Yell Introduces New Maps

UK directory publisher Yell has introduced its own maps on the site and on mobile phones. The new maps were developed in conjunction with Tridoo, which was providing Yell maps for mobile. Map data are from Navteq.

According to the company, the improvements include:

• Ability to search within the map for local businesses and services
• Faster response and better geo-coding for increased accuracy
• Consistent experience across web and mobile
• Quarterly updates to keep information as accurate as possible
• Brand new design with bespoke color-scheme and bigger, clearer maps

The new maps allow for one-click finding of different categories of businesses and information:

It’s worth noting that in the US all the major YP publishers except RHD/Dex use Bing Maps. Dex uses Google.

Yell is the parent company of US publisher Yellowbook. In 2009 the Internet contributed 24% of Yell’s UK revenues.

More Online-Offline Research

The following comes from a large Motorola-sponsored holiday shopping survey. More than 4,500 respondents, it was fielded in North America, Brazil, Europe and China. Just under half the survey respondents were from the US. 

You can click to enlarge but at the bottom it says: “Almost all shoppers (93%) used the Internet prior to going in-store to research prices and information of various products.”

HotPads Launches Android App

Real Estate Vertical HotPads has bypassed the iPhone and gone straight to Android with a new app:

It joins Trulia, Zillow, Smarter Agent and others in the mobile realm. The app has some nice functionality, including GPS-guided directions to houses and apartments.

Interestingly the app also offers vacation rental search and hotels (somewhat strangely).

Didn’t Get Enough 2010 Predictions . . .

Matt McGee has compiled a megalist over at Search Engine Land. Here, in particular, are the Local-Mobile ones (with my snarky editorial remarks in parentheses). Maybe I’m in a gumpy mood here but none of these offer great or truly new insights. Perhaps Andrew Shotland’s is the most interesting of the lot:

• GigaOM: Will 2010 Finally be the Year of Location? (nothing new here; mostly an interview with Skyhook’s Ted Morgan)
• Local SEO Guide: Local SEO Predictions 2010 (Andrew Shotland; worth reading)
• Mashable: Location, Location, Location: 5 Big Predictions for 2010 (mostly bland, non-insights for anyone following local)
• Small Business Trends: Five Can’t-Miss Mobile Marketing Trends For 2010 (not really about SMBs and mostly not new for anyone following mobile; only #3 is interesting as a review)
• Search Engine Land: Predictions For The Changing Local Search Landscape In 2010 (mostly basic stuff here too)
• Marketing Charts: Top 10 Wireless Predictions for 2010 (a couple of interesting ideas in here re near-field communications and augmented reality)

Reminder: It’s Still about the Store

Amid comScore headlines such as: comScore Reports $29.1 Billion in U.S. Retail E-Commerce Spending for Full November-December Holiday Season, Up 4 Percent vs. Year Ago it’s easy to lose site of what the Internet remains mostly about: Online influencing Offline.

E-Commerce is still less than 5% of US retail and I found this gem from Yahoo! research in an article about the company hiring social scientists:

The research, conducted in partnership with an undisclosed national retailer, sought to accurately measure the impact of Internet display advertising across online and offline sales, by tracking people who had registered with both Yahoo and the store. The research found an approximately 5 percent increase in spending among those who had seen the ads – with 93 percent of those sales occurring in stores.

(Emphasis added.)

This is 93% of people exposed to online advertising . . . bought in local stores.

For whatever reason most people still can’t get their heads wrapped around this idea: people do research online (or now on their handsets) and then buy products in stores. Yes, e-commerce is big and growing but it’s never going to eclipse or even come remotely close (in our lives at least) to product purchases that happen in the world.

Hopefully we’re entering a time where marketers will come to see this much more clearly and adjust their campaigns and marketing practices to account for and align with this consumer behavior accordingly.

Current ways to track online-to-offline sales include:

• Coupons
• Loyalty cards
• Consumer surveys
• Call tracking (not everyone makes calls before going into stores however)
• Sales volume tracking in association with particular campaigns and geographies

What have I left out?

Mike Stewart points out another likely tracking scenario: “Check Ins and Mobile Barcode/Door scanners.” Me: Imagine FourSquare/Gowalla applied to retailers . . .

CitySquares Buys Local Shopping Site Yokel

Over the weekend CitySquares CEO Ben Saren sent me an article discussing the company’s acquisition of local shopping engine Yokel. This actually happened some time ago I believe. The company is now going public about it. CitySquares discusses it at a very high level on its blog:

We are excited to announce our recent acquisition of Yokel.com, an online retail directory that has made local shopping simpler than ever since 2005. With just a search term and a geographic location in mind, a visitor can find which local businesses sell a particular product or brand. This is an innovative idea and will be a great asset to CitySquares, because it not only connects neighborhood customers to the businesses in their area but also to the specific products sold in each store.

This site was founded by local search veterans Scott Randall and Don Zereski who both wanted to make local shopping information more accessible online. Together, these two masterminds created the clever software behind Yokel.com, which today has over 2 million retailers on the site.

I wrote about Yokel when it first launched in 2006 (and many times thereafter):

I spoke today to Scott Randall, CEO of Yokel. Yokel has been around for a little while but hasn’t formally launched yet. Yokel joins ShopLocal, CNET and Froogle in offering offline inventory/shopping information to online consumers. So far, there’s no e-commerce. Another competitor in the space, Local shopping aggregator Cairo.com, has shut down following its legal settlement with ShopLocal.

Yokel didn’t get the traction of Krillion or NearbyNow, neither of which primarily aimed to be consumer destinations, which Yokel was trying to be. However it will be interesting to see the integration of Yokel and CitySquares (or whether/how they’ll be integrated). It sounds like they will be.

Now that Google has returned to offering (or intending to offer) local inventory data, and now that shopping on smartphones is becoming fairly well established, this becomes a very interesting acquisition for CitySquares. While Superpages and Yellowpages.com have integrated Krillion (albeit in a nearly invisible way) none of the independent local sites has tried to do something with retailers and local products.

I’ve long discussed that this represents an opportunity to build out a more complete local offering — although not easy to execute. But Yokel provides CitySquares with a terrific start.

See also “Report: People Using Smartphones for Shopping, Not Buying“

_______

I just spoke to Ben Saren about the acquisition. He told me that while the companies had been talking for some time, the deal only closed recently.

Saren said that they would maintain and upgrade the Yokel site in the near term. He also said they were going to be exploring a variety of ways to integrate the Yokel content into CitySquares and use the crawling technology broadly to enhance the range of local content (beyond products) on the CitySquares site.

Saren and I discussed how this potentially opens the door to an entirely new opportunity (and model) for CitySquares around product search. In the next couple of months when Google debuts its local product search, the phenomenon will gain broader awareness. Yokel could well be in a position to benefit from that.

Saren said the local product search space feels like local search five years ago. Indeed, we’re at the beginning of something very interesting around product inventory information, with mobile as an integral part of all of it.

More Ads on Google Maps? Yes!

A number of articles appeared that speculate about or discuss ads on Google Maps (PC and mobile) now and in the future. Google Maps is one of Google’s most successful and valuable properties — arguably even more so in mobile — and the company is going to be both careful and thoughtful about how it expands ads on Maps. Ads already exist on Google Maps today online and in mobile.

There’s always this implication or lurking sentiment behind some of the pieces written that the floodgates will open one day and there will be a deluge of advertising on the map. Don’t bet on it. Google will very carefully align what it perceives to be relevant ads with consumer queries and interests.

The rest of this article is at SEL.

It’s Here: The Internet on TV

What’s now more clear than ever is that the Internet will soon be everywhere: on mobile devices (as is already true), in cars (see Ford) and, finally, in the living room. I’ve been wanting to write something for a long time on the Internet on TV and its potential impact on cable companies. CES makes it unavoidable.

Internet content is coming to TV very quickly:

• Samsung to launch app store that lets you tweet from your TV
• Yahoo! Brings the Internet to More Living Rooms Around the World
• Skype Supports High-Definition TV and PC Video Calls
• Opera Software and GooMe Interactive deliver the best Web and home media experience on any TV
• BBC to allow internet through TV

Netflix is now available directly to TV and indirectly through many set-top boxes. Microsoft in its keynote at CES last night spoke a fair amount about Internet or PC content on TV (as well as social media features of Xbox Live).

Cut to three years from now: all new TVs feature some built-in Internet capability. Those that don’t offer it can be paired with one of several set-top boxes that bring the Internet and Internet-type services to TV.

What happens to cable cos? They become the next in line to lose revenue and see subscribers abandon ship.

Most of what’s on TV is simply garbage and people are increasingly frustrated with paying $60 or more per month for it. Bundles that provide Internet, TV and phone may save subscribers because there will be huge inertia around making changes under those circumstances. In addition, unique content not otherwise available online (e.g., sports) may encourage some people to hold on to cable TV subscriptions.

It’s clear, however, that the TV is becoming just another screen that provides access to content and, increasingly, online services.

So the combination of Hulu + Netflix + YouTube, iTunes, combined with Facebook, online gaming, email, search, etc., will represent more than enough “entertainment” to satisfy most people. Goodbye cable!

The dispute between Fox and TimeWarner cable is indicative of the battles to come as everyone scrambles for more revenue. And such battles will likely fuel increasing cable bills to consumers. That in turn will only exacerbate what I’m describing.

Other thoughts . . .

Yahoo!, Samsung and others are creating widgets or apps for TV, making the approach similar to mobile.

Here’s an interesting, related story about AT&T selling local ads into U-Verse cable TV:

AT&T plans to begin offering local ad insertion opportunities for its U-verse TV service this year, a top company executive said Tuesday. The real estate will resemble what cable operators offer advertisers for local spots on cable networks they carry.

For U-verse, marketers apparently would be able to thread ads into homes in the approximate 120 markets in 21 states that the telco TV services. Large markets include Houston and Atlanta.

This is very much like Comcast, which has a large local sales force. AT&T already provides yellow pages content on U-Verse but local publishers generally should plan for the day when TV becomes a meaningful distribution medium for local (online) content and advertising.

The Internet on TV is not here in the same way that mobile is today. But it’s coming.

SuperMedia and the ‘Yellow Pages’ Brand

Given the apparent “de-emphasis” of the print yellow pages on the new company website, one of the questions I asked SuperMedia (formerly Idearc) CEO Scott Klein is how central the yellow pages are to its business going forward. He said some interesting things that both affirmed the YP part of the business and suggested the company was more aggressively diversifying as well.

“Clearly we’re turning up the heat on our online and our direct mail offerings,” said Klein. “Yellow pages will continue to be a very important piece of what we’re doing and it will be for some time to come. But we’ve made good progress on the other revenue streams.”

The company is selling three types of ad products:

• Print directory
• Online listings/ads/etc.
• Direct mail

Klein made the point that the company had “re-engineered” various processes associated with its online offerings. “Our customers can now use a watch instead of a calendar,” explained Klein. He’s referring to the length of time from when an order is placed to when it goes live online

In discussing how the company thinks of itself he reiterated a point made before that SuperMedia is positioning itself as an advertising agency and not simply a YP publisher.

I asked him what would happen to the “SuperPages” brand. Klein told me it would be sticking around. Super becomes the umbrella label that ties the company’s products together.

I asked about how the “Super Guarantee” was doing. Klein said that the program had exceeded expectations and was helping drive usage.

“We’ve seen meaningful spikes in registrations and healthy improvement in possession and usage.” He said that the company uses Gallup to measure possession and usage and that in “90% of measured markets; possession and usage are up in double digits.” Klein added that call tracking numbers indicate increased call volumes from the print directory.

The “second iteration” of the Super Guarantee ad campaign will begin to air in March.

I presented Klein with the new conventional wisdom (reflected in this Financial Times piece) that print is dead, etc. and asked him were the reps seeing this attitude in the field. While he agreed that this attitude is pervasive he said that the third party research they present (e.g., Gallup) “is irrefutable.”

According to Klein the reps are incentivized (sorry) to make multi-product sales and may lead with different products in different markets and verticals. He pointed to mobile as being something that the company could sell to restaurants and its EveryCarListed auto site as a foot in the door for auto dealers that didn’t exist for the company previously.

“An unanticipated byproduct [of EveryCarListed] is we can sell them other stuff. Some of these guys that had abandoned YP are now interested,” explained Klein.

Asked about the company’s mobile performance, Klein said “All my expectations have really been exceeded.” He added that the usage frequency the company is seeing is greater on mobile than online.

I asked whether the company would be going into more verticals such as EveryCarListed or make comparable acquisitions in vertical segments. Klein said that it was “likely” that there would be additional vertical efforts and some “small acquisitions.” (There are plenty of small companies in the local segment.)

One larger question to ask is whether the “yellow pages” brand continues to be viable over time. SuperMedia isn’t using that term obviously but it’s otherwise closely linked to the print directory.

What do you think? Is it time to ditch the “yellow pages” brand?

Weather An Engaging Add for YPG

This seems like a very small thing: Yellow Pages Group Partners With The Weather Network and MeteoMedia to Provide Local Weather on YellowPages.ca . . . But it has some interesting potential to drive more frequent usage of the site.

According to the release:

Under the agreement, users searching for business listings on YellowPages.ca will experience the added benefit of receiving locally relevant weather above the map section on the search results pages.

Here’s what it looks like:

This is a nice addition. One problem: you can’t just get weather by searching “weather, Toronto” for example. I would recommend however that YPG enable people to use the site simply to do weather related searches.

These searches right now go to Weather.com (or its competitors) or in my case to Google:

I’m always surprised by how involved people are with weather and how much they’re searching for weather related information. Most recently Bob Visse from Microsoft told me this. By contrast, yellow pages are used infrequently relative to search or social networks or mobile devices:

The above chart is from comScore and TMPDM/15 Miles. What it shows is that only 3% of people use IYP sites daily. Adding content like weather has the potential to boost daily usage frequency, which would benefit IYP usage more generally.

Big Glitch Sends Wrong Info from Google LBC

Mike Blumenthal posted on a fairly significant error that happened last night and early this morning. Google reportedly sent local business stats to the wrong SMBs. In other words SMB-A received analytics for SMB-B.

Apparently this was a fairly widespread problem that Google has now caught and I assume corrected. Here’s more from SEL.

Oodle Makes Classifieds More Social, Zillow Grows

Oodle should probably be on someone’s acquisition short list. The site is the largest independent “horizontal” player after Craigslist in the classifieds space. The company has deals with Facebook, MySpace, AOL and many other large Internet brands.

Today the company announced deeper integration of Twitter and Facebook as distribution tools. According to CEO Craig Donato’s blog post:

When you post a listing through Oodle, they not only appear in over 200 Oodle powered marketplaces (including Oodle.com and Facebook Marketplace) – they are published in your social streams on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter giving your friends and followers the scoop on what you’re selling or what you’re looking for.

As users “connect” with Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, your identity on Oodle also evolves. Your public identity on these social networks becomes tied to your listings. People get to see the person behind the listings before choosing to meet them, providing a cleaner-well-lit environment to make a handshake.

This latter statement, about getting to “see the person behind the listings” is a point that Craig Donato has been making for some time.

I would upload a screenshot, but WordPress doesn’t seem to be letting me right now. Here’s my post on Facebook Marketplace (powered by Oodle).

Meanwhile Zillow announced some growth milestones amid the uncertainty of 2009:

• 37 percent year-over-year growth in page views in 2009.
• 3.9 million for-sale, rental and Make Me Move listings are posted on Zillow today, up 43 percent year-over-year, as the result of more listings feed partnerships with brokerages and Multiple Listings Services.
• In December 2009 Zillow launched Rental Listings and Search, enabling anyone to post a home for rent on Zillow, and giving home shoppers the option to search both homes for sale and homes for rent. Nearly one million of Zillow’s monthly visitors are exclusively renters, with countless others searching both types of homes simultaneously.
• The Zillow iPhone App has been downloaded more than 870,000 times since its launch in April 2009, quickly making it the most popular real estate app on the iPhone. Over 2 million homes are viewed on the app each month. Additionally, O’Reilly Media named the Zillow iPhone App “Best App for Real Estate” and a “top pick.”
• Consumers submitted 550,000 loan requests on Zillow Mortgage Marketplace in 2009. Of those requests, 46 percent, or 253,300 were for refinance loans as mortgage rates reached record lows in 2009. Lenders responded with more than 10 million custom loan quotes during this same period. To date, more than 7,000 lender ratings and reviews have been submitted by borrowers.
• 171 U.S. newspapers began using Zillow’s search and listings technology to power their real estate Web sites in 2009, including The Tampa Tribune, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

Nexus One vs. iPhone: Funny Video

I was struck by the fact that not until the iPhone was mentioned during the Q&A session yesterday, at the Nexus One event, did Google acknowledge the device that has, until very recently, been largely responsible for its mobile growth and success in the US. But now Apple and Google are becoming fierce competitors: browser, mobile, PC OS, mobile advertising . . .

Apropos of that, here’s a very funny (profane language) video that pits the two devices against one another:

More CPA Action from Google

Barry Schwartz at SEL posts on a new lead capture form that’s shown up on Google:

Apparently the advertiser will pay a maxium CPC price for the lead submission. This is another version of what Google previously showed with AdWords Comparison Ads:

This leads to this:

That ultimately leads to this:

Google recently introduced PPCall/Click2Call in mobile and is obviously playing with lead-gen and other variations on its traditional CPC model.

Google Maps, PlaceRank & Wikipedia

From Chris Smith’s terrific column today on Google Maps, SEO and Wikipedia:

Google’s recent introduction of Place Pages within Maps came in sync with some key adjustments in the factors used to rank local search content. The combination of changes has resulted in Wikipedia abruptly emerging as a major influence on local search rankings. I’ll describe what appears to have ve happened, and how it may have impacted your local business rankings.

When Place Pages were introduced into Google Maps, Google was attempting to expand content to provide locations and information about all sorts of things beyond just businesses. The Maps team sought to provide information about points-of-interest such as parks, monuments, forests, major buildings, historical markers, natural features and more.

Read the rest at Search Engine Land.

Idearc Emerges from Chp.11 As ‘SuperMedia’

Idearc has emerged from bankruptcy with a new board and a new name: SuperMedia. Here’s what the release says:

Idearc Inc. today announced that it has changed its name to SuperMedia Inc. (the “Company” or “SuperMedia”). The new name symbolizes SuperMedia’s renewed focus on providing outstanding products including the SuperYellowPages®, Superpages.com® and SuperpagesDirect™ direct mail products as well as services, such as the SuperGuarantee ^SM and SuperTradeExchange® Programs, to its clients and consumers nationwide.

“Our new name symbolizes the rebirth of our company and along with it the ability to continue to deliver innovative ways that will change the way in which we help match buyers with sellers”

SuperMedia’s shares trade on the NASDAQ Global Market under the symbol “SPMD” and the Company will take part in Opening Bell ceremonies on Wednesday, January 6, 2010 . . .

The name change follows the Company’s emergence from a reorganization that reduced its total debt from more than $9 billion to $2.75 billion of secured bank debt. The Company’s Plan of Reorganization (the “Plan”) became effective on December 31, 2009.

I’m scheduled to talk to CEO Scott Klein this morning. I’m wondering to what extent the company still considers itself a yellow pages publisher or whether it sees itself as a different animal. Yellow pages is just one of several options showcased on the new site:

The company probably did just over $2.2 billion in FY2009, with about 12.5% of that associated with the Internet.