Yellowbook: Facebook Now Top Traffic Source

I had left the room by this point but I was told last night (hearsay) that during the Yellowbook keynote, at the Borrell show yesterday morning, that the following statement was made: Facebook is now the site’s top traffic referrer, passing Google.

This surprised me and I will seek to confirm it directly with Yellowbook. But if correct it’s striking on several levels. It argues that Facebook could become a major traffic source for local publishers (I believe this was via FB Connect).

I don’t know what the quality of leads coming from Facebook would be in this context — although I’m being told by publishers and others using Facebook Ads that the quality and efficacy is good — but the statement above suggests that publishers must more aggressively look to social media for traffic and leads for their advertisers.

At Borrell Conference, Are You?

I’m at the Borrell Local conference in New York today and tomorrow. This morning I’ll be on the podium setting the stage for Matthew Berk to discuss and demo the Marchex reputation management offering.

Tomorrow I’ll be leading a panel called “Tapping Key Categories: SEO, Paid Search, Directories.” We’ll be talking about three areas: product, distribution and sales. What do all these things look like today and how might or must they change to drive more value and less churn?

If you’re there/here, let me know.

Yelp’s Ambition: Turned Down MSFT Too

I thought Yelp was foolish to walk away from $550 million, but it may have also turned down $700 million from Redmond. According to BusinessWeek:

Stoppelman and his crew believe they’ve only begun to tap the potential of local online advertising. Their desire to keep control is strong enough that Yelp recently turned down a $550 million acquisition offer from Google (GOOG) and a bid north of $700 million from Microsoft (MSFT), according to two people involved in the negotiations. “Yelp has the chance to become one of the great Internet brands,” says Stoppelman. “That for me is the chance of a lifetime.”

$700M — Yikes. Yes, Yelp is becoming a big Internet brand but success in the local ad market is far from certain. That said, the company will be doubling its sales force in the near term, which is part of what the Elevation money is being used for.

There are in fact threats to Yelp: Google and potentially Facebook (though not Gowalla and Foursquare). However, the site has been able to establish itself among consumers as a primary resource and destination for reviews and it has been aggressive in mobile as well.

What do you think? Do you think Yelp has a shot at being one of  the Internet’s “great brands” (and presumably a successful IPO) or do you think Yelp and its board are being greedy and have become “drunk with ambition”?

(Thanks to David Mihm for pointing me to the BizWeek story.)

After the Half: Google’s Super Bowl Commercial

People are buzzing about the probability that Google will have a commercial during the Super Bowl. Search Engine Land reports that as “long ago” as 2007 Google considered a Super Bowl ad but decided against it. Now, after halftime we’ll likely see an ad for Google that many are speculating will be from its existing “Search Stories” videos.

Here’s one that some anticipate will be the ad:

Here’s the Twitter post from Google CEO Eric Schmidt that began the frenzy, suggesting that Hell hath frozen (not hard to believe given the storms on the East Coast) and that a commercial for the company is coming later today:

Here’s the public list of advertisers sans Google.

Danny Sullivan at SEL speculates that the ad may be a response to Bing’s initial success:

This pretty much confirms that Google is absolutely feeling the pressure from Bing. The company has never, ever seriously advertised its core search offerings before in this manner.

When I first saw the discussion of the Twitter comment above I thought it might be an ad for the Nexus One. Regardless of what the ad specifically promotes it’s very interesting that Google is doing it.

What if the ad were for — and it’s not likely to be — the Local Business Center or Local Listing Ads? Imagine that, eh?

We don’t have to “imagine it” we can watch it:

What may be much more interesting than the content of this particular ad is that it may signal Google is ready to do some traditional advertising around key products or services — or more precisely “media buying,” because with all the YouTube videos Google is advertising most of its products now. This is something that I’ve suggested to the company for several years. I’m by no means alone in this of course.

Many of Google’s products that previously underperformed (e.g., Checkout) might have been boosted tremendously by some good ol’ fashioned TV or newspaper advertising. However if Google does begin to advertise more it’s going to be very selective about it I’m sure.

Could Facebook “Own” Shopping?

After the recent acquistion or merger of social shopping/fashion sites ThisNext and Stylehive, I started thinking about Facebook and Shopping.

Facebook is the new Google in the sense that it could hypothetically “own” market segments/sectors if the company devoted itself to doing so. (This was until recently the belief about every new area Google entered.) For example, TechCrunch writes about a new “full featured” webmail being developed at FB — the implication being that it would be highly successful and potentially threaten other webmail clients (read: Yahoo).

Facebook isn’t a good fit for all use cases. But it is for some. Shopping is one of them in my mind. Hearst-owned Kaboodle is perhaps the most effective of the “social shopping” sites but it’s still “under the radar” for most folks.

I conducted a little poll on Facebook the other day and asked people: “If Facebook were to develop a shopping site that offered products or discounts on products would you use it?” I didn’t get many responses, which either says something about me or Facebook. But “discounts” is the key word in that sentence.

Think about a deal of the day (LivingSocial) or group buying (Groupon) or simply a deal center (e.g., RetailMeNot or Ask Deals) featuring money saving offers or incentives that are then broadcast back to others via news feeds. This sort of thing I believe (assuming it’s presented well) would be a massive hit.

Agree or think that Facebook is just for “silly fun”?

Yelp Now at 29 Million Uniques

Yelp now says it has 29 million monthly uniques and 9 million reviews. A majority of users (54%) are over 35; however the largest single group is 18-34.

Yelp is one of the few sites now only selling its own traffic. The major search engines also do but Citysearch and yellow pages publishers all sell a network.

Do you think this approach is sustainable for Yelp or do you believe the company will need to adopt a similar “network” approach for advertisers?

Yell Reveals Better than Expected Earnings

Yesterday UK-based directory publisher Yell (which owns Yellowbook) announced somewhat better-than-expected quarterly earnings. Here are some of the highlights (click to enlarge the charts):

Yell:

Internet revenues continue to grow and represent almost 30% of total UK revenues compared to 24% last year.  Our intentional focus on acquiring more relevant searches for our advertisers, at the expense of volume, caused unique internet users to fall in December.

Yellowbook:

Internet revenues now represent over 16% of total US revenues up from 12% last year with future growth built on the foundation of continuing strong growth in unique visitors.

Is Siri the Ultimate LMS App?

Is Siri, which just released its iPhone app last night, the ultimate “local mobile search” tool? Here’s my discussion from SEL:

Siri is not a search engine technically and it’s not intended to be a replacement for Google. It’s intended to enable you to do more with your voice and your phone in fewer clicks or moves. Rather than showing you information or lists of choices it’s intended to be “transactional,” to help accomplish things. Siri “helps you get things done when you’re on the go” says the demo below.

Another major step away from the much derided “10 blue links.”

Siri provides a voice-enabled, “conversational” interface (using speech recognition from Nuance) and taps into a range of APIs, from companies such as Yelp, Citysearch, Yahoo, Taxi Magic, WeatherBug, Rotten Tomatoes, Google Maps, Eventful and Allmenus.com among others. These are launch partners but others will be added. Eventually, you’ll be able to specify preferred sites (I like Kayak rather than Orbitz for example).

Here’s Opus Research’s Dan Miller’s assessment:

Today the App Store in Apple’s iTunes site begins distributing Siri, a new app that transforms the iPhone into a “virtual personal assistant.” I know, we’ve heard the term before, describing precursor services like Wildfire, HeyAnita or the product of General Magic. Yet, in all those cases, the principal roles of the Virtual Assistant was to handle scheduling, messaging and simple directory-based activities (call origination, incoming call handling and the like).

Siri is set apart because it applies the depth of knowledge its founders and software specialists have built at SRI and elsewhere in creating a “cognitive assistant that learns and organizes” (CALO). Siri users benefit from a voluminous amount of pre-preprocessing and organization of information that has been carried out “in the cloud” on their behalf.

More from Techmeme here.

Siri’s content partners are almost without exception about real-world activities and events and an informal “tag line” is “Siri helps you get things done when you’re on the go.” (Mobile devices help people see clearly the connection between the digital and real worlds, which they have trouble seeing when the discussion is about PC influence on offline buying.)

As a technical matter Siri isn’t a search engine in the sense that it doesn’t maintain an index or crawl the Internet. It taps into partner APIs to enable “transactions.” But from a consumer perspective it will be used in the same way that search is often used on mobile devices today.

If you’re an iPhone (3GS) owner, download it and see what you think. It will become more broadly available soon. Siri is also a counterpoint to the argument that HTML5 and mobile Web will kill apps; can’t do all this with HTML5.

Hurry, get Google corp dev on the phone . . . .

Google Street View Going Inside Stores?

Barry at SEL posts about a tip received from the owner of a NY shop called Oh Nuts. In essence the store said that Google came inside and took lots of pictures that will go up online and complement the exterior Street View images (“Store View”). All this was done with permission of course and probably didn’t cost the store anything.

According to Barry’s post:

I received a tip from a New York retailer named Oh Nuts, that Google came to their store to take pictures for a new Google Maps product named “Google Store Views.” I was told that they took pictures of the inside of the store, every 6 feet, in all directions. They also took pictures of products.

This may be a test or it may be the beginning of a broader effort and significant expansion of the Street View offering by Google (which would almost certainly extend into mobile). Everyscape does something similar but it charges businesses for interior views. Here is one of Everyscape’s interiors of the Sir Francis Drake hotel in SF:

Here is a picture capturing the Google photographer capturing the store interior. Barry has an additional shot on the SEL post:

What do you think? Consumers are going to be interested in interiors in many cases. But do you think that businesses will be interested in this sort of promotion on Google?

How Do Newspapers Feel about the HotJobs Sale?

The original and central element of the Yahoo!-newspaper consortium was the HotJobs property. This was the core content and asset around which the “network” and consortium was built. It grew over time to include other properties and capabilities (search, ad serving/targeting). But now that Yahoo! is selling/outsourcing HotJobs to Monster how do the newspapers feel about it?

Here’s what the Monster press release says specifically about newspapers:

With the addition of HotJobs’s network of more than 600 daily and weekly newspapers, Monster’s alliances with local papers will grow to a total of approximately 1,000, giving Monster reach in all 50 states. The additional newspaper alliances, through their online and print classified ads, will further Monster’s current strategy of connecting job seekers with smaller, local businesses, particularly in healthcare, education, and skilled and hourly job categories.

Yahoo! will continue to manage its broader Newspaper Consortium (NPC) partnership, including providing both search and display advertising, content distribution, and its ad-serving platform, to newspapers in its NPC.

I don’t know whether or to what extent there was any consultation with them about this transaction. Do you think the newspapers care? Ought to care?

Nokia Maps & the Power of ‘Free’

Nokia announced a couple of weeks ago that it was making Ovi Maps with GPS navigation free, matching Google Navigation. The company reported yesterday that it’s seen almost a million and a half downloads and that they’re coming at a rate of one every second:

Today Nokia announced that since the launch of the new version of Maps (see our recent post here) with free walk and drive navigation there have been a staggering 1.4+ million downloads with over 20% coming from China. The one million mark was reached already at the end of last week and we’re averaging a download a second, 24 hours a day, said Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Nokia.

Nokia is determined to lead the market in mobile maps, navigation and location-based services. This first step is a key part of rolling out location and map-based services, quickly activating a massive user base.

If “Nokia is determined to lead the market in mobile maps . . . ” free is a good way to jumpstart that leadership.

The company also said that the top five countries where it saw the activity were: China, Italy, UK, Germany and Spain. China is a particularly important market where Nokia is strong and Android is just starting to enter, notwithstanding Google’s recent threat to withdraw from the market.

Here’s Opera data for China from December:

Nokia Ovi Maps with navigation now becomes a kind of loss-leader or retention tool for mobile users, who might otherwise jump ship to the iPhone or Android, where Google has implemented a terrific navigation app (Android 2.0 and above).

Verizon Launches Cross-Platform Coupons

Verizon has partnered with Cellfire to offer grocery coupons through FIOS (TV), online and via mobile devices. According to the release out yesterday:

It’s simple for customers to sign up for Spend Smart coupons on Verizon’s three screens: Verizon Wireless Mobile Web under the Shopping channel, Verizon FiOS Internet in the Entertainment and Apps channel, and through FiOS TV’s Widget Bazaar Applications Marketplace.  Customers can also access Spend Smart coupons at www.vzspendsmart.com.  When customers sign up on one of these services, the information is automatically synched to the other two, allowing them to view and use coupons on each platform.

To register, customers need to provide their shoppers club or loyalty club numbers from participating grocery stores, then will be able to view, save and use the coupons that are currently available for that retailer . . .

This is broader though “mechanically” similar to the way that AOL Shortcuts works with existing loyalty cards.

Another company M-Dot Network, which is now emerging, does something quite similar in the grocery and retail space: linking offers with existing loyalty cards — or a mobile telephone number (+ PIN).

The interesting thing in the latter case is that someone could be prompted to receive a deal/offer in the store (as opposed to ahead of time) via SMS and then receive and redeem it at the POS a few minutes later.

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If you missed the terrific Internet2Go Mobile Couponing webinar earlier today, you can register and watch “on demand” here.

Pandora’s Local-SMB Push

Pandora — perhaps my favorite iPhone app — has announced a deal with SMB-oriented display advertising platform AdReady. Simultaneously it’s also adding sales people to focus on direct sales to the SMB market. Here’s a quote from an article in ClickZ:

“We’ve been getting a lot of request from small to mid-size businesses, and we had our premium direct sales teams fielding a lot of those calls,” said Mikalis, who claimed Pandora had been doubling its business year over year. “We want our premium team focused on the largest Fortune 500 brands, but we didn’t want to do nothing with those other requests.”

This is very interesting; it’s quite rare to have this kind of inbound activity from SMBs — assuming the accuracy of the statement. Here we probably have a case of a great many SMB owners with iPhones (predominantly) who use Pandora as consumers, seeing the ads and wanting in. Consumer success in this way can often translate into B2B success. The line often posited between SMBs and consumers is very thin in many cases. 

I have never clicked on an ad in Pandora, however. And I now avoid the PC version because of audio ads. The service must be careful as it integrates more advertising that it does so thoughtfully — but that’s another conversation.

Pandora and potentially other Internet/mobile radio providers become another local traffic outlet for existing sales channels — in the same way that many local publishers partnered with Jingle’s Free411 service. The difference is that here, in mobile at least, the ad doesn’t need to be converted into audio. It can exist as in largely the same form as a text (or display) ad.

Hazzah! Coupons Webinar Tomorrow

Behold the power of coupons:

Einstein Bros. Bagels is telling potential customers on Facebook, and, at least in visible numbers, it’s paying off. The bagel-and-schmear giveaway started less than three full days ago, and already the bagel chain has increased its Facebook fan count from a measly 4,700 to a massive 336,000-plus. 

This makes perfect sense when you consider that coupons and deals are the most desired type of ads on social networking sites:

Tomorrow Shooger, ValPak and I will be sharing data and discussing offers and coupons in the digital and mobile arenas (emphasizing mobile).

I just got off the phone with the speakers, Matt Myers (Shooger) and Nikki Atchison (Valpak), and it should be a very interesting session. You’ll have an opportunity to ask questions at the end. And the slides are all available after the conclusion. Shooger’s also going to do a fun “hands-on” demonstration during the session. 

If you haven’t registered and want to attend you can sign up here. It’s free. The session is tomorrow at 10 Pacific/12 Central/1 Eastern. 

YouTube Video Rentals a Modest Success

The NY Times reports on YouTube’s Sundance-related video rental experiment:

YouTube said last month that it would dip its toes into the digital movie rental business with five independent films tied to the Sundance Film Festival. The company said the five films, which were available for 10 days, received a combined 2,684 views.

At $3.99 per rental, YouTube netted $10,709.16.

The Times suggests this isn’t really anything to crow about, while the quote from YouTube is that the test “exceeded our expectations.”

I suspect that YouTube will press forward with this model and seek deals with studios and rights owners. YouTube could develop a viable and potentially lucrative on-demand video rental business (online and on TV) if it can gain access to the content.

Netflix, for example, probably had more than $1.7 billion (roughly) in revenue last year. That’s a meaningful chunk of change for YouTube to go after. Think also about how Google TV ads would/could be integrated into such an offering.

Looking for a BD/Product Strategy Exec?

I spoke to someone yesterday who is a Netscape veteran with considerable local and mobile expertise. He’s looking for a senior/VP-level BD and/or product strategy role. I’m not getting paid to write this or promote him. Here’s a blurb he sent to me describing his background:

[Person X] has fifteen years of experience in the Internet Marketing industry, working for industry-leading companies. He has built profitable relationships with search engines, ad networks, and web publishers. He is entrepreneurial and has started two successful businesses, one in Local Online Advertising, the other in Ecommerce Loyalty. He has built channel reseller programs for two leading mobile software infrastructure providers. His optimal scenario is to find a small dynamic fast-moving team of recently-funded developers, preferably in the Bay Area (or LA or NY). In short, he would like to join a team where he can put his fingerprint on something new that creates real consumer value.

Anybody interested in talking to him send me a note and I’ll connect you.

AmericanTowns Announces Profit Milestone

AmericanTowns has gone from an uncertain strategy a few years ago to profitability according to a release out this morning. The release lists milestones the site has achieved (verbatim):

• AmericanTowns.com traffic has continued to double every 6 months, reaching over 3 million unique visitors in January. (Source: Google Analytics; excludes partner sites with our content.)
• Ranked in the top 700 US websites by Quantcast, AmericanTowns.com has the highest daily traffic of any network of hyper-local community websites.
• Revenues again grew even faster than traffic growth in the quarter, dominated by local advertisers seeking local customers, at over 75% of advertising revenues.
• The Company is now profitable, including all costs of its 15,000 community sites, content distribution to partner sites, and all corporate overhead.
• AmericanTowns.com now includes thousands of locally-relevant blogs and receives over 60,000 announcements and event postings directly from community leaders to the site each month. Each day AmericanTowns.com features over 100,000 news stories and over 500,000 locally-related tweets.

The success of the site is happening largely under the radar of most local industry observers. Local events is one of the site’s core strengths.

Ads Enter the Google ‘7-Pack’

It doesn’t in any way affect a local business ranking in the so-called “7 pack” or on the subsequent Google Maps page. However Google is introducing a new local business ad (”enhanced listings“) that allows a business to stand out with an “enhanced” presence on the map or in the map-related listings on the SERP.

It permits local businesses to call attention to something they want to highlight to their customers and/or prospects: a menu, a coupon, a video, for example.

Read the rest of this post on SEL.

LocalTop Offers ‘Cost per Job’ Billing

There’s a new services directory called LocalTop, which I spoke with about two weeks ago. The site right now is unremarkable and the company is in a beta phase in the SF Bay Area only. However, the innovation is in the pricing model.

Though not unique (HelpHive uses a similar model) LocalTop is one of only a small number of directories taking a commission on a completed project: cost per job, in other words. This is enabling the company with a single sales person on the phone to enjoy an impressive close rate. That’s because there’s literally no risk to the local business.

Several years ago I organized a panel at SMX Local-Mobile dedicated to the idea that local “advertising” online would move from CPM/CPC to CPA. The consensus on the panel was a diversity of business models would co-exist  in the market. True enough, but we may see more pressure on market leaders if smaller sites gain traction with the CPJ/CPA model.

The technology and platform behind LocalTop comes out of BackWeb. Rather than reviews, the site is relying on third party certifications, badges and other mechanisms to ensure that only ethical businesses in good standing are included in the database.

The profile also provides lots of detailed information to help consumers make decisions about service providers:

Co-founder Bill Heye told me that businesses that receive complaints could/will be dropped. LocalTop follows up with customers to evaluate their experience.

The central challenge here will be getting traffic and routing leads through their site. With its “no risk” model the company has addressed the typically biggest problem that local startups face: getting attention and interest from advertisers. However, delivering projects to those SMBs requires traffic and consumer usage.

What do you think of the cost-per-job model and whether that will start to take greater hold in the local space?

Yodle Announces More Funding: $10 Million

This morning independent local advertising provider Yodle announced a new $10 million round. That brings the total funds raised to date to $38 million. From the release:

The round, raised from existing investors, was led by JAFCO Ventures and joined by Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth. The Series D funding round brings Yodle’s total financing to $38 million.

In 2009, Yodle continued triple-digit growth with a 135% year over year revenue increase . . . Additionally, the company continues to be an industry leader in innovation. In 2009, Yodle significantly expanded its nationwide franchise business (YodleFranchise) by bringing on clients like ServiceMaster and Two Men and a Truck, adding numerous strategic reseller partnerships, and expanding its local advertising network to over 75 hyper-local web publishers.

From its humble origins as “NatPal,” several years ago, Yodle has emerged as a top-tier firm in the segment.