The Long Tail in advertising may be SMB-centric. The Short Tail may be ad agency centered media buying, which only go to the Top 100 sites on the Web. If that’s the case, the “Mid-Tail” comes from local publishers, suggests Centro Media CEO Shawn Riegsecker. But these publishers, which rely on high value journalist-based content …

Verve Mobile’s CEO Tom MacIsaac is bullish on local publishers’ ability to drive this revenue growth by selling local audiences not just to local advertisers but also to national brands seeking access to local audiences in a trusted context, through partners like Verve.
The secret sauce is Verve’s ability to deliver quality location-based audiences into a …

The “Making Sense of Mobile Advertising for SMBs” panel at SMB Digital Marketing 2012 was aptly named, as the mobile needs of small businesses vary widely by category and level of sophistication, among other dynamics. Dick Larkin (VP, American Marketing & Publishing), Mary Beth Brendza (CEO, App Express) and Henry Tam (VP Self-Serve Advertising, Millenial …

Local display doesn’t get as much attention as search for SMBs, but we know that in many situations, it can complement search campaigns, or even produce better results. No one pushes harder on this than PaperG, which has developed a network of local media sites for its automated display solutions, and is now working with …

Facebook’s acquisition of mobile photo app Instagram earlier this week wasn’t especially surprising (though the $1 billion price tag may have been). Mobile is a fertile, untapped channel for the social giant, but a growing risk factor the longer the opportunity remains unrealized. And with $5 billion to $10 billion in cash reserves expected after …

In the afternoon session at the BIA/Kelsey DMS conference on Wednesday afternoon, two players in the local search industry talked about the growing local display market and the use of display by SMBs. Moderated by Matt Booth of BIA/Kelsey, Tyler Bosmeny from PaperG and Warren Kay from iPromote spoke about the increasing use of display …

While this news has been out for a little while, we thought it was interesting that a company with powerful TV assets would initiate a deal with a company that provides high-quality, affordable video commercial content for local advertisers. After all, isn’t this what TV has been doing since the ’40s. What gives?
Anyone who’s ever …

AT&T Interactive announced this week the launch of in-app ads on its mobile ad network, an extension of YP Local Ad Network. In-app local ads are served within mobile apps based on a user’s location. Earlier this year, AT&T Interactive piloted in-app advertising and reported generating more than 750 million local ad impressions in three months. …

Over the past year, American Express has embarked on a series of initiatives centered on digital advertising intelligence for SMBs. These include SearchManager (via Clickable) for SEM and multiple social media experiments with Facebook and Foursquare. Now, its small business-focused OPEN division is rounding out the suite with AdManager, which utilizes AdReady’s dynamic display capability …

BIA/Kelsey moderated a panel on “the Out-of-Home User Experience” (click on image for link to streaming video) at MediaPost’s Digital Out-of-Home Forum (DOOH) in New York. DOOH is the third-fastest growing ad medium after mobile and online video.
Paul Lindstrom, senior VP, Nielsen OnLocation, kicked off the panel with data showing video engagement is about 80 percent …

CityGrid, the local content and advertising network announced today its plans to team up with CBS Local Digital Media. The new partnership gives local businesses the opportunity to be featured across CBS’ television and radio websites in major markets, thus gaining exposure to millions of online and mobile consumers.
“A media powerhouse like CBS has deep …

In the first of many possible partnerships with local media companies, Centro has teamed up with Morris Digital Works to create a network that allows advertisers to place geo- and vertical- based ads across a broad spectrum of local and national sites. Other local media partners are likely to team with Centro on similar networks. …

The Scandinavian directory and local search player Eniro has unveiled a pay-per-click advertising network, which it calls Scandinavian Ad Networks. The product leverages traffic from Eniro’s own properties (including eniro.se, gulesider.no, krak.dk, and kvasir.no) as well as third-party partner sites to feed the network.
This launch is part of Eniro’s strategy of becoming a dominant player …

Just days after consolidating Adify and Cox Cross Media into the integrated advertising network Cox Digital Solutions, the company is making waves again. This time, it’s acquiring in order to expand scale by scooping up IB Local Network from Internet Broadcasting Systems, which serves more than 2,200 Web sites.
Internet Broadcasting already directs many of its …

As my colleague Jed Williams has previously written, Yext’s Tags initiative is a big one, going up against Google Places with a broad (and “open”) network of 20 participating Internet Yellow Pages and online directory sites, including AOL’s MapQuest and Patch, Citysearch, Superpages, Yahoo and Yellowbook.
Yext CEO Howard Lerman describes Tags as “full-time, real listing …

TBD.com, the Washington, D.C., hyperlocal news site branding the online operations of Allbritton Communication’ WJLA-TV and Newschannel 8 under the TBD umbrella, is tabling its local ad network, citing limited advertiser interest.
The site currently has agreements with more than 200 blogs and local sites (up from 120 at launch in August) to link to their work …

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 …

CityGrid Media (formerly Citysearch) will extend its paid base of 800,000 advertisers across thousands of neighborhood news pages, courtesy of a display advertising deal with Outside.in. The two companies have been quietly conducting pilot tests of custom ads in “a couple” of markets, leading to the wider rollout.
Outside.in CEO Mark Josephson tells us that the …

One of the big hopes for local this year is … national. As local targeting tools get more granular, there has been an upsurge in national/local advertisers, especially as they focus on touching consumers on the local purchase level. Gannett Digital and MediaBrands’ Geomentum, for instance, are both riding the crest of national-local activities.
Gannett …

As “the media capital of the world,” New York is rife with daily newspapers, high-culture magazines and lifestyle publications, yet Trevor Sumner says he had “no idea what was going on in my neighborhood. I couldn’t even keep up with restaurants in the East Village.” That lack of district-level information inspired NearSay, a start-up site …