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 …

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 …

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 …

Chicago-based Groupon is pushing hard in Silicon Valley to build a major tech presence on the back of Mobility, a mobile services firm purchased last year. One piece of evidence: a billboard on the 101 touting the company as a place to work.
At Where 2.0 today in Santa Clara, VP and GM Mihir Shah said …

This afternoon’s Mobile SuperForum kicked off with a review of our Mobile Local Forecast from BIA/Kelsey mobile guru Mike Boland, followed by insights from a collection of mobile industry leaders weighing in on everything from how extensively mobile is being monetized today, to the real importance of check-ins.
Zaw Thet, CEO of 4info, kicked things off …

Sometimes you see something so compelling you just know it’s the start of something big. The 7-iCollection iPhone app recently launched by Green Tomato for 7-Eleven Hong Kong fits that bill.
Simply put, it uses the phones “augmented reality” feature (if you haven’t seen this, the easiest way to understand it is look at “Monocle” within …

The Australian directories company Sensis has released its full 2010 financial year results (ending June 30) and the results show the company is resilient, though print revenues are clearly coming under increasing pressure. The company generated A$2.1 billion in revenue for the year. On an adjusted basis, revenues declined by 2.9 percent.
Sensis’ print revenues …

 
Yellowbook had signed on to a new local ad exchange launched today by Chitika, an ad network established in 2003 that serves more than 2 billion monthly impressions across 80,000 Web sites. The core idea is to apply the ad exchange model to the local and mobile space.
For Yellowbook, the exchange offers a way to better …

Yellowbook had signed on to a new local ad exchange launched today by Chitika, an ad network established in 2003 that serves more than 2 billion monthly impressions across 80,000 Web sites. The core idea is to apply the ad exchange model to the local and mobile space.
For Yellowbook, the exchange offers a way to …

The new Q1 2010 Smartphone Intelligence survey from Compete (a Kantar Media company) shows significant developments in the use of local search, social networking and gaming on smartphones.
The quarterly study found that nearly one out of three smartphone users has called or stopped into a local business after finding that business from a local search …

Microsoft’s struggles with mobile are no secret. Worldwide smartphone marketshare for its Windows Mobile OS is estimated to be about 2 percent (Admob, May 2010), and MSFT just discontinued the Kin phone, weeks after launch. It would be easy to think of the company as a smartphone also-ran in a world dominated by Apple, RIM …

Motorola will split into “Motorola Mobility” and “Motorola Solutions Inc.” by early next year, according to a filing made July 1 with the SEC. The Mobility unit will include the mobile device and cable set-top box businesses, while Solutions will contain Motorola’s enterprise and networks businesses.
The idea for the split was first introduced last year, …

Today, Yellowbook is rolling out a partnership with European mobile app developer Adaffix similar to deals Adaffix has been launching in recent months across Europe. The app presents a clear monetization opportunity by suggesting three alternative businesses when the caller’s first choice merchant doesn’t answer the phone.
Under the partnership, Yellowbook will be the data provider …

Today, Yellowbook is rolling out a partnership with European mobile app developer Adaffix similar to deals Adaffix has been launching in recent months across Europe. The app presents a clear monetization opportunity by suggesting three alternative businesses when the callers first choice merchant doesn’t answer the phone.
Under the partnership, Yellowbook will be the data provider …

The Austrian mobile app developer Adafix has partnered with Lokaldelen, European Directories’ Swedish operation, to launch a mobile caller ID recognition app. The new application enables the publisher to suggest alternate merchants if a caller fails to connect with their first choice.
When the Adafix app suggests alternative merchants, it accesses the Lokaldelen database. The app …

National retailers are increasingly looking to get their local stores into local Web sites, directories and social and mobile sites. But they are confronting issues such as bad local store listing data, and the challenge of competing with locally owned stores for social and mobile media awareness, according to a morning panel hosted by Red …

Prompted by my writeup of Google’s new mobile pay-per-call program, I had the chance today to speak with the executive team at RingRevenue.
The company provides a platform for partners to monetize incoming calls. It private labels the platform for publishers to integrate trackable phone numbers into their ad units. This of course is nothing new …

As my colleague Peter Krasilovsky notes below, eBay has rebranded its global classified company Kijiji as eBay Classifieds. Parallel with that announcement, the company has launched two new iPhone apps and some projections about the merchandise value it expects to move this year.
First, the data: eBay believes the GMV (gross merchandise value) it will move …

Lots of news coming from mobile local app provider WHERE today. Just a week after it opened up its WHERE Ads local ad network, it has launched a new Web site and officially changed its name from uLocate to WHERE.
The company not only provides the WHERE local app but is also an app production house, …

If you’ve been reading TechCrunch this week, you’ll know (or be annoyed by repeated claims) that this year’s SXSW conference will be all about location-based mobile apps. They’ve dubbed it the “location wars.”
Everyone is doing and thinking about location targeting and mobile. Twitter has been doing it for months with its geolocation API and Friday …