Groups have been using the Web since the mid-1980s for a wide range of activities, such as scheduling, discussions, photo sharing, referrals etc. Groups have been a special strength for Yahoo.
BigTent, a group software company based in San Francisco, has recently been vying with Yahoo for the same market, focusing largely on women. It now …

Ad agencies have never really been a major part of the world of local online advertising. Apart from some geotargeting for their national and regional clients, they haven’t paid much attention to the many opportunities in local (geotarget banners, local search, couponing, directory and social).
Where there has been agency support, it has been largely on …

We had the opportunity to sit down with industry leader MediaTrust to understand the major changes in the in the performance marketing (pay-for-results) category and the challenges of developing a cost-per-lead (CPL) model.
MediaTrust began as an affiliate marketing company, but was continually challenged by the deceptive practices of many affiliate marketers and publishers. Understanding …

Scripps’ HGTV Network, which reaches 99 million U.S. households on air, and 5 million unique visitors per month online, announced today that it is partnering with Cox’s Kudzu in a broad agreement with many moving parts.
The deal will provide HGTV’s on-air and online viewers with Kudzu’s local directory and social media information on home repairs …

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 …

Zillow announced today that it will power Yahoo’s “for sale” listings, in much the same way that Cars.com powers Yahoo’s new and used cars listings. Zillow typically carries 4 million-plus listings. The announcement spearheads a slew of online real estate announcements prior to next week’s Inman Real Estate Connect conference (which I am attending).
The enhanced …

8Coupons, the two-year-old New York-based coupon aggregator, today announced that it has launched The DealBot, which crawls the Web for specific deals.
Deals found by The DealBot are added to 8Coupons’ geolocated “MoneyMap” showing deals and merchant locations. Users can weigh in on coupons by affirmatively voting on a section called “Is this deal …

Local consumers are presumably in buying mode when they are researching where to have dinner, attend an event or go to the movies. How about when they are researching directions to get there?
In fact, mass transit directions in themselves represent a host of opportunities for local services and advertising (along with parking garage info). Companies …

Yahoo is seeking to extend direct marketing budgets online via a new deal with DM giant Valassis, which claims 15,000 advertisers and reaches 114 million shoppers. The new effort adds another dimension to Yahoo’s local reachout, which currently focuses on newspapers and Yellow Pages. The Valassis relationship has the potential to bring its broadcaster and …

Cox Enterprises reports that AutoTrader.com’s revenue declined three percent from 2008 to 2009,but increased its total revenue by one percent to $629 million, largely due to the addition of print operations formerly managed by AutoTrader Publishing.
The company considers its results very positively, given overall automotive advertising results that it says were down by 15-20 …

In a general session at YPA 2010 this morning, BIA/Kelsey’s Charles Laughlin moderated an advertiser panel that featured two advertisers as well as two publisher representatives. The advertiser representatives were local Las Vegas personal injury attorney, George Bochanis, and Shannon Rodman, Director, YPMG Marketing Operations at ServiceMaster. Publisher representatives were Chris Heilbock, regional vice president …

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 …

The Interactive Advertising Bureau, celebrating its 15th anniversary, is holding its annual leadership meeting at La Costa in Carlsbad, California. The sold-out meeting, dubbed “Ecosystem 2.0,” has attracted 650 attendees, up 30 percent from last year: a further omen of recovery in the economy. Over the years, we have actively helped IAB develop its leadership …

Zvents, the events lister, is reporting 35 percent year over year growth with over eight million unique visitors, largely due to its powering events for 285 local media brands, including  major newspapers and the NBC owned-and-operated TV stations.
CEO Ethan Stock cites Quantcast data showing Zvents Media Network as the 250th most used net on the …

Citysearch officially rolled out its CityGrid publisher network this week. The network moves Citysearch away from an exclusive focus on its individual sites (“Citysearch.com,” “Insiderpages.com,” “Urbanspoon”). Instead, it works on a distributed basis with partners (i.e., “SuperPages”) to marry local content and advertising.
In the short term, CityGrid represents the new face of Citysearch and the …

Having been in the trenches for the past year talking about multiproduct selling and how a consultative or collaborative sales process is a key component for selling multiple media, I keep hearing over and over again “I’ve been training on consultative selling for years so why should we rely on it to take us into …

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 …

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Yahoo has announced the addition of The Boston Globe and St. Petersburg Times to its Newspaper Consortium, which now has 37 media companies with 796 newspapers. The announcement was timed for The Newspaper Association of America’s  MediaXChange meeting this week in Las Vegas, where Yahoo holds a bi-annual summit.
The consortium was initially envisioned as a …

If any company had the local and regional footprints to build a local editorial network, it would probably be Gannett, with its 85 newspapers. If Gannett were to go that route, I always thought the conduit would be USA Today.
USA Today, however, has traditionally steered clear of integration with the local papers. It has waded …