Business and Marketing News
Google’s announcement that its self-serve system will be enabled for print newspapers gives newspapers an easier way to reach small businesses. Newspapers, of course, are famously challenged to apply their relatively limited sales forces to anything smaller than a car dealer or hospital. Here are some details: 50 larger newspapers, including titles by Gannett, Tribune, The New … Read more
Judy’s Book co-founder Andy Sack posts very candidly about the difficulties of launching a review/IYP site. Sack, who also founded Abuzz, one of the original review sites, and worked on Firefly, knows something about this subject by now. Founded in 2004 at around the same time as Insider’s Pages, which just changed CEOs, Judy’s Book claims one million unique visitors; a … Read more
CitySearch President and CEO Briggs Ferguson says, in an interview with Greg Sterling, that the site now has “41,000 advertisers.” That means a gain of 11,000 since the beginning of 2005, when the company had about 30,000 advertisers. It is possible that the number is even less. Ferguson sometimes says “advertisers” when he actually means “advertising locations.” If … Read more
TrueLocal has amassed a database of 13 million local businesses, including 3.8 million local URLs, and is now ready to aggressively sell advertising on its local search engine, according to company president Jake Baillie. Up to now, the company’s revenue has largely come from six figure license deals with online directories, including Verizon SuperPages and Amazon’s … Read more
The annual list of my “best read” posts doesn’t necessarily correlate with what’s trending. Readership can be driven by a number of things. That said…it is great to see what’s resonating. Top 10 Posts 1. Can Next Door Monetize Its 10 Million Users? 2. Acxiom Marketing Solutions Group Sold to IPG 3. Web.com Sold to Siris Capital 4. RBC’s … Read more
There are a number of new or re-energized hyperlocal efforts out there, trying to crack the code. New efforts are expected shortly from Outside.in and SmallTown. Ongoing efforts are being made with AmericanTowns, which counts Idearc as a lead investor; and Dallas’ Pegasus News, which is owned by Fisher Communications. CitySquares in Boston continues to build its model. Topix has also remade itself into an … Read more
Online Real Estate has gone through its “classical” period in 1995-2000, and its “dark ages” in 2001-2005, but is now in the midst of its “renaissance” due to “data enlightenment” and “consumer driven industrial change,” per Zillow CFO and VP of Marketing Spencer Rascoff. Speaking at Kelsey’s ILM conference in Philadelphia, Rascoff said a key in the … Read more
The WSJ is reporting that McClatchy, the publisher of 30 newspapers, is set to be the 12th newspaper publisher to join the Yahoo consortium, leaving behind Gannett and Tribune, which had hoped to work with McClatchy to build an alternative national ad network. Meanwhile, The L.A. Times reports that Yahoo has agreed to provide prominent links on section fronts … Read more
Verticals are important to Yahoo! and others on a national basis, but they really aren’t the way to go at the local level because of the limited resources for local sales, says Warren Kay, managing director, strategic alliances, Yahoo Search Marketing. Kay was keynoting Kelsey’s Directory Driven Commerce conference in Reston, VA. In an ideal world, verticals are the … Read more
Under-served small communities are getting more attention. Companies like TownNews, Greyboxx and Topix have set out to focus on small town and exurban residents, and aggregating those local users for advertisers. As we wrote in April, Topix – a 25 person company that is 80 percent owned by Gannett, Tribune and McClatchy – has been aggregating local news from a variety … Read more