Business and Marketing News
Techcrunch published a report today that InsiderPages, the review site that has been actively shopped for some time, may have found a buyer for more than the $8.5 million it raised last March from Sequoia and Softbank Capital. I would speculate that possible purchasers are CitySearch, Yellowpages.com, or RH Donnelley. Theoretically, Yellowpages.com and RHD would have the … Read more
Newspapers can’t expect to beat Yellow Pages or Google in broad local advertiser categories, but they can focus on niche areas and invest in human editors and SEO to bring out their real strengths in the local marketplace, according to Jay Small, who is E.W. Scripps Newspapers’ director of online audience and operations. Small was … Read more
Gannett, via its Planet Discover subsidiary, says it will start providing its newspapers and TV stations with search marketing help. The newly formed “Market Development Group” will be run by Stanley Gauss, the former Online General Manager of The Press of Atlantic City. Planet Discover Head Terry Millard says that Gauss and his team are going to provide … Read more
InsiderPages, IdeaLabs’ women-oriented social network that collects user-generated reviews for local businesses, says it now has “thousands of pay-per-call advertisers” and “is probably the biggest” pay-per- call network. In an interview with The Local Onliner, Vice President of Product Andrew Shotland, wouldn’t comment on rumors that the company is in talks to be acquired , … Read more
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
Yelp, a social network/Yellow Pages hybrid, has launched a mobile version for the Palm Treo as part of a broader marketing relationship between the two companies. Terms are not being disclosed, but cash and tech support have likely been provided in exchange for Yelp’s “optimizing” for the Treo, and for advertising the Treo relationship on the Yelp … Read more
The American Press Institute’s $2.7 million Newspaper Next project is nearing completion on six innovation test beds, and getting ready to share its findings with the rest of the newspaper industry in September, according to Managing Director Steve Gray, who spoke June 29 at the Media Giraffe conference held at The University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Newspaper Next is … Read more
Newspapers are increasingly seeking out “federated search” solutions that can search and crawl all forms of their content, including display, classifieds, various feeds, editorial and archives, according to Catherine Kelly, President of HarvestInfo, a vendor to newspapers. “We’re starting to hear the term ‘federated search’ pop up from different newspapers, without any prompting,” says Kelly, who … 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