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.

Out of Chp. 11 RHD Becomes ‘Dex One’

RH Donnelley formally emerged from bankruptcy, just about a month after Superpages’ parent SuperMedia similarly did so. Indeed, RHD is now “Dex One” and begins trading on the NYSE. The company eliminated more than $6 billion in debt and now has a new board. From the release out this morning: 

The new Dex One Corporation will build upon its legacy of delivering media products and marketing services that help local businesses get found and selected by active shoppers.  The company will continue to offer its “Dex” branded suite of products including online and mobile search solutions, print yellow pages directories, voice-search platforms and pay-per-click networks.

Note the company’s new “about” description:

Dex One Corporation (NYSE: DEXO) is a leading marketing services company that helps local businesses reach, win and keep ready-to-buy customers.  Our highly-skilled, locally based marketing consultants offer a wide range of marketing products and services that help businesses get found more than 1.5 billion times each year by actively shopping consumers.  We offer local businesses personalized marketing consulting services and exposure across a broad network of local marketing products – including our “official” print, online and mobile yellow pages and search solutions, as well as major search engines . . . 

Cross platform local marketing company that happens to be a yellow pages publisher . . .

Pee Wee & the iPad

I was a very big Pee Wee Herman fan. This Funny or Die video featuring Pee Wee and his new iPad is pretty funny; the best part is at the very end. But ol’ Pee Wee’s getting a little “long in the tooth” one might say:

But who can forget the classic Pee Wee’s big adventure (Tim Burton’s first movie):