Local mobile portals make a lot of sense since most phones (even the iPhone 3G) don’t really lend themselves to much surfing. Another social/viral dimension is added through social networking enhancements via profile pages, Twitter and especially GPS.

Two services seem to be leading the way for locally based mobile social networking right now: Silicon Valley-based Loopt, which is backed by Sequoia Ventures, and Boston-based Where.com.

Where.com VP Michael Sullivan, an EnPocket vet, gave me the rundown on his service, which has about a million users activated. It is the first consumer facing product for parent company uLocate Communications, which started as a fleet tracking business five years ago and has a number of location-based services (LBS).

The immediate opportunity for Where is for friends to see who is near them and, if they want to go out, what is near them — an application it has branded as “buddy beacon.”  From a vertical advertising perspective, it’s highly appealing to brick-and-mortar type businesses, such as movie theaters, auto dealers and retail.

Longer term, Sullivan sees the service providing location-based “find it and buy it” services for Yellow Pages companies. “You can order a pizza with short code without putting in an area,” he says. They will automatically know where you are based on network location (opted in). A current deal with Sprint already offers up that capability. Directory assistance is also greatly enhanced, he says.

The bigger value proposition is with a service similar to 1-800-GOOG-411, which currently works on a ZIP code basis and narrows down searches to a radius of a few miles. But “when you are on the street, you want something sent to you that is a couple of hundred feet away,” says Sullivan.

Specifically referring to Google’s role in the space, Sullivan sees a “co-opetition” kind of relationship developing. “They aren’t focused on the social local that we’re doing. We’re seeing the richest engagement with users.”

Where is currently aggregating a great deal of premium content as a key part of its engagement strategy. Partners include such providers as golf.com, eventful.com, state parks, movie theaters, weather, winery finder, brewery finder, Starbucks, cheap gas and ZipCar.

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. 

Local voice search advertising is already getting promising results, with widespread reach, and high clickthrough rates, according to V-Enable CMO Craig Hagopian, who was speaking at DMS ’08. V-Enable is a San Diego-based mobile voice search company with 65 employees. It partners with Superpages.com, Yellowbook, and AT&T’s Ingenio and Yellowpages.com.

Hagopian said the company is averaging six searches per month from a typical user. Featured ads posted at the top of searches are clicked on 10 percent to 15 percent of the time, and half of those clicks results in a call to a business. The ads typically go for $1.20 to $1.40 per action.

The implications may be important. Looking forward, the wallet and key are likely to go away as everything gets digitized. “But the phone stays with you,” he said.

Search activity on the phone is also worth noting. Top features, in order, include Yellow Pages, Directory Assistance, Navigate/Mapping and Internet/Directory Assistance. “All come together with mobile. The mobile phone can do all these things,” said Hagopian.

Voice search has been put on the map over the past few years with the advent of free directory assistance service providers, not to mention Google (Goog411) and Microsoft (Tellme) entering the space. These services are increasingly educating the U.S. mobile market that there is a better alternative to paying $2 for a carrier-delivered DA call.

“We’ve had 500 million calls since we started three years ago,” said Scott Kliger, CEO of Jingle Networks, whose 1-800-FREE411 was the first major free DA play on the market. “That’s three quarters of a billion dollars that we’ve diverted from carrier directory assistance calls.”

According to TKG data, total DA calls will grow from 4.78 billion to 5.9 billion by 2012. The challenge with free DA, like a lot of other things, is monetization. Much of this comes down to human operators, which have proved more expensive than advertiser demand levels have been able to support.

Both Kliger and fellow panelist Craig Hagopian, president and CEO of V-Enable, agreed that market factors are driving usage to levels where ad-supported models will be more attractive over the next few years. V-Enable also touts a higher-end subscription service that supports the cost of live operators with monthly fees. This involves cost containment through a hand-off to an informed operator only in limited cases where automation doesn’t satisfy.

Hagopian also contends that ad support will become more attractive as the aforementioned consumer education is combined with more general adoption around mobile local search. These will be driven by an increasingly sophisticated mobile market. The intuitive nature of voice also lowers adoption barriers, while advertiser appeal will improve as search volume and ad inventory increase.

This will happen through AT&T’s acquisition of Ingenio and as Google continues to push Goog411 in parallel with its Radio Ads initiative. Given that 411 and radio ads are both audio, they’ll have synergies and help each other over the perennial chicken-and-egg inventory issues.

In the meantime, early-adopter advertisers are valuing mobile touch points with users though voice search, says Kliger. Jingle boasts 15 million active users and 100 million calls per year. It has 150 national brand advertisers, 1,500 regional advertisers, and 120,000 local advertisers, which it reaches with sales channel partners such as Citysearch.

This is all offered in a targeted way based on age, gender, location and time of day. Jingle does this based on contextually targeting voice searches. V-Enable, being a search application on the mobile device, does this too but adds registration data to targeting ads.

“Seventy-five percent of users give us this information when they sign up, which has given us a 2x increase in advertising rates,” said Hagopian. “Combine this with targeting by location and time of day, and it can be a powerful tool for advertisers.”

President and CEO Frank Jules, who has held the top slot at AT&T Advertising & Publishing for a year, laid out a prescription for Yellow Pages growth during a keynote at Kelsey’s Directional Media Strategies conference in Atlanta, noting at the top that his business is “changing dramatically.” Jules’ prescription is heavily dependent on the success of AT&T’s efforts on the Internet, which is growing at a clip of 40 percent per year, and social network models.

Cracking social models such as personalized plans and events is “very, very important. If we do it well, we’ll grow from 20 million to 40 million unique visitors on the Web,” said Jules. “And we think there is monetization for advertisers and customers along the way.”

Social areas that will be tackled by AT&T include movies, autos and restaurants. Video also plays a major role. He noted that AT&T has sold 20,000 video ads to small-business customers to date. “They are the least likely to churn,” he noted. “They’re something that actually stays up there. We’re very big on them.”

Going forward, Jules says he has just finished getting budgeting approved for a three-year growth plan in which the Internet gets the lion’s share of the investment. But the plan also includes investments in print, Hispanic media and rep training. “Simple search is evolving to search, discover and transact in all these categories.

“Lots of capital is being put into mobile apps,” he added, noting that the iPhone is “the premier device. We’re spending lots of time on voice recognition applications.”

AT&T’s free directory assistance service, 1-800-YellowPages, is also part of the mix, as is its recent acquisition of Ingenio, a leading pay-per-call service. “We are using it in underutilized headings,” he said. “But we are only dabbling in it today. We’ll be providing a much more robust offering in 2009. It will be the small businesses’ ultimate proof in value,” he predicted.

Jules also provided details of a digitalized Yellow Pages service in the former BellSouth region called “RealPagesLive.” The service enables users to type in digital Post-it notes as mnemonic devices and to turn pages virtually. He conceded, however, that the service has been under-promoted. Mostly, it is being offered for corporate databases, he said.

France Telecom is finally pulling the plug on the 26-year-old Minitel service, which it launched in France in 1982. (Actually, Minitel is really 15 years older than that according to SEC filings: “Under an advertising sales agreement entered into in 1967, France Telecom granted PagesJaunes exclusive rights to canvas and collate the advertising to be incorporated within the telephone directory and the alphabetically classified Minitel service.”) Minitel was to replace the White Pages, but not the Yellow Pages.

According to Wikipedia, France Telecom estimated that almost 9 million terminals had access to the Minitel network at the end of 1999 and it was used by 45 percent of the French population. Originally Minitel was seen as a model for mass deployment of interactive terminals and electronic services. The first 4.5 million terminals were provided at no cost as incentive to use a nationwide, electronic telephone directory. They then started to add a variety of interactive services to allow users to shop for retail products and transportation services, as well as access databases, information services and message boards.

In 1992, Donald Mackenzie, president of Nynex Information Resources Co. (Yellow Pages for New York and New England), told The Kelsey Report, “My view is that now Minitel is online and I want to ask my brethren in the directory business if they would like to share the information and the costs to develop it into a national Yellow Pages product in the U.S.” At the same time, other RBOCs and independent companies were evaluating electronic delivery of information, but no one in the U.S. anticipated replacing the print product with an electronic product. US WEST adopted Minitel to buy into its electronic directory services as a backbone to its videotex application.

By 1997, Minitel had peaked as the Internet provided a more robust platform. Minitel users, not unlike the people who are addicted to a soap opera, resisted fiercely because they thought, in part, that Minitel was their own. The service was judged to be a success in terms of accomplishing several of France Telecom’s objectives, even though it was not a business model that could be transferred to other countries. Today, according to France Telecom’s most recent quarterly report, Minitel revenues totaled only 4.5 million euros in the first half of 2008, down 69.4 percent compared with the first half of 2007.

The electronic information services industry owes a great deal to Minitel. May it rest in peace when it is discontinued at the end of March 2009.

Yellow Pages Group New Zealand has announced the debut of “Yellow mobile” on the Telecom and Vodafone Live! networks. 

According to New Zealand’s Business to Business magazine:

“Yellow Pages Group Digital Media Director Blair Glubb said Yellow mobile will complement the company’s existing range of advertising solutions which already cover the print, online and voice (via the 018 and 0172 directory assistance services) channels. ‘Yellow mobile will help businesses connect with the huge numbers of New Zealanders who want to find businesses and their products and services while they’re on the go. This is a big step towards our vision of reaching every New Zealander every day.’ ” 

While YPG-NZ could have gone with a more sophisticated approach, it has opted for a simple application that provides users with flexibility in how they want to interact with Yellow mobile.

“By texting a keyword, category or business name and a location to 018, subscribers will automatically receive a text message with contact details of the business most relevant to their search criteria. For example ‘Café Valentino. Christchurch’ or ‘Plumbers, Ellerslie.’

“As well as containing contact details for the business, the return text message will also include a link to a full set of search results on the Yellow mobile WAP portal (a WAP capable handset is required to use the link).” 

With a high penetration of mobile users, New Zealand is an ideal location for mobile local services. Mobile was an area lacking in YPG-NZ’s portfolio and was a stumbling block to its goal of reaching “every New Zealander every day.” The key to the success of this venture will certainly be in selling existing advertisers onto the mobile platform with incremental investment.  

“Free one touch directory assistance” from Google’s free directory assistance service, Goog-411, is being advertised in Office Depot’s newspaper circulars as a main feature on GE Dect 6.0 Digital Cordless Phones.

The ad copy spells it out:

1- Use the dedicated one touch button on your GE phone.
2- Search for a business by name or category.
3- Goog-411 connects your call FREE of charge.

What it looks like is the beginning of a new “bounty” relationship that could pay nice dividends for GE, while bringing increased visibility to Google’s DA effort. The last time we saw this tactic was with PC makers, which routinely won bounties from Internet service providers like AOL and Earthlink in the mid-1990s.

European Directory Assistance has launched a new English-language directory assistance site in Belgium called 14-14, which offers residential and business search, with the latter available by name and category. Part of the new service’s positioning is that during business hours, consumers prefer Web-based over phone-based directory assistance.

According to the release:

“EDA’s specific aim is to reach the large expatriate community living in and around Brussels, who often speak neither Flemish nor French but generally converse in English, for instance people working for the European Union, NATO, Eurocontrol or the numerous multinationals established in Belgium.”

EDA operates phone-based DA services in Belgium (French and Flemish), Ireland and the Netherlands.

In a significant development, AT&T’s Yellowpages.com is replacing Yahoo! Local Search for AT&T’s broadband and Internet customers. It is a move that will greatly enhance Yellowpages.com’s position in the space. The company recently told analysts it expects to attract 2 billion searches in 2008 and 3 billion by 2010.

The move is part of a broad multi-year reworking of AT&T’s existing deal with Yahoo! that gives Yahoo! $300 million to $400 million in upfront cash, according to analysts interviewed by paidContent.

It replaces a previous deal that was primarily based on providing Yahoo! with a share of every AT&T broadband user for a co-branded AT&T/Yahoo! portal and sell through of premium services – an arrangement that AT&T has publicly chafed at.

According to published reports, the previous deal brought Yahoo! roughly $300 million in high margin cash flow. A complete collapse of the deal was unlikely, but the renegotiated terms reflect AT&T’s strong position in the company’s many markets like wireless, directories, and increasingly, the Internet.

AT&T is clearly focused on building up its own portal efforts. The new deal will have a portal “powered by Yahoo!.” With the Yahoo! deal completed, it is adding access to its portal and e-mail for all AT&T customers, not just AT&T Internet customers.

The news comes at an interesting time. Last week, the wireless spectrum bids were due and AT&T will clearly be a contender. Further, Google is rumored to benefit substantially from increased mobile traffic from the iPhone available exclusive through AT&T Wireless.

It is unclear if the deal essentially cuts Yahoo! out of being a local search destination site for AT&T customers. In an environment where top portal and search brands are recipients of mobile usage, that seems unlikely. Regardless, it gives Yahoo! more opportunity to sell display and search advertising throughout the AT&T network. It is something that could have strong dividends as Yahoo! battles directly with Google and others. No doubt, retaining tight control of the carrier deck will allow AT&T to steer traffic accordingly.

It is of no small coincidence that last month, AT&T reworked corporate branding to reflect the company’s intended direction. What was once “AT&T Advertising & Publishing” is now being touted at “AT&T Advertising & Search.” The merger between Yellowpages.com and Ingenio, a $250 million transaction, confirms our belief that AT&T is moving the company toward a fully integrated cross-channel marketing company.

It also extends the reach of the Yahoo! portal to the old BellSouth territories recently integrated into AT&T, and extends Yahoo!’s content beyond the desktop to mobile as well – something that will be much more important over time.

According to paidContent, Yahoo! may see declines over $150 million to $200 million in revenue due to the deal’s restructuring. But there clearly is also plenty of upside if Yahoo!’s advertising is widely used, and mobile develops as strongly as anticipated.

We have speculated for some time that AT&T is a natural fit for Yahoo! in terms of an eventual merger or sale. While this news doesn’t sway us one way or another, we do believe these two companies are moving closer together and an eventual marriage of some type is more than a remote possibility.

(This post was co-written by Matthew Booth and Peter Krasilovsky.)