Agendize announced today from the EADP conference in Spain that it will partner with Videoagency, to power its video ads with call to action features. This brings Agendize’s signature click-to-call and save and share features (profiled in a past post) to video for the first time.

Mixpo provides similar functionality, which is a strong proposition to advertisers that want to take advantage of the direct response capabilities of video that is served in a local search context. This is the “lean forward” mode of video viewing we’ve examined in the past.

This is a logical step for Agendize, whose call to action buttons in local listings bring social and personalization capabilities to IYPs. As video is increasingly integrated in these venues, Agendize is following suit. Its existing relationships with Yellowbook.com and Yellowpages.ca, among others, could also help Videoagency and the combined offering gain IYP channel relationships.

Videoagency currently distributes mostly on search engines, utilizing a video SEO tool in combination with increasing video favorability in search engine results (universal search). Like Spot Runner and TurnHere, the company relies on an outsourced network of 4,000 filmmakers to shoot and edit content for SMB videos.

The company is yet another in this quickly growing segment of SMB video vendors. Differentiation will be vital if and when we reach a shakeout in the space; and actionable videos like these (and Mixpo) are one point of differentiation. Check out the demo here.

]]> http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2008/05/08/agendize-powers-local-video/feed/ http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2008/05/08/mojopages-claims-traction-announces-deals-with-key-players/ http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2008/05/08/mojopages-claims-traction-announces-deals-with-key-players/#comments Thu, 08 May 2008 21:41:18 +0000 Peter Krasilovsky Local Media Blog Coupons Verticals Video City Guides http://blog.kelseygroup.com/index.php/2008/05/08/mojopages-claims-traction-announces-deals-with-key-players/ Despite some traction by sites like Yelp – ok, specifically Yelp — the hybrid IYP/ratings-and-review segment remain something of a question mark in the industry. It remains to be seen whether such sites can attract a large number of frequent reviewers and users – and not just recent college grads and/or mother-aged women. It also remains to be seen whether they can cross the chasm out of restaurants and bars into the gold mine of services traditionally mined by Yellow Pages.

Besides Yelp, other sites abound, including Cox’s Kudzu, Boorah, Loladex and Citysearch’s InsiderPages. But it is hard to get a handle on how well they are doing. MojoPages, a newer Yelp-like site, reports it has been making progress.

A year out of the gate, the San Diego-based site claims a solid base ofd 500,000 user reviews and 100,000 local advertisers across the U.S., mostly on the backs of partners including SuperPages.com, Marchex, ServiceMagic and ServiceMaster. It also has coupon distribution with ValPak.

President Jon Carder, a 29 year old vertical search pro who sold his first, baby-oriented venture to IdeaLabs, says the site has been seeing steady growth. He acknowledges the comparisons to Yelp and others, but says Mojo has been developing its own unique mix of features, including video reviews, email notification for reviewed businesses, and an “ask friends” feature. It also has set its algorithms to bring up more relevant results.

A search on MojoPages for Carpet Cleaners in Sen Diego will get you mostly relevant results, he says. If you do a search for carpet cleaners in San Diego on Yelp, he says, “six of the ten results aren’t even carpet cleaners.”

The company also maintained a strong EBITDA margins in Q1 and announced plans to cut about US$30 million in costs, much of it in headcount and other employee related expenses.

The market seemed to like the results. As of 4:00 pm Eastern Time, RHD shares were up 28.5 percent to 8.20. Idearc shares are up almost 8 percent. Following its Q1 announcement, Idearc shares rose significantly and RHD enjoyed a bump as well. Today, the situation was reversed and RHD returned the favor, so to speak.

While it was a good day for the company’s share price, the outlook for ad sales painted by RHD CEO Dave Swanson was anything but rosy. The publisher reported total first quarter revenue of US$674.7 million, a 2 percent increase over 2007. Ad sales, however, dropped 4.8 percent, which RHD executives pointed out was in line with 2008 guidance of mid single digit declines. The company confirmed its 2008 guidance on today’s call.

In describing the current environment, Swanson was very careful not to raise hopes that a recovery was on the horizon.

Responding to a question from an analyst, Swanson emphasized that he “has not seen anything that would indicate any positive turn to the North” in sales results. Asked specifically about Las Vegas, one of RHD’s key markets, Swanson described it as the worst business environment he has seen in his career. While Florida and Nevada remain the worst markets, the pain of a slowing economy is being felt across all 28 states RHD operates in, according to Swanson.
So RHD is making it clear that while the economy will keep results down for a while (and executives maintain the downturn is cyclical rather than secular), the company has taken measures, cost cutting and refinancing, that will improve the stability of the business. RHD is also working on a new version of DexKnows.com, which will go into beta later this year.

On the eve of today’s announcement, Deutsche Bank upgraded RHD from sell to hold, a boost that reflects a view that RHD is less risky as an investment than it was just a few weeks ago.

During DDL last week, I was able to finally meet Palore CEO Hanan Lifshitz. We profiled Palore a year ago, when it was a browser overlay that enhanced search engine results with personalized icon-based notifications of business attributes (pet friendly, kosher, vegetarian, etc.).

Since then, the company has changed its model to utilize all of the data it was scraping from local search sites to get this info. From that has come useful data sets that the company is now structuring in various ways to be used by destination sites (licensed), or as a research tool for marketers.

The company is starting to release some of the data to wet the market’s appetite, including a simple comparison of restaurants that have websites across major metros (see below). Other specific drill downs would be interesting to see, such as who is providing menus, table reservation features, and video (a comparative look at volumes of video clips across IYPs would also be interesting).

The point is that there are lots of mashups of local search data that are possible and potentially of interest or promotional value to destination sites, as well as local marketers and industry watchers. I’m meeting with Hanan again next week, and will find out more about the data he can scrape, aggregate and structure in interesting ways. More to come.

In particular, Evans talks about the perilous position IYP operators are in as vertical content proliferates online. He also makes it clear that the publishers have assets to compete in verticals. Evans points out that Avvo may be positioned as a Yellow Pages killer (in the legal category anyway), but online Yellow Pages has the tools at hand to transform itself into an Avvo killer. Whether it does so is another matter.

This whole notion of how Yellow Pages companies can leverage the vertical opportunity will be on the agenda at The Kelsey Group’s Directory Driven Commerce conference, Sept. 15-17, in Atlanta. Check out our preliminary program.

Brown’s comments served as a fitting capstone for much of the conference – or given his morning time slot, perhaps I should say a prequel to the conclusion.

Brown thinks the various “revolutions” that are shaking up online market-making and marketplaces are in their early stages. Specifically, he believes:

• The newspaper industry is just beginning a period of wrenching restructuring (of its content strategy and business model).
• Verticals will continue to grow apace, to the point where online vertical markets will play a vital part of our quotidian online experience.
• Web 2.0 capabilities (e.g., social networking, video) will become closely woven into online markets.

What was most interesting about his remarks, however, was his overall tone. Brown spoke with the urgency of someone (a guru) who senses we’re in the early stages of a real revolution, and we need to be aware of the magnitude of the changes to come.

As more SMBs begin to experiment with online advertising, the problem of supporting and informing them of the progress of their online campaigns increases. Based on my own experience in the back-office side of supporting SEM sales, I can attest that new online advertisers simply require more communication on how their campaign is working, numbers of calls generated, how to effectively improve keyword performance, and how best to update their profile or Web site to generate more leads. New online advertisers are in the experimental mode and are not yet sold on the value of SEM, which requires constant reinforcement of the ongoing value delivered by online advertising.  

While gaining appointments and educating SMBs on the benefits of online advertising is important in selling SEM, continually communicating the value of what is being delivered is what will help maintain SMB online advertisers. Failing to reinforce the value to new SEM advertisers ultimately leads to higher advertiser turnover in the second or third year, meaning the sales force will have to continually replace advertisers with more new advertisers rather than work on developing existing advertiser campaigns. 

Online video production company Spot Runner announced today that it has received $51 million from Legg Mason, Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT), Grupo Televisa, and Groupe Arnault/LVMH.

The company will use the funding to continue growing its capacity to deliver video advertising, both online and off. These investments are also strategic in nature, involving a collaboration of international media assets with Spot Runner’s video production platform. According to the release:

DMGT is one of the largest and most successful media companies in the United Kingdom with interests in national newspapers and related digital operations, local media, business and financial information, exhibitions and radio. In addition to the United Kingdom, it has operations in Central Europe, the United States, Canada, Asia, the Middle East and Australasia.

“Spot Runner is transforming the way media is optimized and targeted across a broad spectrum of advertising mediums. As a media company with one of the largest bases of local advertisers in Europe, we look forward to collaborating with Spot Runner and applying its model to our business, particularly as we continue to innovate in connecting advertisers with local audiences,” said David Roddick, commercial director of Northcliffe Media, the local media division of DMGT.

Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. is the largest media company in the Spanish-speaking world. Televisa operates four broadcast channels in Mexico that have consistently maintained a sign-on to sign-off audience share of more than 70 percent. Televisa also has interests in the production of pay-television networks, international distribution of television programming, direct-to-home satellite services, cable television, magazine publishing and distribution, and radio broadcasting.

“Spot Runner has demonstrated its ability to create meaningful value for media companies by bringing new categories of advertisers to television and other media and by helping larger companies invest their budgets more intelligently and effectively,” said Alfonso de Angoitia, executive vice president of Grupo Televisa, S.A.B. “We feel Spot Runner’s model has great applicability to the Latin American market and we’re excited to explore new opportunities to partner.”

Groupe Arnault/LVMH is the world’s leading luxury products group, with a portfolio of over 60 prestigious brands including Moët & Chandon, Hennessy, Louis Vuitton, Givenchy, Donna Karan, Sephora and TAG Heuer.

“The global media landscape is undergoing a sea change. For advertisers to be effective, they will need to completely shift their thinking about how media is targeted and distributed, and how creative can be versioned for multiple audiences,” said Antoine Arnault, head of communications for Louis Vuitton. ”Spot Runner is the clear leader in this area. As one of the largest advertisers in the fashion category, we’re very enthusiastic about the prospect of working with them to capitalize on these transformations.”

Spot Runner has seen lots of action lately, emblematic of the activity level in the local online video space. This includes the recent acquisition of the GlobeShooter production network and that of local online advertising firm Weblistic.

Funding in this round also included existing investors Allen & Co., Battery Ventures, Capital Research and Management, CBS, Index Ventures, The Interpublic Group, Tudor Investment Corp. and WPP.

Spanos says the local products will be receiving people, money and time. There will also be vertical investment in autos, travel and health. Previous regimes didn’t see rich opportunities in local and under-invested in the local products, he notes. They also didn’t leverage the relationship between the local sites and Mapquest, which remains the #1 mapping site. But that will change, especially as the city guides and Yellow Pages get relaunched.

AOL is also going to transform its sales effort. While dedicated local sales won’t be brought back, circa late 1990s, new self-serve and partnership efforts will be introduced.