By now, much of the connected universe, and certainly all of technolphilia, is aware of Facebook’s IPO, which seeks to raise up to $5 billion (and perhaps eventually $10 billion) when its shares go public this spring. The net effect is a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion for the 8-year-old social network.
Mining the …

 
The local display ad companyPaperG today unveiled a deal with AOL to offer its local display advertising technology via Patch, AOL’s hyperlocal platform.
The PaperG solution offers the ability to create a locally targeted display ad with only the businesses name and address as a starting point. PaperG then crawls and aggregates the content necessary to …

In the afternoon session at the BIA/Kelsey DMS conference on Wednesday afternoon, two players in the local search industry talked about the growing local display market and the use of display by SMBs. Moderated by Matt Booth of BIA/Kelsey, Tyler Bosmeny from PaperG and Warren Kay from iPromote spoke about the increasing use of display …

Over the past year, American Express has embarked on a series of initiatives centered on digital advertising intelligence for SMBs. These include SearchManager (via Clickable) for SEM and multiple social media experiments with Facebook and Foursquare. Now, its small business-focused OPEN division is rounding out the suite with AdManager, which utilizes AdReady’s dynamic display capability …

ReachLocal announced Wednesday that it entered a strategic alliance with SureFire Search, a New Zealand marketing agency that works with small and medium-sized businesses. The move will expand ReachLocal’s global presence, which includes online ad campaigns in the United Kingdom, Germany and Australia.
ReachLocal trained SureFire Search’s sales force to deliver its products and services, including …

Centro, a pioneer in local online ad placement for national marketers, has received $22.5 million in equity financing from FTV Capital. The money will go toward expanding its regional sales presence and also toward software development.
CEO Shawn Riegsecker tells us that he anticipates adding six to eight regional offices to its existing roster of …

To date, most location-specific advertising requires in-store check-ins to unlock discounts and special offers. Naturally, that necessitates having a storefront that lends itself to walk-in — and check-in — traffic. Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt and others have garnered first-mover hype with these location-based services but have struggled to achieve mainstream adoption beyond the tech elite.
JiWire is extending …

Back in April, I talked to 4Info CEO Zaw Thet about a number of mobile themes and the directions in which he’s taking the company. One of those directions was diversification beyond its flagship SMS content and ad serving.
4Info is the 800-pound gorilla in SMS but has been recently moving into mobile display ads as …

With more than half of its 65 million users listening from portable devices, Internet streaming leader Pandora sees massive opportunity in mobile. In its latest move to tap that potential, the company is partnering with AdReady to introduce geo- and demo-targeted audio and display ad opportunities for local businesses.
VP of Sales Brian Mikalis told BIA/Kelsey that …

For iPromote CEO Michael Barr, “a picture is worth a thousand words.” Now he’s trying to convince third-party publishers, and the local clients they represent, that it’s a no-brainer to serve keyword and location-based display ads alongside the text-based search ads they are already running. This is expressly what iPromote does with its LocalSearch offering.
Barr believes …

AdReady is an established presence in display advertising, serving up both creative automation and media campaign buying tools for agencies, publishers and advertisers alike. The Seattle-based firm has undergone a leadership change over the past year, however, and new CEO Karl Siebrecht wants businesses to be able to utilize AdReady at a more granular level for optimal audience …

We had the opportunity to meet with Medialets CEO Eric Litman to understand its unique approach to deploying media rich mobile advertising. Medialets started out as a mobile ad network much like Feedburner but quickly realized that what mobile advertising lacked was a platform that facilitated the placement of media rich mobile ads in publisher …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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, …

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 …