We’ve just announced the lineup for our Marketplaces 2009 conference, which is March 16-18 at the historic (and excellent) Century Plaza in L.A. We hope you find it as compelling as we do. It is probably a “must attend” event by any standards.

Last year in Seattle, we had 500 attendees, and it was pretty great. This time, with a full year of our Marketplaces research program under our belts, we’ve added a lot of twists and turns, and some exciting formats, including keynotes, in-depth “duo” discussions,  focused panels, a Leads Summit, a Mobile Verticals SuperForum and a “Parade of Verticals.”

Every speaker has been handpicked by us — “no empty suits,” OK? And then there is the great networking that is the hallmark of all our shows.

Try this out for size (in alpha):

Keynoters: Jay Berman, MySpace; Jay Herratti, Citysearch; Chris LaSala, Google; and Chris Spanos, AOL

In-Depth Duos: Dan McCarthy, NCI, with Chip Perry, AutoTrader; Rob Curley with Chris Jennewein, Greenspun Media; Matthew Berk, Marchex, with Larry Fitzgibbon, Demand Media

Leads Summit: Kevin Laws, Vast.com; Tom Mohr, ResponseLogix; and Anna Zornosa, Dealix (Cobalt)

Parade of Verticals: Dan Hobin, G5 Search Marketing; Mike Rutz, Angie’s List; John Triplett, A.H. Belo; and Tony Wills, Allmenus.com

The Mobile Verticals SuperForum: Walt Doyle, Where.com; Tom Kenney, Verve Wireless; and Dinesh Moorjani, IAC (with more to be announced).

Great Featured Speakers: Peter Adams, Matchpoint; Frank Bell, IT Strategists; Craig Donato, Oodle; Emad Fanous, YellowBot; Adam Leff, BogoPod; Michael Oschmann, 123people; Rob Paterson, Friday Holdings; and Andrei Uglar, Weblocal.ca/Transcontinental Media

Here’s the URL to sign up. There are special rates through the 18th (i.e., this Saturday).

AOL’s MapQuest has strived to remake itself for several years. But it has really been going into overdrive since June, with new management, and the launch of MapQuest Local, a map-based directory and city guide service. More recently, it has unleashed specially tailored versions for smartphones.

What’s surprising about MapQuest is that it remains the industry leader, even though it has been overshadowed by more cutting-edge mapping services from Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. It has 46 million to 48 million unique visitors a month. Yet it’s in the odd position of “catching up” to its rivals before its technology and distribution lag causes permanent damage.

“Since the end of June, we’ve been following an entirely new road map,” says Christian Dwyer, MapQuest senior vice president and general manager. Dwyer notes that the arrival of smartphones and GPS has added entirely new elements to the business. It isn’t just about printing out maps anymore. And it isn’t just about releasing the API either. You need to go “live” with saved information now, he says. That changes things.

The September launch of a beta of MapQuest Local, which incorporates data from lots of AOL vertical properties (autos, jobs, city “best of” content, etc.) is pivotal to the company’s efforts. The service has had 3 million unique visitors since its introduction.

The strategy’s second leg is the launch of My MapQuest, a personalized version that starts every search from a saved home (or business) address. My MapQuest has been available since the end of November.

“We want to help users on the front end of discovery rather than strictly be a place on the Web for directions,” says Dwyer. “We want to [provide information on] where, how and what is nearby.” The company will also “extend MapQuest to the mobile experience.”

A horde of additional changes will take place in early 2009, with the incorporation into My MapQuest’s home page of lots of personalized, localized content. Content offerings will include spatial maps, traffic, weather, a business directory, gas price info and even an AOL Careers job search widget centered on addresses that are searched. All of it will be offered via RSS feeds.

“It is about much more than the business listings piece,” says Mark Law, vice president of product development, a mapping veteran recruited from Yahoo. “We are going to be a one-stop shop for all local content” — something that is being syndicated to sites such as Yelp and Flickr.

Law sees the introduction of the RSS feeds and the ability to save content as key to making MapQuest a resource that goes beyond the commute or the overnight trip. “It is going to really drive hyperlocal,” he says. The launch of a MapQuest Twitter feature also moves along this path, as users will be able to constantly update conversations (“the crash on the 805 is really gruesome”).

Presidential elections always represent sea changes in the use of marketing tools (including local marketing tools). The Internet is an increasingly big part of it. Mostly, it is used for raising money.

This time around, it has also been exciting to see thousands of people “request” in-person appearances by candidates via Eventful; to watch the McCain campaign use Topix to reach rural voters; and to see the Obama campaign use Centro’s local network to place geotargeted, online video ads.

I checked in with my longtime colleague Karen Jagoda, who runs the nonpartisan E-Voter Institute, to see what she’s excited about. Jagoda reminded me that it is more than a cliché that all politics are local. Some of the newest, local-oriented innovations have included:

• Encouraging people to use campaign Internet tools to organize house parties to watch the debates or special speeches;
• Virtual phone banks where volunteers could download phone numbers to call and
functionality to report back on results (all from their own house);
• Online contests to win a chance to be with the candidate, which included people everywhere;
• Online tools for people to engage others in their community to contribute, volunteer for
phone banks and walk neighborhoods;
• Making it easy for people to find local volunteer events from the Web site.

Jagoda feels one of the biggest changes is the use of online video at the local level. “Obama created his own YouTube channel, which allowed him to post videos focused on very specific locations,” she says. “People uploaded material and generated their own local following, but probably not as much broke through as some might have expected.”

There was also an interesting effect with TV advertising. A lot of it got more play on the Internet than on the local station. McCain especially created niche ads that were ostensibly for TV, but more intended for their Internet audience (and the press).

But some things remain the same. The E-Voter Institute survey of political consultants found that the Internet remains a second-tier way of reaching rural and blue-collar voters, she says. To reach out to these groups, the campaigns used fund-raising pitches for $5 as ways to include as many low income people as possible. Some of these people are students and retired people who are likely voters, she says.

Have local Web sites benefited from the largesse of the campaigns? Jagoda says it is too soon to tell.

Today at the Canadian Marketing Association’s Digital Digital Marketing Conference, there was quite a bit of buzz around Blyk, a Finnish mobile phone company with an interesting hybrid model for distribution.

Blyk is a free mobile operator targeting young people (ages 16 to 24) and funded by advertising. Brands pay Blyk to help them reach their target audiences while users get interesting messages, cool stuff, free texts and voice minutes. Users receive six SMS/MMS per day in exchange for 217 texts and 43 minutes of voice calls each month.  Accounts can be topped up once the free usage runs out with standard mobile usage fees.

The company was founded in 2006 by former president of Nokia phones Pekka Ala-Pietilä and award-winning film producer Antti Öhrling. Blyk entered the U.K. in mid-2007 and by April 2008 had already reached more than 100,000 members. The company plans to go pan-European in 2009 potentially reaching 40 million young consumers.

A couple of presentations touched on some interesting case studies that gave national marketers some compelling reasons to look twice at this emerging mobile platform.  Executions ranging from straight promotion to previews on ads before they air on TV and books before they’re released show the broad utility of this type of opt-in platform. The level of engagement gained through the transparent relationship between Blyk and its users creates a number of opportunities for advertisers to gain valuable insight into the elusive 16- to 24-year-old market.

From an affinity and subcategory targeting standpoint, the model is unique in its depth and breadth. New members go through a lengthy registration process that includes a detailed questionnaire. The objective is to create highly relevant matches with potential advertisers to create an optimal user experience. The transparency of the interaction is what drives the users to share more personal data than even social networks are able to get a grip on.

One presentation showed some interesting McKinsey research that indicated a 26 percent lift in mobile advertising acceptance among consumers if there was a reward attached to it. For cash-strapped 16- to 24-year-olds, it’s known that a phone registers highly in the reward category. In a case study presented by Janet Kestin, co-chief creative officer at Ogilvy & Mather, a community of Blyk users were asked if they were OK with the advertising in exchange for phone usage. Seventy-one percent of those users responded that they were “cool” with it as long as it was relevant to their lives.

Big national brands like Boots, Penguin Publishing and L’Oreal that have experimented with the platform have seen tremendous results with average clickthrough rates of 29 percent (ranges between 12 percent and 43 percent). Not bad, since the mobile advertising average clickthrough rate hovers around 3 percent to 6 percent.

Blyk is a great example of a phone company that is thinking like a media company. Check this link for some innovative campaigns that have already been executed on Blyk’s network. Some of them clearly demonstrate how this platform could turn up serious volume and innovation on mobile marketing.

With the addition of coupons and GPS targeting, a whole new opt-in local media channel targeting 16- to 24-year-olds emerges.

Broadband providers, especially those formerly associated with telco Yellow Pages, are trying to get back in the game of providing marketing services for small businesses. They’re looking to provide Web 2.0 directory-like profiles and search engine marketing services for small and medium-sized businesses with the idea of maintaining their subscriber accounts, and adding revenues from the slate of premium offerings.

SMBLive, a Reston, Virginia-based software company, has specifically zeroed in on this market, signing deals with BT, Telmex, Telus and Swisscom. Its inaugural launch with BT’s broadband division, called BT Tradespace, has already garnered more than 125,000 SMB participants.

SMBLive Founder and CEO Matt Howard, a Groove Networks veteran, says the idea behind SMBLive was to create a “lightweight” Web 2.0 platform to help SMBs get online in “15 minutes or less.” What’s unique is that the user-generated business listings are quite rich and are capable of pulling in information from all over the Web.

The profiles are “elegantly optimized for natural search” and are always changing as the sellers post new content such as photos, blogs, and videos (although video is only via links with YouTube). The profiles themselves include several calls to action for buyers including rate this business, map this business via MS Virtual Earth, click-to purchase via PayPal, click-to-call the seller, and click to receive seller details.

In addition to the individual seller sites, there is a BT Tradespace portal site that aggregates and dynamically displays different types of seller content, using an Endeca search platform to highlight those businesses that actively participate and/or buy premium services.

“The ideal customer has less than 15 employees and no IT department,” Howard adds. While basic profiles are created for free, the idea is that they’ll upgrade via credit card to packages starting at $30 per month after four to six months — a strategy also utilized by other players in the space, such as MerchantCircle.

Closing remarks at the Warrillow Summit Toronto yesterday gave advertisers targeting the small and medium-sized business market some hope despite the alarming descent in optimism on the current Canadian economic situation.

A recurring theme over the past two days of the conference was the effectiveness of reaching small-business owners during times of major disruption. Two examples of those disruptive hot spots were times of significant growth and, conversely, times of declined cash flow profitability.

During economic downturns, small-business owners are focused on the following:

1. Increased productivity
2. Tools to more effectively market their business

The 2008 Warrillow survey revealed that the top trusted sources of pre-purchase information for small-business owners break down as follows:

As a result of the strength in word of mouth (48 percent), there was a lot of content around the use of social networking and the importance of finding influencers and brand advocates. Visa’s partnership with Facebook (new small-business card acquisitions were rewarded with $100 credit toward advertising with Facebook) and their development of a small-business community residing on the Facebook platform was highlighted as a great example of how to monetize the SMB social graph.

Another deep area of focus was ratings and reviews. With 35 percent of SMBs placing their trust in this source of information, it makes a lot of sense to capitalize on positive reviews when they’re generated. An emerging trend is the use of reviews as content for search engine marketing campaigns. Buying keywords and developing ad messages around positive reviews is one way to leverage this growing spring of trusted content.

Finally, there was an emphasis on the time-crunched nature of the SMB owners and the importance of communicating effectively — for example, limiting BlackBerry e-mails to 90 characters as this represents one screen, and using terms that resonate with them and their business problems as opposed to using industry jargon.

Two days of laser focus on the needs of the SMB market made it clear there are tremendous opportunities emerging to reach this elusive target. The combined effect of the proliferation of diverse media vehicles available through Web 2.0 and today’s disruptive economic environment brings this segment closer into reach than ever.

Precision Tune Auto Care, which has 300 franchisee-owned stores, is the first major auto-care chain to sign up for DriverSide’s new co-branded version of its online vehicle profiles. The profiles include maintenance records. Customers can also receive reminders and special offers via e-mails, alerts or a servicing calendar.

Customers can also use the DriverSide service to look up auto-related info, such as repair costs, or to locate parts or accessories. The ad-supported service, which competes in the online car maintenance space with RepairPal, also enables users to ask certified mechanics questions for free and interact with other auto owners.

“Precision Tune sees that they can create stronger bonds with existing customers by providing a full ownership experience — even if some of the content and services do not relate specifically to their business,” says DriverSide CEO Jad Dunning, who was previously an executive with Intuit’s StepUp. “It’s about being top of mind during all ownership touch points.”

“Our mission is to support the industry by helping it cost-effectively acquire new customers for a wide range of vehicle ownership services and better manage relationships with existing customers,” Dunning noted separately (in a press release).

Such a service also reduces churn, especially for the uncertain customer just trying out a maintenance shop. “Virtually all existing auto web sites focus on the three months a consumer researches a new car purchase, while DriverSide provides tools for the five-to-seven years the average consumer owns their vehicle,” says Dunning (in the release).

It is counterintuitive that Web 2.0 real estate sites would continue to grow their audience and ad dollars while the industry “scrapes along the bottom” for years to come. The sites, though, still say they are growing.

“Fear, value-shopping, and curiosity are driving people in record volumes to our site,” noted Zillow CEO Rich Barton on the company blog. “The fact that we have never spent any money on advertising gives me tremendous confidence in our consumer-centric product vision and in the long-term leverage in our business model (free, open access funded by targeted, relevant advertising).”

The past few weeks, however, have finally let some of the air out of the tires — a delayed pattern also observed with automotive third-party sites and dealers. The result: Redfin, a discount brokerage operating in eight markets, laid off 25 of 95 employees at the top of the month. And now, Zillow has laid off 35 of its 160 workers.

On the Redfin blog, CEO Glenn Kelman said the company was doing fine until just after Labor Day. “We’ve fought like starving animals, and with some success: while industry-wide transaction volumes dropped 33 percent, we grew revenues by nearly 50 percent. Traffic grew more than 300 percent.”

Once the economic meltdown hit Wall Street, however, the “deals started to fall apart. As the stock market wiped out prospective down-payments, tours and offers dropped 30 percent,” said Kelman. “Transactions that were done came undone.” Kelman added, however, that he had no plans to close any of his offices.

Zillow’s Barton, for his part, said the company’s revenues are way up but still fall short of profitability. He said he had “no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm.” But he might eventually hire more ad salespeople. Meanwhile, Zillow rival Trulia, which has been running mean and lean, told Greg Swann of Bloodhound Realty that it has no layoff plans and is looking to expand.

Spotzer, an Amsterdam company selling a “ready to air” video solution for SMBs, has made clear it is serious about partnering with traditional media channels to brings its solution to small businesses. The company announced today that it has brought on Gordon Henry to serve as president of its North and South American operations.

Many in the industry know Henry well as the now former chief marketing officer of Yellowbook, Yell Group’s U.S. division. Before joining Yellowbook in 2001, Henry worked at Knight Ridder and Columbia House, giving him a varied media background.

One of Gordon’s achievements at Yellowbook was building a powerful brand for an independent Yellow Pages publisher. Today, arguably, the consistently branded Yellowbook has higher recognition than some incumbent brands that have gone through multiple variations as they changed form via mergers and spin-offs. Yellowbook changed ad campaigns several times under Henry, and also recently upgraded its graphical look, but the brand remained consistent and was consistently promoted. That focus and effort paid off and it came out of Henry’s shop.

At Spotzer, Henry will be charged with helping the video company rise above a very crowded competitive field. It helps if the person doing this understands the inner workings of Yellow Pages organizations. The ability to match a vendor’s capabilities to what publishers can actually sell can be a critical advantage.

Henry joins Spotzer after it has already gained some traction in the marketplace. In September, it announced a deal with MerchantCircle, and reportedly it has yet-to-be-announced deals with a number of large directory publishers around the globe.

I like all the services using LinkedIn as their platform for social networking. The local implications haven’t really come into focus yet, but the latest publisher to put something out is BusinessWeek, with its Business Exchange.

Developed by former PowerOne Media tech guy Isaac Sacolick, Business Exchange uses LinkedIn profile information as a base, crawls the Web and leverages BusinessWeek’s audience to create, track and contribute topics and posts on any given subject — such as “Newspapers,” which is actually a pretty big subject.

Sacolick says people are always thinking they already organize their info with RSS. But the reality is that RSS is very ad hoc. “BX is organized by topics, already aggregates the top news and blog sources, and leverages the wisdom of the crowd to prioritize the most important topic,” he says. “It’s a simple way for business professionals to build up their online persona and should be really useful for business professionals, small-business owners, managers, MBA students and contractors who want to establish or promote their expertise.”