The ability to marry store inventory with search and promotions is an intriguing one for interactive local media. But what closes the loop on this vision?
Sherry Thomas-Zon, VP, local shopping, Local Corp. — the new name for Local.com — suggested this week at ILM West in San Francisco that inventory can serve as an …

A big chunk of the newspaper industry has banded together to adopt Find n Save, a shopping platform featuring a single place to review deals, product inventory, weekly specials, “cents off” grocery deals and local ads.
Participating newspaper companies include many of the companies participating in the Yahoo search and national advertising consortium and the Zillow …

The Deals space is so hot, yet there are many unanswered questions about it. We know it will be big, but who really knows what it is going to look like 18 months from now?
With that in mind, we have developed a brand-new addition to our regular conference schedule: Deals 3D, a day-and-a-half event taking …

The purchase funnel that takes consumers from awareness to transaction and retention has been an article of faith among marketers for many years. TV advertising, for instance, is “upper funnel.” Yellow Pages, at the point of sales consideration, has been “lower funnel.”
Google has other ideas. Any purchase consideration must now consider the impact of search …

Auctions have influenced a more dynamic shopping environment, but aren’t very important and have ended up as just a niche shopping format, argues James Surowiecki in the June Wired (article not posted). Even on eBay, they just make up 31 percent of all sales.
It’s a far cry from 10 years ago, when Priceline founder Jay …

Finally, we have the long awaited merger of a directory with a retail solution. Today, prior to its earnings call, Local.com announced it would integrate product and store availability into its growing suite of women-oriented services by acquiring Krillion.com. The sale price was $3.5 million.
When it was launched in 2006, Krillion was a real …

Facebook today launched its Deals product as an “alpha” in five markets: San Francisco, San Diego, Dallas, Austin and Atlanta. The effort plays up Facebook’s social connectivity, making it simple to “like” and share deals, and promote throughout the site. The launch comes at a time of rapid expansion in the deals space. Google Offers …

Chicago Magazine will partner with Next Jump April 28 for “Intersections of Style,” a “VIP Shopping Night” that will bring thousands of Chicagoans to select stores offering exclusive discounts and perks (i.e., “champagne check-in”). The event is being promoted by Chicago Shopping, a new shopping portal by the Chicago Tribune, which partners with Next …

When hyperlocal zeroes in on local marketplaces, it makes a lot more sense to me. Witness ShopBuffalo, an attractive new marketplace from The Buffalo News launched as a companion to Buffalo.com. The site has partnered with ShopCity and Hero, a local design firm.
Launched March 31 as part of a broader redesign, ShopBuffalo provides free …

Retail inventory has been revving up as a new, highly mobile-oriented tool for retailers to highlight stock on hand and steer consumers to store locations. It is an important lead-generating feature on new shopping portals, such as FindnSave. Research by JiWire shows that 62 percent of consumers seek product availability when researching goods online. The …

What do you do to keep your customer after your deal of the day runs? That’s a big question for tens of thousands of SMBs — many of which have used deal a day as a loss leader and have an investment in making it work.
Companies such as Closely and WildFire Interactive have a number …

EBay has issued a press release today, recounting some of its mobile milestones this year. Most notable was the 166 percent year-over-year increase in holiday gross merchandise value (11/25-12/25) to $230 million.
Designer handbags, diamond jewelry and Rolex watches topped the list for most expensive holiday purchases. For the year as a whole, top categories were clothing, …

In case you haven’t noticed, eBay has been ramping up a local strategy in the past few months via the integration of all its vertical properties with its home site, the $75 million purchase of Milo.com, and today, a $200 million acquisition of Brands4Friends, a fashion-oriented, German e-commerce site with 3.5 million members and 200 …

In the context of Google’s reported $6 billion acquisition offer to Groupon, questions were raised at ILM:10 about the true potential of deal a day beyond its current two or three daily deals and banner ad e-mails. For Nimble Commerce CEO Prashant Nedungadi, the real potential is moving local advertising into performance-based models.
“Group buying …

EBay’s e-commerce prowess is well-established. Now, it is making inroads into the nearly $1 trillion online-search-for-offline-purchase market with the acquisition of Milo, a shopping search engine that catalogs and categorizes real-time inventory at more than 50,000 stores (national retailers such as Best Buy, Nordstrom and Advance Auto Parts participate).
Terms of the deal were not officially disclosed, …

The hordes of shoppers who still enjoy standing in lines and fighting for parking spaces on the “Black Friday” after Thanksgiving is an offline event. Or is it?
Local sites are prepping shoppers who want to see what’s available at the stores, including The Dealmap, Milo.com, Local.com and Superpages. Other local media companies, including the Los …

Google galvanized a lot of mainstream attention for the online-research-for-offline-purchases market with its recent rollout of Product Search. But with the total sales pie expected to eclipse $1 trillion in 2011, it’s a big enough playground for more than just the big G to stock store inventory online. Milo, which jumped into online-to-offline product search …

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 …

AOL is taking the plunge into the competitive deal-a-day space, launching Wow! as an integrated deals sites under the larger brand that will serve “your bargain of choice” from both local and national offers.
Increasingly, group buying offers are sold like advertising units, not promotional items. The initial value proposition is strong: no upfront costs, strong …

ShopCity, a storefront and marketing platform for SMBs, hopes to jumpstart its reach via a new “City Manager” program that allows local media partners to secure local URL rights owned by ShopCity (i.e., ShopMountainView.com) and market its services. City Managers, who handle sales and marketing as well as community relations, share revenues …