Just Dial, a local search engine company in India, raised approximately $10 million from SAP Ventures and Sequoia Capital Global Equities. The Mumbai-based firm was founded by VSS Mani in 1996 to connect potential buyers of products and services with small businesses. The company enables users to search for local merchants by toll free number, Internet, WAP and SMS.

The company has not diclosed how the funds will specifically be invested. However, The Economic Times reports that a senior company official said the money would power the company into the growth phase as it bets on expanding geographically.

Sebastien Provencher introduced the EADP audience in Mallorca, Spain, to the concept of conversational commerce. Praized Media’s latest product, Needium, mines local Tweets to uncover intent whether it is intentional or unintentional. Provencher offered the example of a series of tweets on people hungry for sandwiches or wishing for a particular type of sandwich. “While most think this is mundane, to a sandwich shop this is an opportunity to connect with an obvious sandwich fan.”

Needium’s platform examines local tweets to identify expressed needs, wants or life events that may be of interest to local advertisers. “With social media, it is a 365-day event with no holidays,” says Provencher. With 140 million tweets a day, there are many potential conversations to mine. “Those local businesses who are listening to and interacting with consumers via social media are being rewarded,” points out Provencher. There is a definite return to the beginnings of marketing where conversations between business owners and consumers are leading to long-term and valuable relationships.

When asked how to take advantage of social media, Provencher outlined his top three recommendations: “Recognize social media conversations constantly change and do not take a break, seek out influencers and make them feel rewarded, and use an authentic voice when communicating including humor.” If local advertisers can find ways to gain permission to interact with those who tweet their intentions, they have the opportunity to win new customers and build a potential long-term relationship with their customers — sweet!

The EADP conference in Mallorca was treated to the insights and good humor of Yellow Pages Group Canada’s Matthieu Houle and the company’s very funny ad campaign.

Mobile, Houle said, gives directories the appeal local advertisers are looking for. His opening slides revealed that “30 percent of YPG Canada’s searches come from mobile handsets which indicates the time is right to monetize this traffic.”

The reason for YPG’s enthusiasm, Houle said, is that “mobile fits into a directory’s established DNA because the content is local, it provides reach for an advertiser’s message, it is geo-specific, and it is searchable.”

While many complain that mobile is still too complex for local advertisers, Houle said this complexity actually creates opportunity for directory companies. “The complexity issue means that local advertisers need more of our attention to help them take advantage of mobile marketing. By helping them review campaign stats, make sense of how to improve a campaign, handle shorter campaign cycles and help them update content, we create closer relationships.”

The directory segment is uniquely positioned to provide deep local content closest to the actual sale in the form of maps, video, pictures, reviews and click to call. “With only 60 percent of advertisers having a website, the number decreases dramatically when we consider how many of those are optimized for the mobile Web. This means we have the opportunity to work with a huge number of advertisers we already serve,” Houle pointed out. The reality is, local advertisers need an easy-to-use destination to send their customers and prospect to whether a person is using a PC or a mobile smartphone.

When asked about the potential for mobile, Houle pointed to the growing number of mobile searches, saying that “intuitively these feel like new users; ones that may have not considered using the print book or the Internet Yellow Pages, but feel the mobile application best serves their needs. When we look at the demographics and the types of searches conducted, we certainly see a different kind of user.”

Publicar, S.A., a leading publisher in Latin America, announced today a deal with Virginia-based Ya Sabe, Inc. to provide local search for U.S. Hispanics at PaginasAmarillas.com. As part of the deal, YaSabe will operate the U.S. website. The company will offer local businesses and national brands an assortment of digital advertising products and services. In addition, YaSabe will sell pan-regional advertising to global brands that want to reach consumers in Latin America and the United States.

Publicar S.A., based in Bogota, Colombia, is a multimedia content provider for South and Central America with operations in Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Panama, Nicaragua, El Savador and Guatemala. Among its products and services are phone directories, Internet search services, website production, call centers and other digital products. Publicar’s Internet properties attract more than 10 million users per month and call centers receive more than 1 million directory assistance inquiries a week.

Ya Sabe, Inc. helps both local businesses and national brands connect with Hispanic consumers living in the United States through YaSabe.com, where users can search in English or Spanish to find information about 14 million U.S. local businesses. The proprietary dataset developed and managed by YaSabe makes it possible to aggregate queries from Hispanic consumers searching online at Google, Bing or on other partner destinations like PaginasAmarillas.com and Holaciudad.com.

Last week I spoke at the annual gathering of the International Classifieds Media Association (ICMA) in Vienna, Austria. My colleague Peter Krasilovsky and I have had the pleasure of attending and speaking at this function in past years.

What I noticed this year is a definite reawakening in the classifieds business, which now sees itself surviving the entry of Google (and now, also Facebook). That’s a very different situation from when I addressed this audience five years ago.

It is more than just survival, however. The ICMA attendees themselves have remarkably evolved. At this year’s gathering, there was a noticeable increase in young entrepreneurs operating businesses in more than 33 countries around the world. And there were plenty of vendors to enable the transformation of classifieds from the offline to the online world.

I was especially struck by two companies. Mocality.com is an early stage, online-only classifieds and directory company that has launched in Kenya. The company, which has found an interesting way to aggregate and verify business listings, is a division of Nespars, the large but little-known South African media conglomerate.

Mocality.com CEO Stefan Magdalinski told me that Kenya leads the way in Africa and perhaps other parts of the world in the use of mobile payment technology that lets mobile users pay for goods and services via SMS message. In essence, Kenya is moving to a cashless economy at a very fast pace.

As I listened and asked questions of many of the “delegates” — this is the European term for attendees — I learned a great deal about the new business opportunities being pursued by energetic entrepreneurs in both emerging and developed markets.

Axel Springer, the large German media company, for instance, has built a leading position in the jobs/recruitment space by leveraging e-mail and newsletters to drive traffic and conversion.

Another player is ISV, a mobile player that has already established a presence in Canada with a solution that allows mobile users to focus more on browsing than find and buy. ISV also offers an easy and fast approach for loading a listing via a mobile device. One can upload video and pictures and text via a mobile phone and can also remove a listing via the mobile.

ADConversion is another exciting company exhibiting at ICMA. The company, which is run by former Google AdSense execs in Europe, helps smaller publishers drive incremental revenues by optimizing AdSense advertising. In return, it asks for a percentage of the incremental revenue it helps generate.

All in all, it is very interesting to see new businesses and new business models in local media springing up all over the globe. While it is true that the U.S. market accounts for nearly half of the advertising budget around the globe, there are non-U.S. entrepreneurs — some running start-ups, some launching new business from inside long established media companies — who are driving very exciting business models in directories, local search, classifieds and social media.

Groupon, the pioneering deal-a-day provider, has used some of the proceeds of its recent $135 million round to buy CityDeal, a European imitator that has launched in 80 markets in 16 countries. The cost of the deal has not been disclosed, but CityDeal has raised $5.6 million. BIA/Kelsey notes that more than $284 million has been raised in the deal-a-day space altogether.

CityDeal, which will now carry the Groupon brand, was founded by The Samwer Brothers, who had previously launched a company that became the nucleus of eBay Europe. CityDeal reports that it has 600 employees, greatly increasing the size of Groupon’s own employee count, which is just over 200.

The acquisition of CityDeal greatly accelerates Groupon’s push to launch in as many markets as possible. It is currently in 59 U.S. markets and had earlier projected that it would be in 100 markets by the end of the year. Other deal-a-day providers in Europe include Groupalia, a Spanish company with sites in Madrid and Barcelona.

In a report on the deal-a-day space being issued this week for members of our Marketplaces program, BIA/Kelsey estimates that Groupon is poised to make $243 million this year from its 30 percent to 50 percent cut of deal-a-day offers; the addition of a second offer on many days in key markets; and the recent introduction of advertising.

MerchantCircle, which has established some expertise in launching markets on the cheap, says it is going international with new sites for Canada, the U.K. and Australia. It had previously announced that it is opening up its API to allow sites to use its reviews, ratings and enhanced profiles on an a la carte basis. HelloMetro, 8 Coupons and Center’d’s The Deal Map are among those sites already using the APIs.

VP Darren Waddell says the 25-person site’s approach is to “get live; get pages out there,” using local country data that it is licensing. In the meantime, he envisions that the international sites will organically grow. Until the sites are fully launched, MerchantCircle will only roll out its suite of free products, which include coupon creation, newsletter delivery, pictures and blogs.

The international sites will likely accelerate their growth when local partnerships are put in place. Waddell says MerchantCircle is looking at SMB firms, YP firms and others to work with. The partnerships will be akin to the relationship in the States that MerchantCircle has established with firms like Web.com. “We are looking for someone to drive [membership] to existing merchants. We want to engage folks that aren’t yet online,” he says.

These are declines that would be the envy of most global incumbent publishers, and in fact they are far better than what other traditional media peers have experienced in Australia. Newspapers, for example, declined 18 percent in the same period. But over the past few years, Sensis has been an industry beacon for sustaining print growth while so many other companies were seeing declines ranging well into double digits. The latest results raise the obvious question of whether Sensis is facing the same fate as its peers, albeit delayed a year.

We spoke yesterday with Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst, who doesn’t believe the declines reflect a sudden secular shift, and he expects to see “a more stable selling environment” in 2010 than in 2009. Akhurst offered several explanations for the 1H 2009-10 drop, and for why he is confident that print will rebound.

Akhurst noted that the first half of Sensis’ July-June financial year features all its largest markets (including Sydney and Melbourne), which as in other global markets have often substantially weaker print performances than small town and rural directories. Second, Akhurst pointed out that sales canvasses for these books took place in the early part of 2009, when worry over the global financial crisis was at its peak.

Akhurst also cited cause for hope. “Our customer base has remained intact,” he said, adding that most of the decline came from advertisers pulling back, or failing to expand into new books and categories as in the past. In general, customers did not abandon the category. Akhust says Sensis has 600,000 advertisers.

Also, Akhurst said that while the financial crisis created an overhang of fear, the actual economy has not suffered very much, with unemployment around 4 percent. He believes an improving economy plus loyal customers suggests a rebound in White and Yellow print.

“The next canvasses will be very important to us,” Akhurst says.

Still, the company is making changes. First it is moving significantly this year from a product based to a “network based” sales approach, meaning Sensis will focus its sales messaging around lead-generation and ROI metrics, across channels. The company will still sell on a pay for inclusion basis. Akhurst does not see pay for performance or performance guarantees anytime soon.

“It’s a continuation of a journey we’ve been on,” he said, noting for example the company’s dramatic increase in its commitment to call measurement a few years ago. The completion of the journey to the “network” approach depended on launching a new generation Amdocs publishing system, which went live in October.

Following a significant court decision, Yellow and White Pages content is not entitled to copyright protection in Australia. Assuming the case is upheld, any entity can legally copy the content from a Sensis directory, even to build a competitive local search or directory product, according to Australian press reports.

The decision is the outcome of a lawsuit filed by Sensis and its parent company, Telstra, against Local Directories, a small independent Australian publisher that used Sensis data in building its product.

The presiding judge argued, in essence, that the effort involved in building the databases didn’t rise to the level of intellectual property worthy of protection.

Sensis also released a statement following the ruling, which said, “This decision raises fundamental issues about the score of copyright law in relation to complex compilations, with far reaching impact beyond the facts of this particular case. Sensis is presently considering its position in relation to an appeal.”

We spoke also on Tuesday with Sensis CEO Bruce Akhurst, who downplayed the impact of the ruling. He pointed out that while the decision was not welcome, it really only clarifies the legality of an already common practice, copying Sensis’s listings data and classification system. He notes out that the content of the actual ads within the Sensis directories is and will continue to be protected under copyright.

On a recent visit to Stockholm, we sat down with Eniro President and CEO Jesper Karrbrink, who is managing Eniro through a strategic shift described in a presentation late last year as moving “from print dependence to online opportunity.” In a videotaped interview, Karrbrink insisted that Eniro’s product is its content. Print directories, the Internet, mobile phones and so on are merely “distribution formats” in his view. “This is a database company,” he said. Karrbrink compared directories to the music industry, which he said would be out of business had it determined its business was manufacturing records rather than distributing music.

The interview covered a wide range of issues, including:

• Eniro’s relationship with Google. He jokingly describes it as “love-hate.” He believes the key is for Eniro to provide search results on its eniro.se, .no, .dk, etc.,  platform that are more relevant to Nordic consumers than to compete in general search. “From an end user standpoint, they will always be competition. There is room for a couple of search engines out there.”
• Reselling competitors’ traffic. He didn’t rule out Eniro launching an SEM product but suggested it was not high on the company’s priority list. “We have discussed that, and we think we have a pretty good offering ourselves. And there is some risk to [selling others' traffic].”
• Sales channel strategies. He suggested that Eniro is reconsidering its current separate print and online sales approach. Going back to a single channel would be more cost efficient and more consistent with Karrbrink’s one product, multiple distribution channels philosophy. He says the company will do what makes the most sense. “This is not a religion.”

A more detailed write-up with more video excerpts will soon be delivered to clients of The Kelsey Report.