tried out in Portugal, where high-speed 3G phones are prevalent, but less than 40 percent of the population has Internet access.

The video ads are being provided by Ocasio, a shopper publication with a print circulation of 25,000. It is charging a premium of 2 euros (or $3.12) to run a video ad, on top of the regular 25 euro charge ($39) for running a 30-second video classified. Users wishing to access a video ad must dial a code (e.g., “760508509”) and wait roughly 10 seconds for it to upload. Users are also assessed a fee of 95 cents. The code is published in text and display ads in the publication.

The video service was developed by Zonadvanced, a Portuguese company that hopes to export its mobile video applications to other countries that have high-speed 3G access. President Nuno Carvalho, who spoke at the recent ICMA general meeting in Brussels, said video is “good for impulsive people,” and takes off on the success of personal video conferencing, which reached 60 million minutes after it was introduced last year in Portugal.

“With our video ad technology, we reach the 60 percent of the population that does not have Internet access, said Carvalho. He noted that all kinds of classified segments could be effectively advertised. Pets, for instance, will be introduced in 2009. For now, there are standard classified ads, plus erotic prerecorded chat.

Rich Barton — Mr. Vertical — has added a new recruitment-oriented vertical to a lineup that now includes Expedia (sold), Zillow and Avvo. The new effort is Glassdoor.com, which provides recruitment-related information. It solicits and publishes detailed salary and bonus information by position and company, as well as in-depth reviews about company culture and views of top executives.

The company was founded by Barton, former Hotwire President Robert Hohman and Tim Besse. Hohman and Besse worked under Barton at Expedia. The site has received funding from Benchmark Ventures and its founders, and has an initial team of 12 people.

Hohman says the company has launched with 3,300 reviews on 275 companies, mostly oriented toward the tech communities of Silicon Valley and Seattle. Eventually, it will add more universal categories, such as nurses and teachers. Everything on the site is free and (theoretically) supported by targeted advertising from employers and recruitment agencies, among others.

The first round of reviews was conducted by a research team and is already fairly representative, with a broad swath of job types. Each participant was promised anonymity, and received detailed information after providing answers to 16 questions in eight categories.

Some initial findings showed that Google pays engineers $110k, or $5k more than Microsoft. Apple, meanwhile pays its engineers $89K. People may work there for the prestige, says Hohman. At the Apple Store, meanwhile, the smart people who provide sales help get $9 to $14 per hour, while Geniuses behind the counter get up to $24 per hour.

The majority of initial reviews were for Microsoft, Yahoo!, Cisco and Apple. Microsoft people give CEO Steve Ballmer a 68 percent approval rating; Yahoo! people, meanwhile, give Jerry Yang 58 percent. Looking at the tracking, you can see Yang’s approval ratings really dived after he didn’t go through with the Microsoft sale.

While Hohman concedes that such a system could be abused, the site has worked to minimize it with safeguards, such as validated e-mail, implemented on the advice of Stephen Kaufer, a board member who was the founder of TripAdvisor.

Already, there are plans to syndicate content from the site around the Internet, and Hohman doesn’t rule out partnerships for recruitment with newspapers and other media, a la Zillow. But the site is primarily a destination site that will live or die on advertising, he says.

Boston-based CitySquares, which just celebrated its second anniversary, is getting about 70,000 unique visitors per month and now has a base of 700 advertisers, averaging $1,200 per year, reports CEO Ben Saren. He believes they have even more potential via upsells such as video, sponsored/display ads, etc.

Roughly a third of the existing advertiser base is in the downtown Boston area, while the others come from adjacent communities, such as Jamaica Plain, Cambridge, Brookline and Somerville. As with most other city guides, the best categories are restaurants and vanity sites — beauty salons, spas, etc.

The hyperlocal company, which has raised under $2 million, has seven full-time sales agents and has really built up a well-known brand in Beantown, says Saren. He believes a large part of the recognition is due to innovative advertising efforts, such as local event sponsorships, quite a bit of viral marketing and an exclusive deal with Boston Pedicabs. There are 17 Pedicabs cycling around Boston all day and night, and a CitySquares banner is on the back of each one — shared with various CitySquares advertisers, which help foot the bill.

To Saren, the high awareness factor puts the company in a good position to “own” the market. He says, in fact, that it is a fallacy that local advertisers are being deluged by a wide group of hyperlocal opportunities. Sites associated with major local media and directory firms, such as The Boston Globe’s Boston.com, GateHouse’s Wicked Local and Idearc’s Superpages, never come up in conversations with potential advertisers, he says. Yelp and Outside.in don’t either. Only IAC’s Citysearch comes up, and Saren believes he is gaining a lead on it.

CitySquares is currently looking to expand its hyperlocal approach beyond Boston’s “Route 128” divider. Starting June 16, the company will launch automated versions of communities throughout New England and New York, easily accomplished using its data feed from Localeze and maps from Maponics.

Saren acknowledges that the “expansion” won’t be fed with feet in the street and local editorial staff, at least initially. Those will be restricted to Boston. But if Manchester, New Hampshire, suddenly starts giving us a lot of traffic, he says, “we’ll start a direct marketing campaign and provide prelaunch discounts to advertisers.”

Walmart.com is a national site without local pretensions. And the company’s stores themselves don’t really have much “community” about them. They generally don’t have bulletin boards or other things to bring the community together.

But the giant retailer is now offering free classifieds on Walmart.com via a deal with Oodle, which hopes to display its network of free listings in as many places as possible, and drive more traffic for advertising. If it works, we may revisit the idea that retail sites are media in their own right — an idea that was floating around several years ago.

Oodle CEO Craig Donato says Wal-Mart may be its first retail partner but should fit right in. The site is looking for partners that get a lot of traffic but also have some local elements to them. Military.com, for instance, has proved to be a perfect Oodle partner, he says. Troops are scattered in communities across the U.S. and the world.

The placement of Wal-Mart Classifieds on the home page of Walmart.com — it isn’t there now — would definitely humanize the site. It could even be seen as part of a broader community development initiative. Two years ago, the company had an initiative to help small businesses launch Web sites and promote themselves on the Internet — something that seems to have come and gone.

The talk on the blogosphere, however, is that Wal-Mart Classifieds is an attempt to take on Craigslist for the hinterland. It seems like quite a stretch. When Wal-Mart starts to promote the Oodle classifieds in its stores, at the checkout counter, and on TV ads (it could, right?) then we may be on to something.

Several years ago, it looked like real estate brokerages might be marginalized by “Virtual Office Websites” (VOWs) that grabbed multiple listings service listings from the Web, using a licensed agent. They then acted as cut-rate sales agents to home buyers.

At the time, it was envisioned that major online entities such as Yahoo! might use VOWs as a loophole for getting into the tent. Worse, there was a fear that banks would use VOWs to facilitate a sneak attack on the industry (if restrictions on their participation eased).

The response by the National Association of Realtors in August 2005 was to draw up new rules that would deny the VOWs access to the listings, making it difficult for them to stay in business. Penalties were imposed on members that assisted VOWs.

It seemed clear that the NAR’s cartel-like actions wouldn’t hold up in court. But that didn’t matter. Mostly, it would buy time for the industry to develop better Internet positioning — like deliberately fouling Kobe Bryant to make him miss a basket and hope he doesn’t make his foul shots from the line.

That’s almost exactly how it has worked out. Almost three years after the Department of Justice sued the NAR to overturn its policies in October 2005, the two sides have settled. For the NAR, it has been time well “bought,” if you want to have that perspective. In the interim, the market has greatly evolved vis-a-vis the ready access to information allowed by the Internet, and changes brought on by bad market conditions.

Under terms of the settlement, the NAR is unable to prevent VOWs from gaining access to listings from its members, or to punish members who cooperate with VOWs. At the same time, the NAR gets to narrowly define what a VOW is (i.e., someone who is actively engaged in selling real estate).

The DOJ issued a statement that the settlement will help innovative real estate practices and help reduce commissions paid by consumers. “Today’s settlement prevents traditional brokers from deliberately impeding competition,” said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Deborah A. Garza. “When there is unfettered competition from brokers with innovative and efficient approaches to the residential real estate market, consumers are likely to receive better services and pay lower commission rates.”

The reality is that the settlement means very little to most players — although it will be reassuring to investors of cut-rate brokerages that saw their lifelines being cut off. It has been an especially tough marketplace for them.

During the intervening years, brokerages have pre-empted many of the advantages of VOWs. They have widely opened their listings to third-party players such as Zillow and Trulia or discount sites such as RedFin. They have more broadly participated in Internet Data Exchange — some had boycotted it — and they have become less reliant on one-size-fits-all sites such as Realtor.com — although it remains the largest real estate-oriented site, by far. At the same time, cut-rate brokerages such as ZipRealty have generally been able to gain access to the listings they need.

To be sure, the real estate industry has major changes ahead of it as the market continues to shake out and the role of agents and brokerages continues to shift. But as the market has shifted, very few people currently use VOWs. Certainly, this settlement is not going to bring in a new era of VOWs competing against the big (and little) guns of real estate.

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.