Zillow Adds a Home Services Directory

October 2, 2008


With the real estate market in an indefinite doldrums, Zillow is transforming itself from an information provider about home sales to a full service provider of information for home owners. The ad-supported service announced today that it is launching a Professional Services Directory that is probably going to encroach on similar territory mined by services such as Angie’s List or ServiceMagic.

The Directory uses Zillow’s 150,000 registered real estate salespeople as a base, but expects to be adding adjacent categories, including stagers, lenders, contractors, landscapers and architects. Consumers can then search for professionals by specialty, business name, city, ZIP code or neighborhood. While it would seem logical that Zillow would invite ratings and reviews, they aren’t included in the initial rollout.

To us, the whole concept isn’t such a stretch (although it isn’t a sure thing that Zillow’s users will march from Z-estimates to mortgages to this). Zillow has been selling ads to this community from the get-go, first via EZ Ads, and now with the updated version, called “Showcase Ads.” Combined, the two channels have now sold 30,000 ads.

Will the new Directory launch as a state-of-the-art IYP, with integrated mapping, etc.? It will not. But it is likely to act as an additional ad channel, and also might support Zillow’s broader, mutual efforts with The Newspaper Consortium. Newspapers have been looking for a way to get into home services – rumors are that some of them had been looking at Angie’s List before its recent round put it out of reach.

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‘Clickable’ Provides SMBs With Search Management

October 1, 2008

To the ranks of Marchex Connect, WebVisible, ReachLocal, Yodle, Metrix4Media, Orange Soda and others add Clickable, a pay per click and search “dashboard” company that has attracted $23 million in venture funding from Founders Fund, Union Square Ventures and FirstMark Capital.

The company’s vision is to focus on an Omniture-like dashboard for larger local businesses such as auto dealers and hospitals. Typicall, these have search budgets in the neighborhood of $50K per year.

The dashboard tracks the performance of every campaign, while adding useful information such as performance tips (“Add a title!”) and columns from search consultants. It also enables people to map, rate and track their leads. The basic idea of the dashboard is to provide an intuitive tool for people who know how to use Google, while putting all the information in one space, notes VP of Marketing Max Kalehoff.

Clickable, which has been incubating for two years, has formed its first partnerships with several key players, including Lexis Nexis. It envisions forming similar partnerships among SMB and vertical players. For smaller players, the company has developed Clickable Express, which provides many similar features but is tailored more towards the Mom and Pop market.

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Zvents Gets $24 Million; Boosts ‘What, When and Where’ Vision

September 30, 2008


Zvents, which is seeking to transform the events category to a broader “what, when and where” category that encompasses local entertainment, organizations and businesses, has announced $24 million in new funding from AT&T (i.e. wireless and Yellow Pages), Nokia Growth Capital and NAVTEQ.

The funding is on top of $7.2 million previously raised from Vantage Point Venture Partners and Red Rock Ventures, both of which are also participating in the new round. A third early funder, Net Services Inc., isn’t participating in the new round.

The massive funding for a company pulling in $220,000 per month suggests a major bet by the companies. The bet is in several things swirling in-and-around the events category, but not yet mastered by Zvents (or rival Eventful, for that matter).

These include taking a lead role in mobile searches for events, which is a top use for mobile phones; selling ads to the likes of Home Depot and REI for Promotion-based events; the development of an ad network that would allow Zvents to place media from one partner site to another; and the ability to fully leverage Zvents network of 250 plus local sites, focused largely on many key newspapers.

All this is very ambitious. But the move of a hefty portion of events-oriented search to mobile is going to be real, especially with the increased presence of the smart phones. Advertising-wise, it makes more sense for some categories than others. The Dinosaur Show at the Milwaukee Arena that is coming to Chicago makes sense. But isn’t it a little off center to think that Home Depot’s caulking workshops translates into a high CPM advertising opportunity? That’s going to take major new thinking at the agencies.

Our interpretation is that buried somewhere in this is a strong vote of confidence in local mobile as a targeted ad platform; the globalization of search; and in the compelling vision of Zvents Founder Ethan Stock. It isn’t a sure thing, but we like where it is going.

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MySpace Kicks Off Self Serve Advertising

September 25, 2008


Fox Interactive Media’s MySpace is seeking to jumpstart local and small business advertising by launching its homegrown Self-Serve Ad Service. Initial advertisers are likely to be rock bands – the first major segment to have adopted MySpace itself — but the service hopes to move up the food chain as time goes on.

Fox is making several dozen templates available for do-it-yourselfers. In this regard, it is similar to AdReady, which provides white label service to The New York Times Co. and WhitePages.com. Advertisers can also use their own art work. Targeting is also available by gender, age, region, city/state, and interests.

Newly released Kelsey Group research shows that 41 percent of small businesses say they would like to use self-serve in lieu of salespeople. But professional local ad sellers –especially on the Yellow Pages side — remain skeptical that people would actually be willing to use self serve for renewals, upsells, etc. (I think they will).

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Extensions of LinkedIn (Continued)

September 25, 2008


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 Business Week, with its Business Exchange.

Developed by former PowerOneMedia tech guy Issac Sacolick, Business Exchange uses LinkedIn profile information as a base, crawls the Web and leverages Business Week’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 that people are always thinking they already organize their info with RSS. But the reality of RSS is that it 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.”

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Just Announced: Big Time Lineup for ILM 08, Silicon Valley

September 24, 2008


OK, we’ve got the format(s) and “best and brightest” speaker roster set for Interactive Local Media: Extending Local Channels, which is Nov. 19-21 in Santa Clara, next to San Jose.

At the top of the list is Angie Hicks, “the Angie” from Angie’s List, and Rodney Rice from ServiceMagic. They’ll tell it all during one-on-one interviews.

More excitement is to be found on a Financial panel with Kara Nortman from IAC; and the “Transition to the Internet” sessions with Kevin Cuddihy from Comcast; Larry Olevitch from NBC Local; Lem Lloyd from The Yahoo! Newspaper Consortium; and Meredith Papp from Google’s Traditional Media team.

For some people, Interactive Local Media is all about the ad nets. If that’s the case, we have three of the leaders in the vertical and local space: Russ Fradin from Cox’s Adify; Shawn Riegsecker from Centro; and Jason Tafler from Gannett’s PointRoll.

And we’ll have plenty of “Community” with Mark Josephson from Outside.in; Mike Orren from Pegasus News; Dave Galvan from Topix; and Seb Provencher from Praized.com. We’ve also zeroed in on New Business Directories in the U.S. and abroad with Chris Smith from Sensis; and Eric Peacock from CitySearch/InsiderPages; and Pieter Grasdijk from Holland’s iLocal. Watch for some additions there, to be announced shortly.

We also are looking forward to new directions in mobile with Greg Wester from VoodooVox (Greg, of course, one the smartest analysts to come out of The Yankee Group). We’ll have a lot of other local mobile-related things at the show, including leading edge local iPhone and Google Android demos.

We’re especially proud to land Mike Liebhold from The Institute For the Future to give us a sense of how mobile, GPS and Mapping technologies impact the future of local media, community and society. Mike is a longtime tech industry leader and visionary (at Apple, among other places). All this will be rounded out with some great Comscore data on multi-platform local usage from Brian Jurutka, a great presenter and analyst.

What is really going to make this conference stand out, however, are the multi-paneled “Superforums” on SMB Marketing and Video, hopefully complete with audience “voting” via laser pen (if we can figure out the logistics with 600+ attendees). The SMB SuperForum is now largely in place with Web.com’s Jeff Stibel doing a mini keynote, with strong support from Paul Ryan from DoneRight; Josh Walker from CityVoter; Court Cunningham from Yodle; Todd Crandall from Metrix4Media; Darren Waddell from MerchantCircle; and Mike Englehart, the new CEO from LiveDeal.

On the Video SuperForum side, we’re kicking things off with a mini-keynote from Brad Inman, the CEO of TurnHere (and founder of HomeGain and InmanNews), great demos, and many top speakers to be announced on that shortly. Here’s the Kelsey Group URL for where to sign up. (But don’t delay. Prices go up shortly).

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Comcast Teams with Mixpo in Push for Online Video

September 22, 2008


Comcast, the nation’s largest cable TV company, is set to upsell its vast body of video advertisers via a new deal with Mixpo, the Seattle-based venture backed company dedicated to making video “actionable” across multiple platforms. For Mixpo, the deal represents its first foray into cable. It already has deals with several newspapers, including The Houston Chronicle and Freedom Newspapers.

For Comcast, the deal with Mixpo extends well beyond its 90 local markets. It will also extend to Comcast broadband, and to Vehix, its third party auto site.

“Comcast ‘gets’ video. They are finding that it’s very easy to upsell existing clients from TV to online with the benefits of direct response and analytics,” says Mixpo CEO Anupam Gupta. “From a strategic perspective, they really understand that this is about creating new direct response ad units that can be monetized better.” For national advertisers, it beats being tied to 15 second pre/post roll ads, which is what they’re typically offered, he adds.

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