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.

New York Magazine, whose online effort is run by longtime MSNBC.com exec Michael Silberman, has emerged as one of the most ambitious city magazine efforts on the Web, competing directly against city guides and other local services. Yesterday, the site, which leverages a sales force of 100, announced a partnership with Clickable to power its local online advertising.

Clickable itself is gaining steam. The company has expanded beyond its roots in vertical search to include a platform with display ad management as well. Last week, it announced a similar deal with Fox Audience Network.

CEO David Kidder tells us that more than 2,000 sites are currently using the Clickable platform, which provides access to Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. Kidder says that Fox is rolling out the platform in two phases. The first phase will utilize Clickable’s performance-based model. It is a lot of strategic positioning for inventory and integration. The second phase will include several enhanced features, such as click to call.

Aaron Finn of AdReady and Michael Barr of iPromote discussed the opportunity to serve advertisers interested in display advertising particularly in the self-serve environment. Finn noted that there are roughly 1.4 million businesses participating in search whereas there are only 44,000 businesses participating in display. He believes that there is scale for display and that it’s the next big opportunity for self-service advertisers. Both Finn and Barr noted the importance of easy-to-use automated advertising controls, access to creative tools, and the ability to produce the ad in many display units/sizes and file types.

Fellow panelists Victor Wong of PaperG and Warren Kay of Fox Audience Network echoed some similar sentiments, indicating that self service is here, but it needs to be nurtured. Kay, however, who has been in the local sales environment for years, most recently at Yahoo, simply stated “local sales is difficult.” He said that anyone who thinks he or she can provide a self-service solution and think advertisers are going to flock to it is misguided. While Kay believes that self service is a way to attract customers, he notes that its not the end all be all and that essentially feet-on-the-street options are still critical to local sales.

The New York Times publishes separate sports and business sections on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It may soon move away from separate sections altogether. This past Saturday, there was not a single display ad in either the sports or the news sections of the paper. There was less than a quarter page of classified advertising.

NCI President and CEO Dan McCarthy told attendees of Marketplaces 2009 in Los Angeles today that “local marketing spend is going to be reduced tremendously. It will have a big impact on all marketing budgets,” he said.

“Local media starts with price and results, “added McCarthy. “Marketers needs to hold on to as many dollars, especially with a glut of 3.6 million homes for sale and millions of duplicated listings on every independent site. You can’t feel like you’ll have a dominant impact on consumers looking for a home,” said McCarthy, whose company publishes The Real Estate Book, ApartmentFinder and the Livingchoices.com portal, among other titles.

The real estate advertising market itself has shrunk from $8 billion to $9 billion in 2006 to $3.5 billion to $4 billion today. “There is a significant sucking of dollars,” he said. On the bright side, however, “marketers are still trying to figure out: ‘How do I play?’ Social media adds another wrinkle to all this. It turbocharges word of mouth and reduces the value of ad-related leads.”

McCarthy additionally noted that Facebook has 156,000 real estate professionals using it, compared to 136,195 on ActiveRain and 80,260 on MySpace. Local marketers have to commit to content that is authentic and turn it into actual offline relationships, creating a massive personal network.

AutoTrader CEO Chip Perry, speaking on the same session, said online’s real value is that it is closing the information gap. “The biggest cap was making used cars visible. We used to have 3 percent of them visible; now we have 50 percent.”

The secret to success in the auto space is to “focus on unmet needs,” added Perry. When it comes to auto sites, what people want are “cars, inventory and specials.” That’s the reason for AutoTrader’s next major initiative: display advertising. “It’s all that is left of newspaper advertising,” he noted.

Google, as part of a series of cutbacks, is eliminating its Print Ads program, which had 800 newspapers and other print sources participating. The program, which began in November 2006 with 50 newspaper partners, stops selling new placement Feb. 28.

The Print Ads program, launched for Google by online pioneer Tom Phillips (DejaNews, Starwave, Go Network, etc.), used Google’s system to auction off print space. It has been part of a broad effort to engage other media and get beyond online text ads.

“Remember where 93 percent of your revenue comes from,” said Phillips, in a 2007 presentation to the Newspaper Association of America. “Don’t forget your core business. Our goal is to bring more revenues to our partners. We (the print ads program) only survive if the print business thrives. We think we can help turn the table.”

The program has been especially interesting as an alternative to Yahoo’s newspaper consortium, which has been cultivating its online aspirations in search, national advertising and article placement. Print Ads, by comparison, has been entirely about adding new advertisers to the declining print product. Advertisers taking part were not typical newspaper fare. They included Sur La Table, ServiceMagic, Hotel.com, Covad and Blue Nile.

A post on Google’s company blog attributed to Print Ads Director Spencer Spinnell notes that the company remains dedicated “to working with publishers to develop new ways for them to earn money, distribute and aggregate content and attract new readers online. We have teams of people working with hundreds of publishers to find new and creative ways to earn money from engaging online content. AdSense, DoubleClick, Google Maps, YouTube, Google Earth, Google News and many other products are a part of our significant investments to innovate in this space.”

The manner in which Google has positioned Print Ads with parallel traditional media programs (Radio Ads and TV Ads) in the past makes us wonder how this move affects those programs. According to a Google representative we reached today, it shouldn’t at all: Stepping away from newspaper ads is an isolated move, based on dynamics and the current state of the medium itself.

“We made the decision to stop supporting Print Ads based on the impact the product was having for our partners and advertisers. We weren’t having the impact we wanted,” said a Google rep. “With regards to radio and TV ads and how those tie in, we’ve made excellent progress with adding inventory from NBC Universal and the Hallmark Channel, and the Audio Ads program is doing well with more than 1,600 radio stations.”

Additional Reporting by Mike Boland

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Related: See TKG report on Google’s traditional media programs, “Google’s Next Frontier: Traditional Media.”

We’re just about ready to go with Interactive Local Media 2008, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, in the heart of Silicon Valley. It should be a very important, game-defining event — and the first one for The Kelsey Group in the new BIA Advisory Services era (BIA Financial Network acquired Kelsey last week, adding resources and smarts to the team).

Previously, we announced a lot of the lineup, with hand-picked execs from Google, Yahoo, Angie’s List, ServiceMagic, Comcast, NBC, TurnHere, Adify, Centro, PointRoll, IAC, Citysearch, Outside.in, Sensis, Topix, Praized, PegasusNews, VoodooVox, comScore, Yodle, Done Right, Metrix4Media, LiveDeal, MerchantCircle, CityVoter and Institute for the Future.

Here are some new highlights. Our opening keynoter is local search innovator Mark Canon, the ex-Switchboard/AOL Search/Autobytel exec who now runs Yell.com. Mark will share his authoritative insights on local, vertical and directory/search, and the differences between the U.S. and international markets.

We have also developed a great “pre-conference” session with Andrew Shotland, the former NBC and Insider Pages exec who has become “Mr. Local SEO Guide.” Andrew will provide his insider tips on search engine marketing.

From Yahoo’s Newspaper Consortium, we’re adding former Tribune Interactive exec Mike Silver, who represents the newspapers in all this. He joins Yahoo’s Lem Lloyd on the podium to talk about what we’ve learned so far.

On the SMB SuperForum, we’ve added Jeff Stibel from Web.com, who will be keynoting the mega-session. We’ve also added John Keister from Marchex, Travis Fore from Network Solutions and Matt Howard from SMBLive (an especially interesting broadband service).

On the Video SuperForum, we’ve landed Brian McCarthy from Citysearch, Peter Bowen from SeeSaw Networks, Glenn Pingul from Mixpo, Diaz Nesamoney from Jivox and Steve Espinosa from eLocal Listing. And we’ve added an out-of-home twist — out of home is a huge growth area in local advertising — via John McMenamin of Ripple.

We’re also pleased to have lured Pieter Grasdijk from the Netherlands to talk about iLocal, and Josh Herman from Acxiom’s InfoBase to discuss local audience segmentation. Wrapping things up with “all thoughts local” are three of our smartest friends: Ethan Stock from Zvents, Jennifer Dulski from Center’d and Craig Hagopian from V-Enable.

Throughout the whole thing, we’re running state-of-the-art and really fun iPhone and video demos and even some contests, with the audience voting via laser pen (yours to keep). See you in Santa Clara? Here’s the link to register.

Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace is seeking to jump-start local and small-business advertising by launching a homegrown Self-Serve Ad Service. Initial advertisers are likely to be rock bands — the first major segment to have adopted MySpace itself — but the service hopes to move up the food chain as time goes on.

Fox is making several dozen templates available for do-it-yourselfers. In this regard, it is similar to AdReady, which provides white-label service to The New York Times Co. and WhitePages.com. Advertisers can also use their own artwork. Targeting is available by gender, age, region, city/state and interests.

Newly released Kelsey Group research shows that 41 percent of small businesses say they would like to use self-serve in lieu of salespeople. But professional local ad sellers — especially on the Yellow Pages side — remain skeptical that people would actually be willing to use self serve for renewals, upsells, etc. (I think they will.)

OK, we’ve got the format(s) and “best and brightest” speaker roster set for Interactive Local Media: Extending Local Channels, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, California, next to San Jose.

At the top of the list is Angie Hicks, “the Angie” from Angie’s List, and Rodney Rice from ServiceMagic. They’ll tell it all during one-on-one interviews.

More excitement is to be found on a financial panel with Kara Nortman from IAC, and the “Transition to the Internet” sessions with Kevin Cuddihy from Comcast, Larry Olevitch from NBC Local, Lem Lloyd from The Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium and Meredith Papp from Google’s Traditional Media team.

For some people, Interactive Local Media is all about the ad nets. If that’s the case, we have three of the leaders in the vertical and local space: Russ Fradin from Cox’s Adify, Shawn Riegsecker from Centro and Jason Tafler from Gannett’s PointRoll.

And we’ll have plenty of “Community” with Mark Josephson from Outside.in, Mike Orren from Pegasus News, Dave Galvan from Topix and Seb Provencher from Praized.com. We’ve also zeroed in on new business directories in the U.S. and abroad with Chris Smith from Sensis and Eric Peacock from Citysearch/Insider Pages. Watch for some additions there, to be announced shortly.

We are also looking forward to new directions in mobile with Greg Wester from VoodooVox (Greg, of course, is one the smartest analysts to come out of the Yankee Group). We’ll have a lot of other local mobile-related things at the show, including leading-edge local iPhone and Google Android demos.

We’re especially proud to land Mike Liebhold from the Institute For the Future to give us a sense of how mobile, GPS and mapping technologies will affect the future of local media, community and society. Mike is a longtime tech industry leader and visionary at Apple, among other places. All this will be rounded out with some great comScore data on multiplatform local usage from Brian Jurutka, a great presenter and analyst.

What will really make this conference stand out, however, are the multi-paneled “SuperForums” on SMB marketing and video, which we hope will be complete with audience “voting” via laser pen (if we can figure out the logistics with 600+ attendees). The SMB SuperForum is now largely in place with Paul Ryan from DoneRight; Josh Walker from CityVoter; Court Cunningham from Yodle; Todd Crandall from Metrix4Media; Darren Waddell from MerchantCircle; and Mike Englehart, the new CEO from LiveDeal.

On the video SuperForum side, we’re kicking things off with a mini-keynote from Brad Inman, CEO of TurnHere (and founder of HomeGain and InmanNews); great demos; and many top speakers to be announced shortly. Here’s The Kelsey Group URL for where to sign up. (But don’t delay. Prices go up shortly.)