Bad PR Viral Video: Pre in Beer Mug

As a brand you never want to see something like this, which has become viral: Palm Pre in a beer mug:

I own a Pre and like it in some respects but have grown more frustrated and impatient with the device over time, rather than less. I’m considering getting rid of it and buying an HTC Android Hero.

Regardless of what I do, someone else’s frustration turned into the video above, which is now making the rounds. The best way to avoid this is to make a better device and/or address the problems that people are experiencing promptly.

One cannot overestimate the damage that something like this can do on an unconscious level to people in the market for a handset in an increasingly competitive smartphone environment.

Recent Posts at Internet2Go

Here are a number of recent stories from Internet2Go:

• T-Mobile Data and Voice Price War?
• Another US Mobile Ad Forecast: $4.2bn in 2015
• NearbyNow Launches Another Magazine iPhone App: Brides
• New TMP-comScore Survey Data on Local Mobile Search
• Nielsen Q2 Mobile Data: Smartphones, Ads, Social Nets
• Mobile Display and the ‘Tyranny of the Click’
• Search Will Not Be 73% of Mobile Ad Spend
• Google Adds Unified Search Box on Android
• Bridging the PC-Mobile Divide

Marchex Reputation Mgmt Tool a Breakthrough

Marchex has used its OpenList search platform to develop an SMB reputation monitoring tool that is truly impressive and valuable. It comes at the right time for the market as more and more SMBs understand that they have to protect and promote their reputations online, as a form of word of mouth. I’ve discussed it in some detail at SEL.

It brings listings and reviews from many places online together in a single dashboard.

Marchex is allowing SMBs in during the beta period to sign up but after that won’t be making it directly available to SMBs. Rather it will be available through Marchex’s partners, who in turn with and sell to SMBs (e.g., yellow pages). My view is that this is extremely valuable and  one of the first non-advertising offerings that SMBs would willingly subscribe to. I also believe that as one of many offerings being sold to SMBs by yellow pages publishers its true value won’t be highlighted. Here’s a description the content the tool collects from the press release:

Marchex Reputation Management blends Marchex’s heritage in local search with its proven ability to partner and deliver local advertising solutions. Specific features include:

• Reviews: Charts break out the percentage of positive, neutral or negative reviews in an easy-to-read display.
• Mentions: Charts demonstrate activity by reviews or mentions to tie the information back to particular changes in the business or marketing efforts by month.
• Business listings: Ensure business listings are accurate and visible on top online consumer destinations.
• Keyword identification: Top keywords and phrases are highlighted to identify the terms that differentiate the business and act as an alert to any customer service issues.
• Competitive marketing analysis: Compare a business to other local businesses to analyze how its reputation and marketing efforts stack up.
• Ability to engage: Share positive news and reviews with customers and employees through email, Twitter, Facebook, Digg or other sources.

This last bit is also important; it makes the whole thing “actionable,” because businesses can promote positive reviews through Twitter, Facebook, etc. And there are other dimensions of this that support marketing. To my knowledge there isn’t anything else like this on the market for small businesses. That’s why I use the word “breakthrough.”

Here’s a general promotional overview produced by Marchex:

Are SMBs Stymied by Social Nets?

A just-released telephone survey of 500 US small business “executives” conducted on behalf of Citibank argues:

• 76 percent have not found social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to be helpful in generating business leads or for expanding their business during the last year
• 86 percent say they have not used social networking sites to get business advice or information
• 61 percent of respondents say they rely on search engines for business advice or information
• 28 percent use email marketing and 25 percent use online advertising to generate business leads and sales

So this poll might cause you to belive that no one is using social networks and social media in the SMB segment and that it’s unlikely to change any time soon. As I’ve tried to argue before, there is no “representative” sample of SMBs. The closest you can get is a population that shares general characteristics with the larger market: under X number of employees, revenues between X and Y and so on.

The proper way to view something like this is as a snapshot of a part of the market at a point in time. And it’s also incorrect in terms of its implications. While small businesses do question the efficacy of social media they are using it in increasing numbers (stay tuned).

Related: Hitwise data on US social net growth:

infoUSA to Distribute Savings.com Coupons/Deals

A potentially big deal for both parties, infoUSA and Savings.com announced a distribution relationship this morning:

[InfoUSA] the leading provider of data driven and interactive resources for targeted sales, marketing and research solutions today announced infoUSA customers can now receive enhanced content through Savings.com, the premiere destination for online coupons. Coupon data provides another level of granularity for Point of Interest (POI) listings and a more robust product offering for infoUSA customers . . .

Savings.com features deep discounts for major retailers in apparel, home goods, health and beauty, electronics, travel and all major retail sectors for merchants such as Target, Gap, Apple, Macy’s, Verizon, Best Buy, Home Depot and Travelocity, to name a few. Founded in 2004, the site now carries coupons and digital deals from over 800 brands and over 3,400 merchants.

This is interesting because volume/reach and inventory have always been a problem in the fragmented coupon space. There’s no question of consumer demand, although it varies somewhat by audience segment, the issue is finding the coupons for the stuff that you’re interested in. That has prompted efforts such as Ask’s recent coupon search vertical.

The infoUSA-Savings.com deal is also interesting because lots of the big publishers in local can add deals/coupons immediately through this opportunity. However most of Saving.com‘s deals are e-commerce oriented and not offline. So there’s a little bit of a conceptual disconnect there. However the content is quite valuable.

Maps, Maps, Maps, Google Maps

This morning Chris Silver Smith spins out a more elaborate discussion of a topic he presented at SMX East: how to use Google MyMaps for local SEO:

There are all sorts of useful custom maps that one could provide about local areas. Companies which develop value-add information maps about local areas could easily reap the benefit of having more content within Google Maps which can convert to more traffic to their websites. Some examples I’ve seen include a blog about coffee which pinpointed independent coffee shops of Denver, a map of local tourist destinations at Catalina Island, and maps for Silicon Valley cafes provided by Mapplr.

This is a relatively advanced tactic I believe . . .

Next up is different issue but also in a way about UGC on Maps: Mike Blumethal writes about Google’s apparent decision to stop using TeleAtlas data in the US. I’ve also “riffed” on Mike’s post at SEL:

Many people complained or warned at the time of the switch from NAVTEQ to TeleAtlas that the latter’s data in the US was poor by comparison. TeleAtlas has always been viewed as being stronger in Europe. Google may have agreed and so is still using the company apparently outside the US. Mike cites a statement from TeleAtlas that seems to confirm the company is no longer working with Google in the US:

“Tele Atlas confirms that Google has decided to stop using Tele Atlas map data for the U.S. Google will now use its own map data. Our relationship with Google for map coverage continues outside of the U.S. in dozens of geographies.”

And of course there’s been a ton of writing about Local Listing Ads, which are now live in San Diego and San Francisco. Mike B. does a nice roundup of the writing here.

The End of Email? Not Likely

The WSJ offers a lengthy article today proclaiming the end of email in favor of other types of tools such as social networks and email successors such as Google Wave:

Email has had a good run as king of communications. But its reign is over.

In its place, a new generation of services is starting to take hold—services like Twitter and Facebook and countless others vying for a piece of the new world. And just as email did more than a decade ago, this shift promises to profoundly rewrite the way we communicate—in ways we can only begin to imagine.

Rather than being marginalized or eliminated I believe email is more analogous to radio, which at one time made room for movies that in turn made room for TV, and so on. I do use Twitter and Facebook to communicate in cases where once I would have used email. But the volume and frequency of email has not stopped or been supplanted by these sites. And Google Wave will need to incorporate email if it hopes to go mainstream, even though it offers much more functionality than conventional email.

Email is clearly evolving alongside these other communication platforms. IM didn’t kill email, although it’s used by younger people than email. In face IM has had to get used to Facebook.

I think we’re seeing a proliferation of tools that make online (and mobile) communication more fragmented and maybe segmented: I communicate with certain people via LinkedIn and others via Twitter or Facebook; still others with IM and yet another group with SMS. Email, however, is the lone platform that everyone is on. It is the “core” or standard communication vehicle that we all use — and likely will continue to use for some time. (There’s also the issue of attachments and other very functional uses of email.)

Someone will eventually build an integrated communications platform — having been discussed for many years — that allows one interface to receive messages from multiple inputs and is smart about the outbound methods it uses. Motorola’s “MotoBLUR” social software on its Cliq Android device points in this direction.

For now we just get more work and more information madness to enjoy. The PC and Internet were supposed to bring about the end of paper, the “paperless office.” Sure, paper has been diminished somewhat but there’s still paper everywhere. The same will be true for email.

Similarly, once upon a time, “computers” were supposed to create more leisure by enabling greater productivity. That now seems like an incredibly naive thought. The unintended consequence was, instead, the creation of cultural and institutional expectations of more productivity and more work — in the same amount of time. So much for promises.

Kindle Price Drop Not Enough

Last week, starting to feel the coming competitive heat and perhaps having exhausted the market for early enthusiasts, Amazon’s Kindle 2 saw a price drop from $299 to $259. The company also launched an “international version,” which works in “100 countries” and uses AT&T as behind-the-scenes network (vs. Sprint  in the US; CDMA vs. GSM).

Last week also saw discussion of Barnes & Noble’s forthcoming eReader, to be powered by Android. It joins a growing list and will reportedly have built-in WiFi and a six inch color display, which the Kindle does not. As I’ve written before, even before it has really started to go mainstream, the eReader market is already intensely competitive. Kindle is clearly the most visible device and the leader accordingly.

But Sony has a device that starts at $199 (apparently backordered), still $60 less than the Kindle. And others to gain attention in this initial “land grab” phase will likely go lower. In order to hold and grow its market Kindle will have to drop prices further and/or improve and expand the functionality of the device — in other words: color screen, better Internet access experience, maybe apps, etc.

There will be tablets (Apple, Android) that tap into the apps available for their respective mobile handsets. This may prove to be a competitive advantage and could support higher prices. But the Kindle, without a developer ecosystem, apps, broader media capability or aggressive pricing, may find itself losing out over time to more fully functioning and cheaper models.

Indeed, we may even see the eReaders given away at some point — like PC printers — by publishers and/or retailers to accelerate the eBook market.

____

Reader: Here’s another eReader from LG, which is solar powered.

Local.com’s Patents Reviewed

This past week Local.com announced that it was awarded a patent for Enhanced Directory Assistance, tied to advertising services. The press release summarizes the patent this way:

[T]he patent describes a system and method for maintaining a dynamic index for a telephone directory assistance system. The system enables advertisers to dynamically control whether a listing – and/or one or more of a keyword index, a localization index, and a position control index – associated with the advertiser is included in an EDA request, and in what position the associated listing is returned in response to the request.

This is associated with another ad-supported directory assistance-related patent previously issued in 2007 to Local.com (“methods and system for enhanced directory assistance using wireless messaging protocols”).

Despite some bullish predictions, the ad-supported directory assistance model has failed to live up to its promise. However the traditional DA business is in decline and carriers are seeking to squeeze more revenues from it. Accordingly there may be another round of effort to monetize conventional DA that may fall within the orbit of these Local.com patents.

Somewhat ironically carriers initially set up ad-supported competitors to their own DA businesses (i.e., Verizon’s 800-THE-INFO, AT&T’s 800-Yellowpages) but they have largely failed to promote them — due to their own corporate ambivalence about “cannibalizing” traditional DA. (See also this discussion of the impact of smartphones on 411 usage.)

In addition to the above, Local.com received a much broader patent regarding local search (“indexing web pages of a web site for geographical searchine based on user location”) but that “art” appears to be on a collision course with several others making similar, sweeping claims. At some point there will be litigation, but for now Local.com is building its portfolio and could, if successful, develop a healthy IP licensing business over time. The company is already licensing its IP to a number of companies. There are many “ifs” between here and there of course.

Angie’s List and the Subscription Model

Angie’s List continues to chug along. Earlier this week the company announced that it had passed the 1 million members milestone. Founded in 1995, the company (as you know) relies primarily on subscription revenues, though there is some advertising.

Recently Angie’s List expanded into healthcare. It claims to offer information on approximately 425 categories of businesses including 150 healthcare categories. In the world of free content it’s a statement about the brand and customer experience that Angie’s List can survive and even thrive. 

Notwithstanding the newspapers and their impending threats to “put the genie back in the bottle,” the subscription model is not very pervasive and only a small number of companies have made it work online. To date Angie’s List has raised roughly $53 million dollars from private investors.

Local Listings & Google LBC Ad

A number of people have commented on my remark that Google’s Local Listing Ads “don’t compete with AdWords.” I spoke quickly and not very clearly, or I didn’t accurately convey what I meant. What I meant was that the Local Listing advertisers don’t compete in the AdWords marketplace — not that the ads themselves don’t compete with AdWords.

In fact the Local Listing Ads are more prominent than AdWords in some respects because the blue pushpin makes them “pop.” See this example:

Though there’s no creative/ad copy the Local Listing Ads are visually more prominent and thus could well drive more clicks than traditional AdWords for local lookups. So yes in this sense they do compete.

Separately I was just made aware of a trial TV and online video campaign for Google’s LBC. The narration is by Google’s Carter Maslan beginning a new career as voice-over talent:

Seriously, this is very effective and if something like this is done for the Local Listing Ads it could be quite successful.

To those who believe that Local Listing Ads will never “work” because they’re not being “sold” I would say think again. We’re entering a new period when many local businesses will be motivated to self-provision if the value is clear and the tools are simple.

comScore: 10% of Display Local/Geo

From comScore this morning:

The study found that between 9 and 11 percent of display ads in the four markets among all publisher sites were locally targeted. San Francisco (11 percent) and Washington D.C. (11 percent) had a relatively higher share of ads being locally targeted, while Atlanta (10 percent) and Chicago (9 percent) were slightly lower. Not surprisingly, in the regional/local site category – which includes sites like Yahoo! Local, Citysearch and Yelp – the share of display ads that were locally targeted was substantially higher at between 23-33 percent among the four markets.

And now for some crude math:

Using the IAB numbers . . . if online display advertising represents 22% of online ad revenues ($23 billion) that’s $5.06 billion. Ten percent of that would be just over $500 million. This is probably low. But that’s the crude math.

I spoke to comScore this morning about the methodology and here’s what they said:

There was no manual review of ad copy. They also didn’t capture which ads were IP targeted. The way they determined local or geotargeted advertising was by estimating the percentage of ads that would appear normally in the particular DMA they were examining. Then they compared that to the actual percentage of ads appearing in that DMA. If there was a higher percentage of ads than the normal average in the DMA they assumed those ads were geotargeted.

There’s ambiguity and under-counting here to be sure but it starts to get at very interesting data.

Any thoughts?

Local Listing Ads and 7-Pack Live

The 10-Pack is apparently being replaced by a listing of 7 local businesses (the “7-Pack”) instead to make way for the new Local Listings Ads. Mike Blumenthal was first to notice this. Place Pages are being used as landing pages. This is what I just saw for the query, “dentist san francisco.”

The blue pushpins denote Local Listings Ads. San Francisco is one of two cities in which Google is testing this program. The other is San Diego. When you click on one of the ads Place Pages appear:

Note in the top screengrab that Dr. Loev is also an AdWords advertiser and does have a website. However, Google is sending the traffic to Place Pages in this case (wonder if Dr. Loev made that decision or Google). It may also be that Google is simply testing this without Dr. Loev’s knowledge and not charging him. That’s also a possibility.

With automated ad creation and Place Pages it can do that all day long. In addition to testing the waters with advertisers, Google is looking to see how consumer-users respond to these new ad units.

___

Update: I’m finding it irregularly. Not all ads click through to Place Pages. Some are going to SMB sites.

Call Tracking Controversy?

The emerging conventional wisdom is that call tracking should be uniformly included in search and other online marketing campaigns. However in a column today at Search Engine Land, David Mihm strongly argues that call tracking is not a good idea:

To maximize your rankings on Google Maps, Yahoo Local, and Bing Local, your business’s Name, Address and Phone number (“NAP,” to borrow a Localeze-inspired acronym) should broadcast the same rock-solid signal on every platform.  Think of them as your business’s thumbprint.  As Gib Olander of Localeze  says, they are “not the place for advertising.”

Remember, as Brownbook’s Marc Lyne pointed out, that “you don’t own your business information.” For instance, what happens if you give your business a unique tracking phone number at a directory that Acxiom happens to spider for its own index? That number is now considered authoritative by Acxiom, and gets pushed out to every partner that’s leasing Acxiom’s data. Meanwhile, infoUSA and Localeze probably still have your main line. You now have two different thumbprints.

In a perfect world, Google, Yahoo, and Bing would be smart enough to see that the business name and address information matches, even though the phone numbers differ. They’d “count” all of them as citations for the same business, but continue to display the Local number you’ve given them in the Local Business Center. But given some of the issues with Google’s merging algorithm, do you really want to take that chance?

I’m not an SEO expert so I’m not able to dispute or speak to these issues. I wonder if anyone wants to read what David has said and comment or address his points?

If I Were a Yellow Pages Publisher . . .

The past few days I’ve been thinking quite a bit about the predicament of yellow pages — and by extension other traditional local media. I realize it’s very easy to be someone who sits back and critiques others’ mistakes. I often liken analysts, myself included, to movie critics. It’s much more challenging to make a movie than to criticize one after it’s been made. And in my work and writing I always try to put myself in the position of someone who’s actually under pressure to accomplish something and has real-world P&L responsibilities.

With that . . . No one has asked me to run a YP company but here’s what I’d do:

Work on the brand:

Relying on Google SEO is a losing game over the long term. You’ve got to do SEO and get even better at it — optimize for the long tail and so on. But you’ve got to develop a brand. RHD’s Dex has done this to a degree. Yellowpages.com has sort of done this (but not really). Many consumers are responding to the “generic” URL rather than brand loyalty. Superpages is trying to do this around the Super Guarantee. But it’s something that needs more attention.

Develop other brands:

Build out verticals or alternative brands that appeal to different demographic segments. See this data from the TMPDM-comScore study about usage:

As you might expect: print is used by older people; younger people use search engines. So if I were AT&T I’d be buying Yelp. The sales force could sell the ads and the brand would be an enormous addition to AT&T interactive (I’ve got no financial stake in Yelp and nothing personal to gain from recommending this). Notwithstanding the chart at the very bottom, Yelp’s traffic is already bigger than the IYPs:

If you can’t read the chart, Yelp is the blue line, Yellowpages.com is green (#2), Superpages is #3. I would argue that other YPs should try and buy Yelp but they probably can’t afford to. AT&T is probably the only one that has the cash.

Change the sales culture:

I understand that most YP publishers are working on this, but somehow they’ve got to shift the commission structure so that reps are equally incentivized to sell digital. The folks at the Kelsey Group will have more insight into the sales/commission issues and the status of those efforts than I have, however.

Work on the cost structure of the business:

Newspapers have been killed by their cost structure, which can no longer be supported by declining ad revenues. YP publishers have moved faster and more deliberately than newspapers, but they are now in danger of going the way of newspapers — less and less usage, fewer revenues.

Aggressively syndicate data/ads/etc:

YP publishers are already doing some version of this: get the ads and data out to third parties. Why not create a Local AdSense offering? To succeed it probably needs to be collaborative because there’s not enough ad coverage from any individual publisher.

Mobile — Yes

AT&T has to date been the most aggressive and experimental in mobile. Superpages has got some interesting things to announce, however, this week. Mobile is a critical area that needs to be developed much further than it is today. The new Yell iPhone app is an example of conservative thinking that may win some usage but won’t turn any heads or gain the loyalty of younger people. Here a “segmentation strategy” is probably also be called for.

More community, more social

Work with Praized, AgendiZe, Facebook Connect. Social efforts to date, with a few exceptions are weak. Facebook (and maybe Twitter) + local may be the other punch the industry didn’t see coming.

Create a lab environment where people can do crazy stuff and be creative:

Superpages’ Seattle office (former InfoSpace) is the best example I know of this. Rod Diefendorf and Pete Schwab in that office are working on some “crazy shit” as they say. The Twitter implementation, even if it doesn’t wind up driving lots of traffic, is an example of a creative risk. They’re doing other interesting stuff as well. Their freedom and the fact that they’re not from the traditional YP culture enables them to think differently about the product.

YP publishers, at least on the interactive side, need to be more flexible and willing to launch less than perfect products and improve them over time. Risk taking is now key, paradoxically, to survival.

The European Directories-Skype deal is another creative experiment; it may not “work,” but it’s a worthy effort. And if it does kudos to them.

The consumer culture has changed drastically around traditional media companies and most of them have not changed to reflect the new reality. Culture shift in organizations is extremely difficult but it has to be done: flatten them, reward risk, creativity and initiative.

We’re now in the third quarter:

I apologize for the sports metaphor. I heard from one of the attendees at the Kelsey-YPA show that there was an underlying sense of anxiety bordering on a kind of nascent panic. That’s appropriate because things are getting much worse for YP publishers. Print directories and yellow pages will never go away but they will get a lot thinner and lose many more advertisers if they don’t accelerate change. As the “third quarter” metaphor suggests, they don’t have infinite time to make cultural changes that will help them remain viable.

Source: TMPDM-comScore, 9/09

NearbyNow: Mobile’s Got Momentum

One of the panels I moderated at SMX East on Monday was “mobile apps.” Among the panelists was Scott Dunlap, CEO of NearbyNow. He spoke about the apps that they’d built for the magazines 17, Runners World and Lucky. He said there are many others in the pipeline.

Then he said something that took me by surprise . . . that his company is focusing more and more of its resources on mobile app development. He also said that, in a number of cases, the magazines NearbyNow is working with have more iPhone app installs than subscribers to the print publication. Think about that: mobile, though a more fickle group perhaps, is already larger than their traditional business in terms of audience. After the session he told me privately that the publishers are monetizing the apps very successfully and already making “a ton of money” on them.

The picture he presented was very different than the “maybe next year” attitude that dominates marketers’ thinking. And this is the case of traditional media, leveraging and extending brands into mobile and making money from advertising — already.

The more traditional parts of the NearbyNow business are not moving as fast, Dunlap told me. In effect it sounds like he’s shifting direction in a significant way. I was impressed by not only NearbyNow’s response to market demand but also by the fact that these traditional media publishers “get it” and are moving quickly, contrary to stereotypes.

Here’s a video of Dunlap demonstrating a mall-specific app from NearbyNow:

More Info on Google Local Listing Ads

Yesterday morning I had a discussion with Mike Blumenthal and David Mihm about Google’s new Local Listing Ads. Since the announcement Mike had a chance to speak to someone from Google at the SMX event. Mike and David (and the jovial Will Scott and inscrutable Andrew Shotland) were among the group of people I had dinner with and discussed the announcement the other night.

According to the discussion that Mike had there are a number of issues that haven’t been fully worked out by Google. Chief among them is the issue of pricing. From what Mike told me, it appears undetermined whether SMBs are going to pay a single rate across all business categories they belong to or whether each category will carry a different price. For example, if I’m a wedding photographer I might be under “weddings” and “photography,” among other categories. Would each of these carry a separate price that might vary by popularity? That kind of question has apparently not been answered.

Another issue Mike, David and I talked about was Google’s non-indexing of the Place Pages. The decision was likely made to avoid alienating Google’s reseller partners, many of which rely heavily on SEO for their own traffic. The 10-Pack already pushes quite a few page 1 organic links down below the fold:

( . . . Hence the European Directories-Skype strategy.)

I was surprised that Mike Blumenthal was advocating in favor of Google indexing Place Pages. He said in some areas the Google Place Page might be the best local content available. He added that if they were going to be used as landing pages for the Local Listings Ads they also should be indexed.

There’s also the question of the potentially competitive AdWords (see lower right in graphic below) that show up on Place Pages. Will Google offer to remove those ads for local businesses that are participating in the program as advertisers? This is how others in the space operate, why not Google?

With Place Pages and Local Listing Ads Google is doing something of a balancing act, trying to advance its own agenda, while not alienating partners that it believes it needs as sales channels into the local market. Yahoo!’s Local Business Ads product was sold by resellers and didn’t create any friction (to my knowledge) between the parties there. But Google, because it so dominates search and now local search, is in a different category.

Gordon Borrell and others have already said that this product is unlikely to succeed at scale because “local advertising is sold not bought.” I’m not so sure: automated ad creation, structured rich landing pages, fixed pricing, customer service support (see Mike B.’s blog post above) . . . Google has a bunch of issues to work through and they might not execute well here. But just imagine this TV or radio campaign:

“Millions of people every month look for businesses like yours on Google. Now there’s a simple way to get your business in front of all those potential customers: Local Listing Ads. To find out more visit [site] or call 800-XXX-XXXX.”

Many many SMBs would respond to that. Google’s challenge is really in providing the necessary support and education (though it wouldn’t take that much). With the right execution, I’m guessing that Google could pick up a million SMB advertisers in 12-18 months.

Who thinks I’m completely wrong?

_____

Update: Is the “7 pack” clearing room for Local Listing Ads units?

New comScore-TMP Local Data

TMP DM/15 Miles presented Wave 3 of its local search study (n=4,000) with comScore today at the SMX show. Here are the top line data from the slides:

Primary (“first”) source for local business information:

All sources used (vs. primary):

• Search: 64%
• Print YP or WP: 62%
• IYP: 55%
• Local search sites: 41%
• Local newspaper or mag: 23%
• DA: 17%
• Other print: 11%
• Cell and other segments (missed the data)

Usage frequency (note social networks see greatest frequency, followed by mobile):

Post search behavior. What did people do?

Detail from the above chart (most people from IYPs called the business for example):

Local search market share:

Note the growth of Google Maps. Also note the growth of YellowBook. The study doesn’t include other sites like Yelp. It also doesn’t take account of local searches conducted on the main sites of the search engines.

Takeaways:

• The space is more fragmented than ever, many sources used
• Print continues to erode as a “first choice”; IYP has grown somewhat
• Social media and mobile are growing
• Google Maps is now really dominant in local

Marketers need to understand consumer vertical category usage (IYP vs. search vs. local search) in order to target them properly.

Update: TMPDM/15 Miles put out the press release this morning.

EU Directories + Skype = Local SEO?

All the grand plans that eBay’s Meg Whitman had for Skype largely failed to materialize. Many of those visions had to do with driving calls to local merchants and the prospect of PPCall. Now as Skype becomes an autonomous company it’s getting back into the local game by pushing into the yellow pages space with a new “click to call” offering. Earlier this April Mike Boland at Kelsey was told of several tests going on between Skype and directory publishers that were integrating Skype “click to call” functionality in search results. I wrote about my views of the prospects and outlook for such partnerships at the time.

Now the first such deal has been formally announced, between European Directories and Skype. According to the press release:

The partnership between Skype and European Directories will offer consumers free calls to up to 700,000 businesses across Europe. Participating European Directories advertisers will have the opportunity to be highlighted with Skype’s blue “Free Call” button anywhere their number appears on the internet.

In order for telephone numbers to be activated, users must have Skype for Windows 4.1 installed. Most (North) Americans don’t appreciate how popular Skype is in Europe, with millions and millions of users.

Under the deal, European Directories advertisers will be the beneficiaries of the Skype pnr “free call” button. Other phone numbers will be equally “activated” online but they will not enable a free call (in other words no need for SkypeOut to call a landline). Thus the idea is that more calls will be driven to European Directories’ advertisers because their numbers will be highlighted. All those calls will be tracked/trackable and won’t need to be replaced by unique call-tracking numbers.

The second bit is the SEO value of the move. With a small number of exceptions, yellow pages are having to rely increasingly on SEO in Google for traffic. Even as print usage declines, many publishers find they are losing increasing amounts of online traffic to Google as it makes its Maps product stronger and more “sticky” as they used to say (e.g., tying the PC and mobile more closely). The not-so-new battlefield is page 1 of Google search results and the 10-Pack in particular.

This deal will call-enable numbers that appear in the Google 10-Pack in addition to elsewhere on the page. Here’s a Denmark search result for that quintessential local search subject: pizza.

European Directories’ advertisers will now go from this:

To this:

And here’s how the full 10-Pack will look under the new deal (for those will Skype 4.1 installed):

Directory publishers (w/Skype) will thus try and “colonize” the 10-Pack and first page of organic results on behalf of their advertisers. My understanding is that preliminary results from the trials Skype has done with a couple of publishers were positive. (I wonder if specialized publisher icons will be developed to provide “branding” in the 10 Pack.)

For European Directories it marks another step in the journey from traditional publisher to lead-generation platform for local businesses. The buttons could support a PPCall model as well, even though my understanding is that it’s not part of the offering at launch. For Skype it also represents a bold move (back) into local. It’s less clear to me how consumers will react — although most local business searches do result in a phone call.

It’s also not clear how Google might react to this and, if it dislikes the move, whether the company can effectively do anything about it.

Google Offers New ‘Simple’ Ads for SMBs

Google has introduced a new ad program aimed at local businesses. Called Local Listing Ads, they offer flat fee pricing (which varies by category and location) and automated ad creation. There’s no bidding, keywords or creative for the SMB to generate. Rather the ads are created by Google from the details in the SMB’s Local Business Center listing.

Businesses must be signed up in the LBC and have claimed their listing to participate. The ads don’t compete with AdWords, they’re shown in new positions on Google.com and in Google Maps. I’ve posted screenshots at Search Engine Land.

The LBC dashboard will reflect activity — including calls — from consumers. I was told calls would be recorded. Call tracking will be provided for free by Google and each time a merchant gets a call there’s a whisper message that the call was from Google. Here’s a video that explains the program:

As I say in my post at SEL, this does not appear to be a product for partner resale (I’m inferring). The first 30 days are free. Right now this is a trial in San Francisco and San Diego exclusively.

Here are my questions:

• Do you think this will be popular? If so, with what segments of the SMB market?
• What effect, if any, will it have on traditional media companies in the local space?

A few people I discussed this with tonight believed that there would be an initial surge of interest and that it would have little impact longer term. I believe however that it could be quite successful but that Google will need to build broad awareness for the program among small businesses.