Dex Media, the newly minted company that was once SuperMedia and Dex One, is counting on a strategy of serving as the “outsourced marketing partner for small-businesses” as they wade into the complex and confusing world of digital media.
That was a key message from this mornings investor call to reveal the Q1 results of predecessor …

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I recently had the opportunity to speak with Bruce Burke, CMO of M-ize. That’s m-ize like monetize, and mobilize which is exactly what m-ize does with its social media platform. The focus of m-ize is on specific product categories and expertise so that reviews and posts are more relevant to what a consumer is seeking, …

Companies that are successfully transforming their sales teams to serve a fast changing local and SMB marketplace tend to follow a common set of best practices. These include a focus on customer-driven key performance indicators, a heavy reliance on data to drive all aspects of sales, and sophisticated segmentation to maximize sales effectiveness and manage …

SuperMedia and Dex One completed their merger today, creating Dex Media, a company with annual revenues of approximately $2.6 billion (based on combined 2012 revenues), with about $500 million in digital revenue. The combined company also has 2,700 sales reps and roughly 665,000 advertisers.
The combined company is the second largest directory publisher in the United …

BIA/Kelsey recently rolled out the first in a series of reports offering very specific cuts of data from our Local Commerce Monitor research. LCM is BIA/Kelsey’s long-running study of how U.S. small business advertisers are evolving their use of media to acquire and retain customers.
The first of these “Spotlight” reports focuses on small business advertisers …

Will tech companies like Google, Apple, eBay/PayPal, Amazon, Microsoft, Square and Intuit move in on the role traditionally played by banks? It is a distinct possibility in the not-too-distant future, as digitized transactions, mobile payments and offers, and digital wallets usher in a debit-oriented environment that loosens traditional ties to credit cards and bank branch …

Disruption happens. In the local space, we’re seeing it happen with Yellow Pages and newspapers. Banks are seeing it happen as well, which will cause a major change in the way that customers keep track of their money, buy goods and services and stay “loyal” to merchants.
At NACHPA’s Payments 2013 in San Diego this week, …

Solocal Group CEO Jean-Pierre Remy offered directory publishers a vision for print to digital transformation built on a strong focus on building content, vertical segmentation and a relentless focus on execution. Remy was the keynote speaker at the Local Search Association annual meeting in Las Vegas.
Remy has been at the helm at Solocal (formerly PagesJaunes) …

This morning at the Local Search Association conference in Las Vegas, incoming chair Bill Dinan and association president Neg Norton outlined how a changing marketplace in Yellow Pages and local search are driving the need for changes in the association.
The LSA, formerly the Yellow Pages Association, represents directory companies that are in midst of radical …

Local Service Pages, a new publisher in NY who launched a Bronx book in the fall of 2012 is extending the usage of the print books with their Staten Island Book. They are the first directory publisher to have a “fully interactive book” through their actable ads.
The Local Service Pages is not your ordinary book; …

Over the past few months, BIA/Kelsey has been looking at various SMB-focused sales approaches among both traditional media players and digital pure plays. Our objective was to establish a common set of best practices. We discovered early on that the local sales organization that does everything right does not exist, or at least we were …

I am personally looking forward to Solocal CEO Jean-Pierre Remy’s presentation later this month at the Local Search Association’s annual conference in Las Vegas. Solocal, which recently changed its name from PagesJaunes, is the leading search and directory company in France. The company has developed a reputation for strong execution in building or integrating (often …

If you’re planning to be at next week’s NAB Show in Las Vegas, please look us up. During A Fireside Chat with Facebook and Google: Partnerships and New Ventures, I will interview Kay Madati from Facebook; and Bright Parks and David Gehrig from Google about new ways local stations can be benefit from working with …

The Long Tail in advertising may be SMB-centric. The Short Tail may be ad agency centered media buying, which only go to the Top 100 sites on the Web. If that’s the case, the “Mid-Tail” comes from local publishers, suggests Centro Media CEO Shawn Riegsecker. But these publishers, which rely on high value journalist-based content …

Primitive (and perhaps misleading) estimates on effective ROI have driven many local publishers up the wall. During Yelp’s IPO period, one analyst suggested that it cost pizza shops almost a hundred dollars in advertising on Yelp for every pizza sold.
To combat such mistakes and show how local ad dollars are really working, Yelp has come …

Significant news in the online presence/reputation management space came across the wire at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference last week in Boston, as VendAsta announced $8.25 million in Series B funding to accelerate the company’s holistic identity/reputation/social management solution.
In just over two years, it has established a deep network of local publishers (Cox Media Group, …

The recent Boston Consulting Group study done in cooperation with Yelp, raises many questions about SMB online ad spend and presence. We want to comment on the key top-level metric they reported: Three percent of their [SMBs] advertising budgets flows online.
Some subsequent commentators have interpreted this finding as narrowly referring to online display ads, …

Yellow Media’s longtime CEO Marc Tellier is stepping down and the company is seeking a replacement who can lead it through a full transformation to digital. Tellier has been at Yellow Media’s helm since October 2001. He has agreed to stay on during the search for his replacement to effect a smooth transition.
Yellow Media like most …

Tuesday at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local Conference, HubSpot CEO Brian Halligan emphasized that the local marketing game has changed – dramatically, secularly. Traditional “push” marketing techniques (usually requiring large budgets) no longer resonate with many consumers. Rather, small/medium businesses must be nimble and creative, qualities at the foundation of the company’s inbound marketing approach.
“It’s much …

Deals are still going strong but are never going to be the principal promotional channel for the vast majority of businesses, noted Deal Current President Patrick Dillon, who was speaking March 20 at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference in Boston. Dillon said that in San Diego, for instance, there are 23,600 businesses that advertise, but …