Alibaba, is China’s answer to Google and Yahoo!. The online site is 39 percent owned by Yahoo and recently entered a strategic partnership with Infomedia, the second-largest Yellow Pages publisher in India.

The agreement with Infomedia provides Alibaba access to the second-largest population in Asia. The deal with Infomedia opens the opportunity to sell online advertising to its more than 750,000 advertisers and leverages Infomedia’s sales force of 650 that can immediately begin to access a wider array of India’s SMB base.

According to The Wall Street Journal, “[Alibaba’s] move into India is part of its strategy to grow globally, as a large chunk of its revenue comes from domestic trade listings within China.”

As Google, Yahoo! and MSN continue to struggle in Asia and China in particular, homegrown Alibaba and Baidu continue to prosper in Asia. By tapping into population-dense countries, both Alibaba and Baidu have set themselves up for tremendous growth as both China and India’s middle class grows at exponential rates followed closely by the rapid adoption of broadband, mobile Web access and more stable business environments.  

Lawrence, Massachusetts-based Yellow Pages publisher LocalTel has partnered with Google’s AdWords program to sell keywords on Google and Google Maps, and for ads to appear on partner sites within Google’s AdSense network. According to the press release, “ Through a new strategic relationship with Google, LocalTel has become a Google Adwords authorized re-seller allowing businesses of all types and sizes to easily and effectively advertise on the largest search engine on the web.” 

As independent publishers struggle to build their own online revenues, partnerships with major ad serving networks are key alliances. Using strong local brands combined with the brand appeal of Google allows smaller publishers to build online revenues without relying solely on their IYP properties.   

MediaNews Group CEO Dean Singleton is well known within the newspaper industry as one of the least sentimental businessmen among all the publishers. He’s taken a hard line against journalistic “excess,” resulting in products that have been highly profitable but not critically acclaimed. At the same time, in search of new revenue streams, he’s been a leader in online and niche experimentation.

At the Newspaper Association of America’s Marketing Conference this week in Orlando, Singleton gave a clear-eyed view of where he sees the industry’s challenges, and how he thinks it can recover its footing, especially on Wall Street, where newspaper stocks have taken a brutal beating.

Singleton noted that online has got to become a big part of the revenue picture, but that the core print product remains central to the industry’s future. Five years from now, for instance, he hopes to see MNG getting 20 percent of its revenue online, up from 8 percent today. Since online has higher margins, he would expect online to account for half the company’s operating cash flow.

The core product, meanwhile, will drop from 85 percent to 65 percent of revenue, and account for 35 percent of the company’s profit. Niche products, meanwhile, would get around 15 percent.

“We have to be very aggressive to get to 20 percent” for online, he said. “Especially since a lot of online is based on employment” and needs to become more diversified.

But he believes the target is achievable. “Some newspapers are close to that now, “ he said. Two MNG titles, for instance, get 15 percent online and 17 percent niche. “That’s not a bad business. That’s the kind of business that Wall Street can applaud. We’ll have core readers, and online, there will be niche, targeted consumer groups.”

Singleton’s bottom line is that while the new revenues will be valuable, supporting the core is job No. 1. Consequently, sales hiring and retraining is a core part of the company’s credo. He will also continue to spend on maintaining circulation levels so his newspapers remain the No. 1 source of geotargeting.

“The new world we’re in … it is restructuring time,” he said. “We have a pretty tough deck of cards right now.”

While Singleton anticipates new revenue growth from online and niche, he personally believes the newspaper industry will get its biggest boost from something that produces almost no revenue today: wireless. “Wireless is the biggest opportunity in 20 years,” he said. “Consumers pay for relevant information 24/7. It is tailor made for newspapers.”

Yellow Pages Group Canada has signed an agreement with Copernic, owners of Mamma.com, to supply local Canadian advertiser listings to the mamma.com search engine. According to the press release from Copernic, “The agreement means local search queries will be served YellowPages.ca listings in premium positions clearly identified as local listings.”

Mamma.com is a well established search site that simultaneously searches a variety of engines, directories, and deep content sites. Adding local listings in premium positions is a departure from its current strategy that features site aggregators in many of its local search results. 

With YellowPages.ca moving up to number 8 in the December 2007 Comscore rankings in Canada, this move is yet another traffic agreement that should continue to improve its position in overall traffic rankings.    

Pagesjaunes France has announced it will take a dramatic pricing approach in its largest urban markets where it will cut print costs by 20 percent while raising online costs on average by 50 percent. The goal of the pricing program is to move more revenues into online while reducing the revenue growth risk created by declining print usage in its major urban markets. The areas affected by this pricing strategy are Paris and its surrounding areas as well as the Southeast (Provence, Alps, Cote d’Azur).

In addition to the 20 percent print directory price cut, PagesJaunes will offer a multi-heading discounts. Unlike its European peers, PagesJaunes had charged for each heading purchased. These urban regions represent 18 percent of 2007 print revenues, 25 percent of online revenues and 8 percent of total 2007 revenues, which makes this a substantial risk. For now, the remaining middle tier and rural markets will be unaffected by this pricing policy.   PagesJaunes feels justified in making the change in order to preserve its revenue growth projections as well as benchmark its proposed online cost increases with Google.fr’s current pricing. In a comparison between Google and PagesJaunes.fr conducted by the financial group Exane BNP Paribas, Google’s average price per click in the main Yellow Pages categories in France was 0.8 euros and 1.2 euros in Paris, compared with PagesJaunes’ cost-per-call average rate of 0.5 euros. 

One might argue that a call is more valuable than a click when considering PagesJaunes reports 70 percent result in a commercial contact or phone call demonstrating better ROI. Also supporting the decision is the fact that Exane BNP Paribas estimates 90 percent of Pagesjaunes.fr customers do not advertise on Google.fr.  PagesJaunes has also made the decision to charge for each online category. In the past, a company advertising under “used cars” and “car repair” was only charged once. Under the new pricing structure, advertisers will be required to pay extra for multiple online ads from 2008 onward. In order to mitigate some of the increase, volume discounts have been introduced.  

Online has sold relatively well for most publishers due to the lower cost structure and high ROI derived from the calls generated. Changing the pricing structure has the potential to increase cost per call and ultimately ROI. The move to reducing print cost while at the same time increasing online costs by 50 percent assumes savings from one will be reinvested in the other. Kelsey research shows only a portion of print savings is in fact reinvested into online media with a large portion of the savings returned to the business to cover increased operational costs.  

With declining usage and print revenues in its major metropolitan markets, PagesJaunes is clearly looking to the future. As Andrew Day of Truvo has stated, “a Euro invested in online is a longer-term investment compared to print.”  With 2007 online revenues making up 36 percent of overall revenues, PagesJaunes is in a good position to make this grand experiment work. It will be interesting to see if it drives other publishers to take a similar major market approach and concede to the inevitable shift from print to online. The key will be whether these strategies successfully migrate advertisers at most risk while maintaining the stable print advertiser base as long as possible.

It is hard for me to comprehend, but we are finally finished with ILM:07. We were grateful to have had 650 interesting and enthusiastic attendees from all over the world, 72 stimulating speakers, a full load of sponsors and an excellent partnership with SES.

Our next conference, April 30-May 2 at the Westin in Seattle, will be a highly differentiated affair. Stay tuned for what we are doing with that (but not for a couple of months, OK?).

For those of you who can’t get enough coverage, a virtual conference will be up with all the PPTs in a couple of weeks (but only for attendees). You can also order the DVD.

For immediate gratification, however, check out the posts from my talented colleagues on the Kelsey Blog.

I especially liked Michael Taylor’s write-up of our discussion with Mahalo CEO Jason Calacanis. Michael is totally correct: “The long and short of Calacanis’ comments go to several of the key themes heard over and over again at ILM:07 — relevant content, deep content and engaging, passionate people are all needed to make a highly relevant and personalized search experience.”

In addition to the Kelsey write-ups, Mike Boland has captured links from the press and bloggers who attended our event. It was good to have them aboard. And Mel Taylor took some great pictures.

Here are easy links to Kelsey ILM:07 posts:

1. TKG Analysts Lay the Groundwork (Michael Boland)

2. Winebaum Provides a Fresh Look at Local Search (Michael Taylor)

3. Cash Is King for Local Search Investors (Charles Laughlin)

4. Herratti’s Citysearch: Social Media Video Partnerships (Bobbi Loy-Luster)

5. NCI: ‘We Can Work with Zillow’ (John Kelsey)

6. ILM:07 Spotlights mobilePeople (Stephen Marshall)

7. Stubbs Discusses AT&T’s Post-InGenio Vision (Michael Taylor)

8. TMP’s McKelvey Discusses Online/Offline Research Data (Michael Taylor, Michael Boland)

9. New West’s Weber and Independent Local Media (John Kelsey)

10. Marchex’s Horowitz: Bet on People Already Winning (Charles Laughlin)

11. Google’s Hanke: Maps, Mobile and Mashups (Michael Boland)

12. An Intuit-ive Approach to SMB Marketing (Stephen Marshall)

13. Injecting Social into Local Media (Michael Boland)

14. Taking It Home: The Final Panel at ILM:07 (Stephen Marshall)

Interactive Local Media: 07 is ready to roll Nov. 28-30 in L.A. That’s next Wednesday through Friday!

The show, which is being produced in partnership with SES Local, has attendees from all over the world. One exec told me he is coming on Wednesday, taking the red eye to New York that night due to a prior commitment, and flying back on Thursday night for the final day.

Attendance-wise, we have the biggest sign-up list for a Kelsey event since the mid-1990s. Almost everyone that we have slotted will actually be there. While the agenda has been tight for some time, with 70-plus speakers, here are some last minute adds:

• Christophe Maire, a cofounder of Nokia’s Location-Based Experience Development, is set for Day 3. HOT DISCUSSION TOPIC: Nokia’s $8.1 Billion purchase of NavTeq.

• Laurel Gilbert, from Microsoft’s Atlas division, is speaking on our localizing national advertising panel. HOT DISCUSSION TOPIC: How Microsoft will use Aquantative to transform itself into a true Web advertising giant.

• Doug Kilponen from MerchantCircle is speaking on the localized shopping panel. MerchantCircle just received a $10 million cash infusion from IAC and others. HOT DISCUSSION TOPIC: Best Practices for Signing up Small Businesses.

• Claudia Poepperl from mobilePeople is set to provide a demo of the London-based company’s cutting-edge social mobile technology.

We are also expecting a drop-in from a top executive of a company that’s been in the news, but we can’t say much more about it. And speaking of news, there are lots of interesting news announcements that will drop around the show as well. So, will we see you in L.A.? Here is the registration page.

The numbers are looking very, very good for the Interactive Local Media:07 conference in L.A. Nov. 28-30. Internally, we think this one is a record breaker. Register and book the hotel while you can. The latter tends to sell out.

In recent weeks, we’ve been putting the final touches on the program. For instance, we’ve added Facebook’s Chamath Palihapitiya, who is VP of product marketing. Here’s a snippet about Chamath from Fast Company’s cover story this month:

“Palihapitiya, 31, is tall and whippet thin, with elegant manners and a ready smile. A former electrical engineer, born in Sri Lanka and raised in Canada, he ran AOL’s instant-message group, then jumped to the venture fund Mayfield. He is part Sand Hill Roadster and part freethinker.”

Other notable adds include ShopLocal CMO Bob Armour, Scott Ferris from Microsoft’s Atlas division, LA Times.com’s Robertson Barrett, and City Voter’s Josh Walker. There is also a brand-new Local Mobile panel, featuring Gary Roshak, who has migrated from Marchex to Yahoo!, Jeff Torgerson at InfoSpace, and Collin Holmes at V-Enable.

Also, take a look at the SES side of the show. Google Local head Eric Stein, Zorik Gordon from Reach Local, and Topix head Chris Tolles are just some of the great execs SES is bringing in. Kevin Heisler and Kevin Newcomb are moderating the SES panels.

The Kelsey Group also has its LinkedIn networking set up for the show. We’ve got dozens participating already. Once you register, you should sign in for that, too (even if you haven’t used LinkedIn for a while). See you in L.A.?

MyYahoo!, Yahoo!’s personal home page and news reader, was redesigned earlier this year and available as an opt-in upgrade in beta. Today I logged in to discover my page has been automatically upgraded, suggesting either a coming out of beta, or part of a slow roll out to all MyYahoo! users.

In any case this joins a long list of recent online product redesigns. The new look and feel are more consistent with Yahoo!’s home page and the site is generally sharper with a more intuitive layout, tabs and Ajax functionality. See screenshot below (click to enlarge).

Role Models

MyYahoo! has done as much as any other personal home page product to popularize RSS and personalization for news, weather sports, classifieds and video. Similar products that have gained some traction for compelling feature sets and personalization tools include NetVibes, Pageflakes and iGoogle.

Having all these forms of content in one place could grow in popularity, along with the general trend toward blended search. This is compared with offline media where content has traditionally been siloed into different buckets (television, magazines, Yellow Pages, newspapers, radio, etc.). Online consumers are coming to expect everything in one place and personalized home pages are the epitome of that standard.

Given that news is a central part of the personalized home page experience, newspapers have an opportunity to build these types of tools that utilize their trusted brands, feature their own content and also allow users to personalize their “front page” with feeds of different news sources, categories and classifieds. The New York Times’ MyTimes and a few others already do this to some degree.

In terms of content syndication, there are RSS feeds available for just about every online news source. Craigslist also has RSS feeds available for any classified category as well as specific search terms (i.e., “studio apartment in Pacific Heights, San Francisco”). Users can set up these RSS feed within any personalized news reader — something that could and should be looked at by any classified provider interested in greater online distribution.

(click to enlarge)

The challenge with such offerings has traditionally been to gain mainstream traction with a vaguely defined technology that carries yet another confusing three-letter tech acronym. Here, branding will be an issue and a nod should be given to MyYahoo!, which has popularized the medium to a certain degree, without ever using the term RSS.

Keep It Simple, Stupid

Easy customization will indeed be a key part of the formula for success. Along these lines, one thing that occurred to me as I was playing with my own MyYahoo! page today is that this format is very similar to a Facebook profile in its customization for displaying news, events, even classifieds, through an expanding universe of widgets developed by third parties.

For Facebook this mostly takes place within the microcosm of one’s social network, while MyYahoo! covers the larger world of news, weather, sports, etc. But they overlap in a lot of ways and have similar appeal in their ease in customization and level of personalization — things that should be examined closely by any online product or destination interested in building compelling products that are in line with evolving user expectations.

Overall, MyYahoo! is a great online utility that Yahoo! could market more heavily as a jumping off point to the Internet. Video products will also fit in to RSS and personalized home pages, as explored in the TKG White Paper From Reach to Targeting: The Transformation of TV in the Internet Age.

And social networking could be brought into the fold, although this would would likely happen via acquisition as Yahoo!’s own social network, Yahoo!360, has failed to get the widespread traction it needs. Indeed, Yahoo! pulled the plug on it last week. And we’ve all heard the rumors about a Yahoo!/Facebook deal, although it’s unlikely this will happen anytime soon as Facebook’s value — and its resolve — continues to escalate.

As video, news, classifieds, local search, shopping, social networking and other forms of online activity continue to converge, expect more product development and more consumer traction from MyYahoo!, Netvibes, Pageflakes and the like – as well as others that will come along.

The sales rep recruiting game has just gotten a bit more crowded and a lot more competitive. As we have discussed at our conferences and in recent Kelsey Advisories, with the influx of new online directory players such as Citysearch, Yodel, LiveDeal and ReachLocal, and the added growth of YellowPages.com’s sales force, the recruiting space for online sales reps is much more crowded. If we add in the demand created by newspapers and TV stations also seeking online-savvy sales reps then experienced online sales reps are as scarce as hen’s teeth or as valued as gold (you pick the metaphor!). While this may be a boon for professional sales rep and sales management recruiters, this massive need for skilled online sales reps means companies will have to battle for candidates in the areas of base salary and benefits and add in a few creative recruiting methods to meet their manpower needs.  

In a recent post on Venturebeat.com, Dan Kaplan reveals ReachLocal is aiming to dramatically increase the size of its online sales force. “Local search marketing company ReachLocal will use its massive $55.2 million infusion to build a gigantic sales force that it hopes will dislodge the Yellow Pages as the de-facto place local businesses spend their promotional dollars.”  Kaplan makes a good point on the grand goal set out by ReachLocal. “To add some perspective, ReachLocal has around 300 salespeople; the global Yellow Page market employs more than 41,000 in sales alone. Zorik Gordon, ReachLocal’s chief executive, doesn’t balk at that figure, and suggests that a sales force of 10,000 or more might be in the cards. This is an unprecedented goal for an Internet-focused company, and a risky one. It comes at a time when the market for talented salespeople is extremely tight.”  

While I applauded online companies with ambitious business and sales goals, I often sit and wonder how they expect to meet these lofty sales force recruitment goals they have promised their investors. The most likely strategy is that companies and recruiters will work covertly to steal sales reps already trained and experienced in online sales while supplementing their numbers with a smaller percentage of college graduates and experienced sales reps with a working knowledge of online. Now is a great time for sales reps to have online sales on their resumes. Entering “online sales” in Monster.com over the weekend turned up more than 5,000 matches with Idearc’s Superpages.com and several other major vertical online companies showing up in the results. 

The idea of building a sizable online sales force in short order is more of a tall order for any major brand organization let alone some of the lesser known companies such as Yodel or ReachLocal. Acknowledging a slower ramp-up timeframe for building out a well-trained sales force certainly affects any business plan and should give investors pause when considering realistic sales recruitment and sales productivity goals. 

While no organization wants to settle for a subpar sales organization, the crowded market will most likely mean many organizations will have to “try out” people of varying backgrounds until they come upon a candidate profile that produces the best candidates in volume who have the ability to be successful and meet or exceed sales goals. The hot market for online sales reps also means companies will have to work harder to support and maintain their best online reps for fear they may be recruited by another organization offering better compensation or benefits. While it is often easier for managers to focus their efforts on low performers hoping to raise their output, managers must be mindful now more than ever not to neglect top performers’ needs, making them vulnerable to recruiters and competitors.  

It’s a wild, wild world in online sales right now as traditional media shifts online and more media outlets are focusing their efforts on developing online verticals, IYPs and local search portals, all requiring sales staffs to monetize the effort. Reps often go where the money is, but more often than not the company environment and intangible benefits like team spirit, advancement opportunities, training and education benefits go a long way in demonstrating how a company values its sales team. HR departments, recruiters and sales management will have to reexamine how they are recruiting, compensating and maintaining their online sales teams or suffer endless turnover, and constant recruitment just to maintain some sales momentum in the market.