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 …

EBay is pushing to do more to integrate the flagship auction site and its Marketplaces products with ProStores, its online storefront software company. The effort to integrate ProStores is part of a broader effort to integrate its properties (i.e., eBay Classifieds).
ProStores, acquired by eBay five years ago, currently has “tens of thousands” of customers, who …

Groupon announced today that it will work with McClatchy, the third-largest newspaper chain, in 28 McClatchy markets. The rollout begins this month in Sacramento and Kansas City. Other McClatchy markets will be added over the next several months, possibly including titles in Ft. Worth, Miami, Charlotte and Raleigh.
Like Living Social’s earlier deal with The Washington …

Center’d, the local/social events and city guide site, has consistently reported growing traffic. But in its three-year existence, the site has never really found a niche that would set it apart from the competition.
The site, however, has kept on hammering away at local/social trends, with a strong emphasis on sentiment analysis and local mapping — …

I had the opportunity to speak with Michael Pastko, CEO of Coupious a Boulder, Colorado-based mobile coupon platform. Coupious got its start when Pastko and his partner leveraged their experience at Purdue University to launch a Coupious iPhone application in Lafayette, Indiana. While the duo did very little marketing, word-of-mouth marketing helped push their mobile …

I had the opportunity to speak with Brad Reynolds, CEO of Mongoose Metrics, a Cleveland, Ohio-based call measurement and conversion analytics company. Reynolds was quick to point out that it is not simply a call tracking company, but rather it is dedicated to linking online and offline conversion so clients can better understand what leads …

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 …

Sears is loath to invest in its physical stores but has built a collection of “shop your way” online and mobile services as a high margin substitute, according to an article on WSJ.com. The article notes that Sears’ e-commerce division boasts 180 employees, and has boosted its revenues by “double digits” in the past two …

Three years ago, BIA/Kelsey created the Marketplaces research program and conference because we saw that local advertising was quickly “verticalizing.” Indeed, money and talent have poured in for the new breed of vertical products that would take their place among existing vertical success stories, such as AutoTrader, Cars.com, Realtor.com and ServiceMagic.
The Marketplaces 2010 conference reveals …

CitySquares, an online city guide and directory company based in Boston, has acquired the assets of Yokel, which provides online retail services and maintains a database of 2 million retailers. Terms weren’t disclosed. The combination should work well with CitySquares’ recent turn toward national/local operations.
Fees for Yokel, whose tagline is “all shopping, all local,” start …

Lately, we’ve been hearing more about  shopping search start-up Spreezio, a kind of Priceline for merchandise (TechCrunch profiles it today). In other words, you name the price that represents the threshold at which you’d buy, and then see who bites.
This could come at the right time as we’re seeing more services that give greater control …

 
Local product data provider Krillion announced a deal today that will distribute product ads and inventory content across Topix’s hyperlocal news network.
This will take the form of a geographically targeted “local best deals” section on many Topix pages. As Krillion’s data drills down to product feeds at individual store locations, these listings will promote in-stock …

Krillion announced today that it will productize its “find in store” functionality into a more succinct package for product search sites to use. This will include easier integration into Web sites; an interface that puts product pricing, availability and reviews all in one window; and additional features such as recommended substitutes for out-of-stock products.
The company …

Localeze biz dev head Gib Olander has a good piece in MediaPost in which he argues the need to refine local search marketing campaigns based on changing search behavior. In other words, the way people search and the terms they use need to be better recognized.
After providing some data that quantify the local search opportunity …

At a pair of TKG-run sessions at SES San Jose, the value of good local data was a pervasive theme. This relates to the ongoing online-offline challenge in local media and search. The problem basically comes down to the inability for search engines to inherently track the convoluted process that starts with a search query …

Local product search provider Krillion today added 96 product categories to its “Localization Engine.” The new categories join Krillion’s current sweet spot of home appliances and consumer electronics, and include computers, office equipment, car audio & electronics, and tools & hardware.
This brings its product categories to 155, including 900 brands, 20,000 big-box retail locations and …

Local retailers are increasingly going beyond store locators to drive sales. The extensions to store locators include brand locators, coupons, menus, trip planners, and even guides to where Wi-Fi, nonsmoking and RV parking can be found.
A leading vendor in providing retailer solutions is Anaheim, California-based Where2GetIt. Roughly 280 companies and 550 brands are using Where2GetIt …

The balance between merchants and brands is being shifted by the increasingly common use of enhanced “product locators,” which adds store locations, maps — and frequently promotions such as coupons — to the mix, says Lauren Freedman, president of The E-Tailing Group in Chicago.
Freedman has just completed a round of shopper behavior research for …

Last week at SES New York, I had the chance to catch up with Alex Muller, CEO of new mobile shopping search product Slifter.
The mobile application allows users to search for products that can be found in local stores, including how many are on the shelf. To do this, it works with big-box retailers such …