We have been meeting with a number of media salespeople, tracking articles about the transformation of the sales process, developing a number of theories specific to transforming the media sales process plus what is needed to support the transformation. We will be exploring a number of these theories and observations supported by sales rep interviews …

The news came over the wires this weekend  that Bob Pittman has been named as the new CEO for radio and outdoor giant Clear Channel Communications. Pittman, who is the opening keynoter at ILM West Dec. 12 in San Francisco, steps up from Chairman, Entertainment and Media Platforms.  Pittman is the first CEO of Clear …

The session Spectrum: The Air We Breathe at the NAB Convention last week examined the issue of the proposed incentive auction for some of the spectrum now used by local TV stations. The question-and-answer format between the audience and my fellow panelists — Bill Lake (FCC), Alan Frank (Post-Newsweek), John Hane (Pillsbury Winthrop) and Jane …

One of the big themes in local this year is the increased amount of localization in national ad campaigns. We saw it with U-Haul and Progressive Insurance a couple of weeks ago on our podium at ILM East in Boston. Those have been mostly search plays. But we also see it with display ads on …

When it was launched in 2004, Gannett’s Planet Discover was a pioneer in local search and later, the development of local online marketplaces. But it has lately had a lower profile, dating to a temporary mid-2007 mandate to focus on Gannett newspaper and broadcast properties. That mandate ended in mid-2008, and the company has since …

Local and vertical content is eagerly sought by national players, from The New York Times to Yahoo, MSN/Bing to AOL. Now, Thompson Reuters is leading the local, vertical charge for wire services.
In an aggressive push to lure traditional U.S. media away from the Associated Press, the information industry giant is moving into aggregation with Reuters America, striking …

At ILM:10, Pandora’s Cheryl Lucanegro (senior VP of ad sales) and Brian Mikalis (VP of performance sales) made it very clear where the popular Internet radio service is headed next — to your car dashboard.
The company is leveraging two fundamental insights in driving (pardon the pun) its migration into the vehicle: More than 50 percent …

If the first two decades of the local Internet were primarily about on-boarding traffic, then CBS Local Digital Media President Ezra Kucharz foresees that the next decade will be about “opening doors to consumers, getting them the information they want, and getting them to transact.”
This philosophy drives CBS Local’s digital philosophy across its 28 owned-and-operated …

Local media brands continue to look for ways to populate their sites with local bloggers and Twitterers. In return, they provide them with a bigger platform.
The latest to jump into the game is NBC Universal, which paidContent reports has developed “The 20” to highlight selected Twitterers in all 10 of the markets where it has …

High school sports have been the centerpiece of many hyperlocal efforts. They bring to the table highly passionate fans, families and players in the hard-to-reach 12- to 17-year-old demo.
But the economics of school-by-school efforts don’t always work, whether for branding, region-wide advertisers and advertising sales, production needs, data and content acquisition, or site infrastructure. Just …

The latest attempt to make hyperlocal a sustainable reality came today with Allbritton Communications’ launch of TBD.com, a hyper metro site for the Washington, D.C., area. Allbritton, which has sunk “under $5 million” into the project to date, hopes it will grab hold of the D.C. audience in the same way that its Politico has …

Everyone is fighting for a better, more cost-efficient way of producing content for Web sites. But is the so-called “content mill” search optimized approach of a Demand Media, Associated Content or Examiner.com the only way to achieve this?
Whether you agree or disagree with the characterization of these companies (we largely disagree), alternatives are out there. …

FreshGuide.com, which includes the BookFresh.com scheduling service, has been acquired by Sugar Inc., a diversified media company that includes a TV network and programming aimed at women, as well as ShopStyle, a “social shopping service.”
FreshGuide.com founder Ryan Donahue says the acquisition will enable the company to expand beyond its four existing markets — San Francisco, …

For the past year and a half, we have been answering questions about and consulting with our clients on sales transformation and consultative selling (see here, here and here). One of the key aspects of many of the questions we receive is “what has fundamentally changed, how has it changed and what do we need …

Coupons are hot in a down economy, and printable online coupons — and even mobile coupons — are gaining share in the coupon business. But local SMBs aren’t always in on the game, as coupon sites frequently gravitate toward one-stop national accounts.
Now, Analog Analytics, a San Diego-based vendor, is pushing a clever mobile solution that …

Local radio and television stations are in various stages of extending the broadcasting business model from traditional over-the-air to an array of digital platforms. This allows both new inventory with different attributes to be sold and a critical revenue growth path. How these digital incentives by broadcasting firms get resourced, managed, executed and evaluated …

DataSphere, a hyperlocal enabler and sales agent for local media companies, says that Northwest TV and radio giant Fisher Communications has now sold more than 1,000 hyperlocal advertisers using Datasphere’s neighborhood-specific content and sales system. The system is now in more than 43 neighborhoods served by Fisher TV stations in Seattle, 40 neighborhoods in Portland …

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 …

Digital media is more cannibalistic than complementary and is seriously eating into the demand for traditional news sources such as newspapers, TV and news magazines, according to the third annual survey of news users done by Outsell Inc.
The survey findings are based on almost 3,000 consumers and are fully detailed in Outsell’s “News Users 2009” …

The IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers are out with their semi-annual report on the online ad market. IAB/PWC say that interactive revenues were $23.4 billion for 2008, which is up 10.6 percent from the prior year. But everyone seems to be pointing to ominous signs, since the share of second-half revenues was just 51 …