A few years ago, the location of businesses became a big question mark, as well as a strategic issue, as people wanted to shop or dine nearby. These “geo-fencing” issues were especially important for Yellow Pages companies.
Since then, search has become more the norm, along with GPS-based phones, which have location baked into them. What …

When it comes to Local Yokel Media’s business focus, it’s all about 15 miles. That’s because 80 percent of consumer spending is done within 15 miles of home. CEO and Founder Dick O’Hare shared that fact at this afternoon’s session on “Local Targeting: Getting the Bull’s Eye.” O’Hare added that geo-contextual relevance is the …

JiWire, the mobile Wi-Fi network reaching 40 million users each month, announced today that it raised $20 million in funding led by Trident Capital. In the past year, JiWire expanded its business to enable advertising across both mobile applications and public Wi-Fi using Compass, an interactive platform that makes locating brands easier. Compass turns standard display …

It’s hard work distilling 20,000 people, hundreds of sessions, droves of start-ups, seemingly endless parties and even a Mike Tyson cameo into a cliffs notes recap of SxSW Interactive. Not that anyone is shedding any tears for me. America loves lists (or so I’ve heard), so here are “the big ideas” that have my brain buzzing …

SCVNGR “chief ninja” Seth Priebatsch and Gowalla CEO Josh Williams both employ game mechanics to elevate their location-based services, and both believe that gaming’s inherent fun factor can motivate more important behaviors, including social good. But that’s where the similarities stop.
The duo delivered keynote addresses at SxSW Interactive, Priebatsch in front of 4,000, Williams in …

Yesterday I had the chance to talk to Foursquare GM Evan Cohen. A former Jupiter analyst and Bebo exec, Cohen was brought aboard last year to help steer the ship amid rapid growth.
The wide reaching discussion hit upon the company’s perpetual innovations “beyond the check-in” and the challenge in appealing to the large but elusive …

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 …

During the 72-hour whirlwind that was ILM:10, several other announcements also came down the pike. Among them:
- Group buying giant Groupon continues its flurry of partnerships. The Chicago-based deal a day inked separate deals with the Chicago Tribune Media Group and JiWire. The Tribune agreement calls for Groupon to power local deals each weekday on the company’s recently …

While 2010 has been lauded as “the year of local,” it has also seen an influx of interest and spending by national brands to drive neighborhood-level store traffic. These initiatives have taken diverse (and sometimes highly publicized) forms: Gap’s deal-a-day offer through Groupon, Best Buy’s mobile check-in experiments with Shopkick, and a host of real-time inventory …

At ILM:10, Pandora’s Cheryl Lucanegro (senior VP of ad sales) and Brian Mikalis (VP of performance sales) made it very clear where the popular Internet radio service is headed next — to your car dashboard.
The company is leveraging two fundamental insights in driving (pardon the pun) its migration into the vehicle: More than 50 percent …

There is a lot going on in online media on the East Coast evidenced by the panel on geolocation here at the Internet Summit in Raleigh, North Carolina, sponsored by TechMedia and Southern Capital Ventures. Geolocation continues to be major news given the press coverage of Gowalla, Foursquare, Google and Facebook, which are all chasing …

Google has been telling anyone that will listen just how bullish it is on local/mobile commerce, and it has backed the bombast with a series of initiatives (Places, Place Search and Tags just to name three recent, relevant examples) to aggressively court SMBs and better connect with consumers at a neighborhood level. The latest is the formal …

With more than 150 brands offering daily deals, and traditional media companies now building out their own deals platforms, the need for differentiation is apparent. LivingSocial, which according to compete.com boasts as many monthly unique visitors as Groupon, has acquired social adventure company Urban Escapes to position itself as a “local activity discovery engine,” not simply a deals provider.
Rather than deals, …

Online “ad versioning” has taken on heightened significance as national and regional brands vie for their own piece of the sizable local advertising pie. However, as SEM becomes more sophisticated and consumers expect smart targeting from commercial messages, basic metro-level campaigns often don’t suffice. Kenshoo realizes that and is implementing its Conversion Attribution Modeling platform …

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 …

 
BIA/Kelsey has asserted that a logical next step for deal-a-day providers is to target smaller geographical radii and specific consumer preferences to bolster their value proposition. LivingSocial has made a move in that direction by serving deals at the neighborhood — or sub-metro — level.  
New York and Washington, D.C. (LivingSocial’s home base), are debuting the offering. …

The location-based, check-in phenomenon that Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt and now Facebook Places have popularized domestically is going global, and the Austrian social Yellow Pages community Tupalo wants to be the first mover as the virtual check-in line crosses the pond.
The Vienna-based company, a joint venture of HEROLD.at and European Directories that is operational in five European nations, …

As the demand for dependable call-tracking tools intensifies in the SMB marketplace, WebVisible — the Irvine, California-based local online marketing provider — has unveiled upgrades to its portfolio of services to enable more focused ad geotargeting and greater call-tracking capabilities for businesses.
WebVisible has boosted its Geneva Platform to serve locally targeted ads for its clients across all …

We note with interest the new partnership between New York Magazine and Foursquare, the location-based service now in 21 cities that lets friends see where you have “checked in” and lets you vie to be mayor (hail Outside.in’s Camilla Cho, our mayor at the recent BIA/Kelsey Marketplaces conference).
New York’s 7,000 followers on Foursquare will have …

Blog king Robert Scoble, during a presentation at Inman Real Estate Connect today in San Francisco, said we’ve entered “the third movement of information” during the Internet era. All are necessary to boost appearances on Google, he told the real estate oriented audience. In 1998 we saw the introduction of the blog, he noted. …