It’s safe to say that Ted Leonsis is at the center of the local revolution. He’s done it all, from his early days trying to jumpstart ecommerce at RedGate, to his work building a local framework at AOL (i.e. Mapquest, Digital City, MovieFone, Studio Now); to his current role as Vice Chair, Groupon; Board Member, Amex; a Principal with the $450 Million Revolution Growth Fund; and of course, as owner of The Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards and The Verizon Center.

What is Ted’s Take on key local issues? We’re talking live with Ted Monday at 3pm pacific/12 pm eastern in conjunction with his keynote at ILM East in Boston, which takes place March 28.

Sign up for the free Webinar. Registrants also get a discount code towards the conference, which is March 26-28.

Movl, a tv app maker, received $500,000 from billionaire entrepreneur and investor Mark Cuban, to help fund business development as the company launches three new features. Movl designs multiscreen, multidevice apps to enhance the connected-TV viewing experience.

Now Movl is working on a program called Direct Connect, which adds to the existing Connect service and is designed to work with both the Wi-Fi and 3G capabilities of mobile devices. Movl explained the program would have the capability to tap into a smartphone’s built-in accelerometer to use the phone as a game controller. The business model is ad-supported or paid ($30/month) for Direct Connect with a free trial available for developers.

The app maker is also experimenting with a multiscreen, interactive ad platform and Kontrol TV, which will offer shortcuts for users to find multiple TV apps from the same app— including channel apps, trends, tweets, and other social media references related to TV shows. The company projects a May launch of Kontrol TV.

Last month, Movl announced a new app called SwipeIt, which works on Android phones and Samsung TVs (and is technically owned by Samsung), allowing users to “swipe” content from their phones and have it appear on their TV screens. Early last year, Movl’s WeDraw app won $200,000 as part of Samsung’s Smart TV apps competition.

The agenda is shaping up well for the Local Search Association’s April conference, the first involving a partnership with BIA/Kelsey. The event runs April 21-24 at the Boca Resort in Boca Raton, FL.

We’ve lined up headline presentation from Ursula Worth, Google’s head of directories and web hosting partnerships, and Mary Boysman, VP of Brand Marketing and Advertising at Aspen Dental.

Worth and her Google colleagues will offer some insight on how it views the future path for local online media, while Boysman will give an advertisers perspective on building a local integrating marketing program.

Aspen Dental operates more than 300 retail dental centers in 22 states. Aspen uses the full spectrum of media choices to drive customers to Aspen locations, from print Yellow Pages to search advertising and social media. Boysman will offer a major advertiser’s perspective on how it builds its marketing program and how it evaluates and rates the performance of its media choices. Anyone interested in a cut of Aspen’s sizable annual media spend will want to hear what she has to say.

In addition to the headliners, BIA/Kelsey and the LSA have built a robust lineup of workshops that offer attendees a rich store of data and insight.

The workshops include an overview of BIA/Kelsey’s Yellow Pages and local online forecasts; a review of new BIA/Kelsey research on the pay per call market, plus a download on a series of sales rep interviews being conducted by Hawthorne Search. Additionally, the Local Search Association will provide a look at results from the latest Local Media Tracking Study, conducted by Burke Research.

Stay tuned for announcements on new speakers in the coming days. Look here for more information on the conference.

Following in the footsteps of major brands such as Apple, Nike, Harley Davidson and ESPN, LivingSocial is now seeking to enhance its core brand via a retail “experience” center where book clubs, cooking classes, painting classes and performances can all take place.

The effort follows a trial of a LivingSocial membership program with built-in discounts and perks, a la Amazon Prime. Amazon, which owns 31 percent of LivingSocial, has been developing drop-off sites and is rumored to be contemplating its own stores.

As reported in The Washington Post, LivingSocial has paid $3 million to renovate 918 F Street, a six-story building near the hot new retail area of the Verizon Center and a few blocks from its headquarters. As the article recounts, “There’s an industrial-grade kitchen for temporary ‘pop-up’ restaurants. In a cooking classroom, high-definition, flat-screen monitors connected to motion-sensor cameras give an over-the-shoulder view of a chef at work. Another area could host intimate music sessions, and ‘flex’ rooms will host everything from yoga classes to book lectures.”

To us, the center is a natural extension of Living Social Adventures, in which Living Social acts as the host and promoter for experiences that can combine an outing, a meal and entertainment. One question is whether the cost can be paid back — $3 million appears to be the cost of the building. The extensive renovations may bring the cost higher. A second question is whether the experience center can be replicated in other markets.

The center opens Feb. 16 with a $119 Mexican dinner — not cheap — by celebrity chef Mike Isabella. The meal is a warm-up for a new D.C. restaurant Isabella is launching in the spring. LivingSocial told The Post that the idea is to extend its focus on lifestyle branding and move away from being known as a coupon company. The term it uses is “scarce experiential.”

Given the focus on classes, LivingSocial’s tie-in with Amazon, and Amazon’s purchase of TeachStreet, it’s surprising that Amazon isn’t leveraging TeachStreet’s relationships with independent teachers. Instead, it has closed down the service.

On Thursday’s Q4 and full-year 2011 earnings call, Eniro announced that it will phase out its print Gula Sider (Yellow Pages) directory in Norway, leaving only local directories as a print product choice in the Nordic country with a population of 4 million.

The move is yet another sign that the core Yellow Pages directory is nearing the end of its natural life in some of Europe’s more densely populated and digitally advanced markets. In December, European Directories shuttered the print operations of its Gule Sider (Yellow Pages) operation in Denmark and sold its online assets to Eniro.

This move shouldn’t come as a huge surprise given the rapid migration of directory revenues from print to digital, particularly in large markets like Stockholm, Oslo and Copenhagen, where declines in usage and revenues have been steep in recent years.

BIA/Kelsey forecasts that print will account for just 40 percent of Nordic revenues in 2011, and barely 20 percent in 2015.

Eniro will continue to publish its local directories product in Norway, called Ditt Distrikt, in 74 smaller communities around Norway. There was no word given on the fate of the Gula Sidorna (Yellow Pages) directory in Sweden, Eniro’s largest market.

For the full year 2011, Eniro reported group revenues of SEK4.3 billlion, a decline of nearly 19 percent, though the organic decline was a more manageable 11 percent. Adjusted EBITDA was SEK1.1 billion.

Poland, once one of Eniro’s more stable markets, experienced a dramatic 44 percent revenue decline in 2011. Another troubling sign for Eniro was very modest 1 percent organic-only growth in its core Scandinavian markets. However, the company is maintaining its guidance to return to growth in 2012.

BIA/Kelsey will have a more complete rundown of full-year 2011 results in an upcoming Advisory.

The deals culture is shifting from customer acquisition to customer loyalty by necessity. Why? Deals have begun losing high-income women. That’s the view of Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim, a featured speaker at ILM East in Boston March 26-28.

“Daily deals had an initial surge then quickly lost flavor on a key customer segment — higher income women with jobs,” Kim said in an email exchange with us. “This segment is the most profitable to most merchants. Acquiring them as a loyal repeat customer is worth quite a bit over any other customer segment.

Are deals really losing these women? Kim said the explosion of daily deals has led directly to lower conversion rates. “Daily emailing of 50 percent discount offers quickly turned from value to fatigue users,” he said. “ Email response rates and all conversion rates took downward dips across almost every vertical. That’s echoed by all the e-commerce merchants we have talked to.”

Loyalty programs such as those run by Next Jump, however, have begun to reverse the downward course “Towards the second half of 2011, we managed to climb conversion back up. This was not done via targeting, but through loyalty. The growth of loyal repeat visitors increased conversion rates at every level 50-150 percent higher, category by category.”

Kim said loyalty is mostly measured as a byproduct of points and rewards. “From 2010 to 2011, as the points platform got stronger, we saw metrics increase as follows: 100 percent increase in first-time visitors converting into a transactor. 300 percent increase in single-transactor converting into a repeat loyal transactor.”

Kim adds that the big trend on the horizon will be ease of purchase — convenience. “Make it easy for me to find and buy what I need,” said Kim. “Earn my trust as a consumer, and even at good prices [not best], you will have my wallet share. This is how you earn loyal customers.”

Charlie Kim is a featured speaker at ILM East, which takes places March 26-28 in Boston. Other loyalty-related speakers include Jim Douglass, SVP, Cartera, and John Valentine, VP, SCVNGR/LevelUp. You can register here.

We’ve long looked at the online-offline gap. This comes down to the challenge in connecting the dots between increasing levels of online research and the sheer volume of offline spending (95 percent of U.S. retail). This is ROBO: research online to buy offline.

Now we’re not only seeing things like retail inventory feeds (i.e., Milo), mobile shopping and payments start to connect those dots, but they’re even starting to reverse the flow. In other words, flipping ROBO on its head: using offline research to facilitate online buying.

This is also known as “showrooming,” essentually using physical stores as showrooms for product research before buying from a more price-competetive online marketplace like Amazon. And of course smartphones, shopping apps, and cameras (read: barcode scanners) empower this.

This will be an ongoing area of research and analysis in the days to come. In the meantime, you can check out my column over at Street Fight, which introduces and starts to bat around the concept. Read some below and stay tuned for much more to come on this topic.

In the ever expanding universe of tech & media parlance, we’ve recently been given our newest term: ‘showrooming.’ Tied to the emergence of smartphones and shopping apps, it refers to the act of using local stores as showrooms for more price-competitive online purchases.

What’s interesting is that it essentially reverses the ‘research online to buy offline’ (ROBO) phenomenon, we’ve been talking about for years. Just as e-commerce players were relegated to research tools under ROBO, the tables have now turned on their offline counterparts.

Amazon has even gone as far as offering discounts on purchases scanned in stores (using its app), to further push its vested interest in this trend. And lots of local physical stores have retorted with futile lobbying and letter-writing, rather than competing head on.

But to what degree is showrooming actually happening? One indication was offered this week through a new report from Pew. During the holiday shopping season, it found that 52 percent of adult mobile users relied on their devices while shopping in local stores.

38 percent called a friend for advice, 24 percent looked up reviews, and 25 percent looked to see if they could find a better price elsewhere (both online and offline). And the numbers tend to skew higher for users 18-49, urban, and college educated.

But when asked what was the outcome of this in-store mobile research, 35 percent made a purchase at that store. That’s good right? Perhaps not, if you consider that this mobile activity drove 65 percent of shoppers away (glass half full or empty, etc.).

But here’s the kicker: many of those mobile price shoppers were driven straight into the arms of competitors. Specifically 37 percent didn’t purchase at all while 19 purchased the product online and 8 percent did so at another store. That’s a full 27 percent that bought somewhere else.

Read the rest here.

Here’s a look at the contests:

1. Staples’ “Give Your Small Business the Push it Needs.” To enter, contestants must submit a 15-second video about their business on Staples’ Facebook page. In order to win, each business must get the most votes for their video. Staples offers the winning five businesses up to $50,000 in free television advertising in a Staples ad or $40,000 in free advertising and $10,000 in cash each. Winners also get $500 in Staples merchandise and services. Deadline is March 14.

2. Wal-Mart’s “Get on the Shelf.” The world’s largest retailer is offering the winner of this contest an opportunity to have its product sold in Wal-Mart stores and Walmart.com. In addition, the winner will receive marketing help and assistance in scaling production to meet the retail giant’s demand. To enter, contestants must submit a video via YouTube. Deadline is Feb. 22.

3. Facebook’s “Small Business Boost.” While some companies are using Facebook as a contest platform, the social media network itself is offering tiered prizes in its SMB contest. The 10 U.S.-based businesses that can drive the most “likes” to their Facebook business pages by April 1 will receive up to $10,000 in free advertising. Smaller prizes include receiving $50 in free Facebook advertising for attracting 50 Facebook “likes” before the April 1 deadline. Winners with 100 “likes” on their business pages will receive a $100 ad credit.

We’re seeing more vertical players trying to leverage their brands with deal offerings and advertising. The latest one is Blue Cross and Blue Shield. Twenty-two Blue Cross state organizations around the U.S. are working with Analog Analytics to launch Blue365, a deal program offering health and fitness discounts, as well as adjacencies like tax prep.

SnapFitness, eDiets.com, Reebok, H&R Block and others are charter deal providers for Blue Cross. The launch will be supported via a media campaign launching in late spring. “Health and fitness is the quintessential loyalty program,” says Analog CEO Ken Kalb. He notes that consumers are making more of their own health decisions, so a health marketplace makes more sense in this climate.

Besides health, Analog has made a move into travel, working with Travelsavers Partner Services, a mega-booker working with more than 17,000 hotels and representing 20 percent of all travel bookings. Kalb says the biggest problem with travel as a deals vertical is sourcing new deals all the time. While destination deal sites such as Groupon and LivingSocial are scoring very well with travel, smaller sites do well to hook up with a one-stop such as Travelsavers. ‘They have 1,000 people trying to find travel deals,” he says.

CSO Insights recently completed its annual global sales force survey and has come to some interesting conclusions. While sales objective achievement has increased overall, 2012 sales objectives are being projected at their highest level in recent years coupled with the lowest confidence levels in actually achieving them. One of our core beliefs with sales objectives is you can’t expect increased performance without increased support. CSO Insights’ data seem to support this:

“Increases in revenue goals need to be backed by investments in sales rep efficiency and effectiveness,” added Jim Dickie, managing partner, CSO Insights. “The study uncovered a wide variety of factors that can positively impact sales performance including optimizing lead generation, better alignment of the sell cycle and the buy cycle, and leveraging CRM 2.0 technologies such as sales collaboration, sales management analytics, and sales intelligence. Best-in-class sales organizations that focus on formalizing their sales process and deepening their relationship with customers are significantly outselling their competitors.”

From our point of view, those organizations willing to provide updated training on a more consistent and effective sales process, coupled with better market intelligence, are the ones winning in the local media space. So much of what we are seeing are inconsistent sales methods, lack of central management control over the sales process, more managers who are player/coaches, and a void in preparing media salespeople to have a deep strategic discussion on how digital media works with their core media or how digital media supports a small and medium-sized businesses’ needs and goals.

Recently, BIA/Kelsey has developed many new tools and research to help support managers and salespeople with market intelligence, education on the value of digital media and, more important, how digital media and traditional media can be sold side by side. Our core philosophy is that media salespeople should be the value experts with any of their portfolio products. As the value expert, they need to understand the customer’s challenges and the industry’s challenges so they can translate their portfolio of solutions to the customer’s needs and goals.

Sales is becoming less about personal relationships and more about information relationships. There is too much information on digital media available for SMBs and even brands to process which means the salesperson has to fill the role of information interpreter to become the valued consultant. Translating the myriad technical functions and features of digital media into concrete value messages, supported by simple to understand facts and figures, is what SMBs crave.

So while contemplating how to move the sales needle, think about how best to support the sales team and what support is needed to achieve even higher goals in 2012.