Groupon Pours More Gas on the Fire

Group buying just got hotter. The whole segment went on everyone’s radar when Groupon announced in December that it had raised $30 million on top of a previous $36 million. That round reportedly valued the company at $250 million and helped spawn copycats galore (though Groupon is not the first group buying site by any means).

Last night TechCrunch reported that the site had raised a “huge” new round with a valuation of $1.2 billion. That will further ratchet up the frenzy that already exists around couponing/group buying.

Although these companies are positioned as something new, in the wake of the rise of the social Internet, (Groupon uses the term “social commerce”) it’s the old reverse auction (prevalent in the late 90s) with local couponing at the core (hence the name). And it’s fundamentally about online driving offline, though there’s an e-commerce component.

There are now literally dozens and dozens of companies in the US and Europe doing something very similar. This segment is hotter than a lobster in a dutch oven, you might say. Groupon is trying to get to scale faster than others and build its brand.

Previously aggregator Yipit, which positions itself as the “Kayak of group buying,” pointed out that there were more than 40 of these sites in the US as of a couple of months ago. It’s only going to get bigger as traditional publishers and others try and get into the game and these sites push their deals out through established channels.

Groupon right now is doing something of an “arbitrage” play: acquiring consumers through online display advertising and then selling them to local businesses for considerably more. I wrote a recent post, “The Dark Side of Grouponing,” based on an interview with a restaurant owner who said that the system “worked” but that there were lots of hidden issues and pitfalls.

That post received considerable discussion with one marketer pointing me to advertiser satisfaction stats on the Groupon site to refute the thrust of my post:

In response to the general trend but trying to provide more tools and/or flexibility to advertisers and publishers are Analog Analytics, which offers couponing/deal tools to traditional publishers, and Closely, which offers an array of promotional/CRM tools to SMBs and publishers.

I also had a very interesting conversation with David Ambrose, the co-founder of NY-based Scoop Street, not long ago. Among other things he and I discussed how these sites were competing with all the other channels and media trying to get SMB/local business attention and mindshare and how the model might influence the “culture” of local advertising.

There’s no question that Groupon and its kin “work” and are well-liked by consumers. Here are the questions that surround these sites in my mind:

• Is there staying power in the market?
• Will SMBs “burn out” on these sites, especially as they compete with one another to offer more aggressive consumer deals and bombard SMBs with calls? (This is where brand comes in.)
• Will their value proposition (pay only for real customers, get money up front) have a broader impact on what SMBs expect from “advertising” and are willing to pay for?
• How will grouponing and the business model question immediately above affect traditional publishers/media channels (even search and other online channels)?

Three years ago at SMX Local-Mobile I ran a panel called “The Ultimate Local Ad Model” which asked the question: will the local market migrate to lead-gen and other CPA models from PPC and CPM? The panelists argued “no” and that multiple models would co-exist. I agree with the latter statement but there’s something significant going on here that is roughly comparable, in a way, to the whole phenomenon of “geo-social gaming” and how it may be changing the culture of the local-mobile segment.

UBL Expands Scope of Mission

The company behind Universal Business Listing, which began with the idea of being the single place for SMBs to submit and manage their data online, is broadening its mission. Here’s some information from a curious press release that went out early this morning:

BounceBack Technologies, a global technology company specializing in business intelligence, today released an open letter to shareholders, customers, and employees announcing that the company is changing its name and expanding with innovative new services and expanded capabilities. Moving forward, the company will focus its efforts on acquiring and developing services that improve the way businesses promote and protect their identity online. This new direction is designed to strengthen BounceBack Technologies, renamed as Name Dynamics, Inc., and help shape the future growth of the company in demand markets such as online search, interactive marketing, and business identity security.

BounceBack acquired the assets of UBL in January, though UBL co-founder Doyal Bryant is CEO of the venture, which is being renamed “Name Dynamics.” At any rate, the mission now appears to be much broader than listings data submission:

Moving forward, the company will focus its efforts on acquiring and developing services that improve the way businesses promote and protect their identity online. This new direction is designed to strengthen BounceBack Technologies, renamed as Name Dynamics, Inc., and help shape the future growth of the company in demand markets such as online search, interactive marketing, and business identity security.

The concept behind UBL was pioneered by the old LocalLaunch (acquired by RHD, now DexOne) with its “master business profile.” And several companies have been trying to executive on a variation of this theme for some time: the idea of a “one-stop shop” that provides access to a broad network of sites for SMBs (or multi-location businesses).

I briefly ran into Bryant at the SMX West conference and he was promising new/big things, which this release hints at.

Facebook Developing an Answers Service?

The AllFacebook blog reports that Facebook is testing a new “questions” product similar to Quora (or Aardvark, ChaCha, kgb or Yahoo Answers):

Some users have begun reporting seeing a new “Questions” product within their homepage, something oddly similar to Quora, a product developed by ex-Facebook employees that also recently raised funding at an $86 million valuation. While it doesn’t appear that this product has any integration with Quora, it appears to be in direct competition to Quora as well as Yahoo! Answers.

The AllFacebook post doesn’t really speculate about the model or implications for the broader market; however there are obvious local and mobile use cases. Beyond general and pop culture questions this could quickly become a word of mouth local recommendations engine:

• What’s the best . . . ?
• Where can I find . . . ?
• What is there to do . . . ?
• Who do you recommend . . .?

The rest of this post is at Internet2Go.

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Update: Some additional information at GigaOM, makes it seem akin to Aardvark.

More YP Data: Users More ‘Ready to Buy’

Last month the YPA released third party data that argued yellow pages offer the greatest local reach and trust of any competitive ad medium. Today comes part two that says 80% of consumers consulting yellow pages are “ready to buy.”

Here are the top-line data from the release:

• 8 out of 10 Internet Yellow Pages searches were from people who said they were ready to buy, with 36 percent reporting they had made a purchase after finding local business information at an Internet Yellow Pages site, and an additional 44 percent saying they intended to make a purchase.
• Approximately 8 out of 10 print Yellow Pages searches were from people who said they were ready to buy, with 39 percent reporting they had made a purchase after finding local business information in a print Yellow Pages directory, and an additional 39 percent saying they intended to make a purchase.

Here are some charts that illustrate these and related data:

Now come two slides that seek to refute the notion that people consulting the yellow pages (online or in print) are looking for contact details for a business they already know or have already selected:

Here’s what TMPDM/comScore say about the known vs. unknown business question (click to enlarge):

Source: comScore/TMPDM (7/09, n=4,000)

What the slide immediately above says is that 39% of online and 17% of print YP users don’t have a company in mind when consulting these resources. The print number in the YPA/Burke data above is fairly consistent with the comScore findings, but there’s a 20 point discrepancy between the comScore and YPA/Burke data regarding online directories.

The larger communication in the data and the release is: YP is widely used by consumers who are ready to buy but in many cases haven’t decided where or from whom to buy.

Do you agree with/believe the YPA/Burke findings or are you skeptical?

MerchantCircle Expands Q&A, Says ‘HelloMetro’

Social answers or Q&A is quickly becoming a larger part of the local experience. There are a range of Q&A communities and engines out that are wholly or partly local: Aardvark (now part of Google), kgb, ChaCha, Quora, YPG Answers, Yelp has forums, SuperMedia just introduced this today, AT&T’s coming Buzz.com and there are other examples (e.g., Facebook, Twitter to some degree).

And this morning MerchantCircle is expanding its successful Answers program to include the Demand Media-owned AnswerBag service.

The press release does a more succinct job explaining the reciprocal deal than I would:

Through this agreement, questions posted to Answerbag.com will be routed to more than one million members in the MerchantCircle network, and the top responses from merchants on MerchantCircle Answers will be shared with the Answerbag community. As a result, Answerbag users will be able to tap into MerchantCircle’s massive network of experts. MerchantCircle members will also realize a broader distribution of their advice around the Web. Launched in September 2009, MerchantCircle Answers has received nearly 80,000 questions resulting in close to 100,000 responses from MerchantCircle members.

There’s also a parallel deal being announced with city guide HelloMetro, which is somewhat broader in scope:

MerchantCircle has also signed a similar partnership with HelloMetro, a global network of 1500 hyper-local city guides that lets people get to know a city through local articles, history, attractions, real estate, jobs, business listings and more. Through the partnership, consumers will be able to ask questions on more than 1,000 HelloMetro city websites and get answers from local experts they can trust, all powered by MerchantCircle Answers. MerchantCircle will also help HelloMetro business users connect with one another with its social networking system. With both partnerships, MerchantCircle members will receive attribution for their contributions.

In addition MerchantCircle claimed listings (not an advertising category) will become the “featured businesses” on the 1,000-plus HelloMetro sites.

MerchantCircle’s Darren Waddell told me yesterday that roughly 2/3 of MC’s revenues come from advertising (by third parties, e.g., AdSense) and one third from SMBs who opt for MC’s advertising services. We talked a good deal also about future product direction and features. I also asked whether the company, which relies very heavily on SEO, had seen a decline in traffic in the wake of Google’s map and local results taking up more page one real estate.

Waddell said that because MC is more of a long-tail site than most local directories he said that he thought MC had been less impacted than others. He did say there was a drop in traffic but that it seems to be returning to previous levels.

While MC continues to be critiqued by some for its earlier, questionable sales practices it has now become a pretty valuable asset and business network waiting to be scooped up. (The site claims more than 1 million SMB “members.”) I predict we may see that this year or very early next. According to the public information I’ve been able to find the site has only raised about $15 million total. MC would be quite a bit cheaper for a Google to acquire, for example, than Yelp would have been.

Former AOL Exec Now WebVisible Revenue Chief

WebVisible has hired Jon Rosen, formerly of SpotRunner, AOL and other places, as Chief Revenue Officer:

Prior to WebVisible, Rosen was the executive director for strategy and business development at AOL Search, which included AOL local search. He architected several high-value acquisitions and partnerships and developed America Online’s SEM and SEO division. Rosen also served as a corporate officer for Autobytel (Nasdaq: ABTL) – one of the largest automotive search advertisers and online properties – where he led business development, advertising sales and operations, partner acquisition and search marketing. At Spot Runner, a well-known local advertising innovator, Rosen ran the company’s online, search and local business.

WebVisible recently closed a $20 million “C” round and said it would be hiring 50 direct salespeople. The company also announced that McClatchy would be broadly rolling out its offering to the newspapers’ various local markets.

SuperMedia Getting Vertical

Not long ago DexOne (formerly RHD) launched a vertical strategy with a weddings site. I didn’t talk to the company but assumed this was the first in a series of verticals that it was going to pursue. Now, SuperMedia is doing something similar but more aggressive. It has built a new “AskLearnHire” platform and three new verticals at launch, all with the “prefix” Super:

• SuperMortgages
• SuperRemodelers
• SuperHVAC

They all follow the same “template” and these are the first verticals in a larger planned rollout. The sites try to capture and address different stages of the consumer research and decision-making cycle with Q&A, content and lead-gen, hence the tabs Ask, Learn, Hire:

Consumers can ask a question and get it answered by a service provider; they can read content (written by writers but later by SMBs) and/or they can submit an RFP/lead-gen form:

According to the press release out this morning:

During the beta phase, leads will be sent to participating businesses at no charge. After official launch, businesses can purchase exclusive leads at a competitive market fee. Leads are only offered to one business at a time with information about the consumer’s needs so businesses can evaluate before deciding to accept that lead. Businesses are only charged for the lead if they decide to accept. The consumer’s contact information is only shared with the business once the lead has been accepted, which eliminates consumers being contacted by multiple businesses.

As you can see from the presence of the cape-wearing fellow, the SuperGuarantee is a prominent part of the entire offering. SuperMedia is trying to build lots of brand equity around the SuperGuarantee, which I’ve been told independently by several people at the company is very popular and “working.”

During a call last week, I was cautioned by SuperMedia VP Robyn Rose that the sites are a work in progress and in beta. The initial three categories were chosen because they’re popular on Superpages and involve varying degrees of research and consideration.

SuperMedia is trying to learn from consumer and SMB interaction with them whether and how to modify the sites before proceeding with a larger rollout. Conceptually this is very creative and interesting and trying to go beyond and provide more utility than the typical profile page details and content that are common to directories. There’s also broad SEO potential here in the Ask and Learn categories.

The sites will also gain exposure on Superpages.com and vice versa.

Taking a broader view, the changes and new efforts at Dex, Yellowpages.com and now SuperMedia reflect a time of transition and change in the US directory industry. The local market is now incredibly dynamic and competitive (as it extends into mobile) and these efforts are new attempts to bring more content, relevance and value to consumers and advertisers. In the case of SuperMedia, in addition to its various syndication programs, this vertical strategy is an effort to not only provide a useful consumer experience but also something of a hedge against reliance on a single consumer destination.

What do you think of this new vertical approach?

Promoted Tweets: ‘Pull’ and ‘Push’

Twitter’s business model has emerged. Ironically, yesterday, Bill Gross of IdeaLab (and founder of Overture) announced TweetUp, a keyword-based search marketplace built on a proposed better search engine for Twitter and a group of syndication partners. Last night Twitter announced its own, very similar idea with Promoted Tweets:

Q: What are you launching? What are Promoted Tweets?
A: We are launching the first phase of our Promoted Tweets platform with a handful of innovative advertising partners that include Best Buy, Bravo, Red Bull, Sony Pictures, Starbucks, and Virgin America — with more to come. Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets that businesses and organizations want to highlight to a wider group of users.

Q. What will users see?
A. You will start to see Tweets promoted by our partner advertisers called out at the top of some Twitter.com search results pages. We strongly believe that Promoted Tweets should be useful to you. We’ll attempt to measure whether the Tweets resonate with users and stop showing Promoted Tweets that don’t resonate. Promoted Tweets will be clearly labeled as “promoted” when an advertiser is paying, but in every other respect they will first exist as regular Tweets and will be organically sent to the timelines of those who follow a brand. Promoted Tweets will also retain all the functionality of a regular Tweet including replying, Retweeting, and favoriting. Only one Promoted Tweet will be displayed on the search results page.

Image source: AdAge

The NY Times echoes how this will work:

When a Twitter user searches for a word an advertiser bought, the promoted message will show up at the top of the results, even if it was written much earlier. The posts say they are promoted by the company in small type, and when someone rolls over a promoted post with a cursor, it turns yellow.

This is paid-search advertising around keywords (though pricing is apparently CPM to start). Ads will also appear in third-party clients and syndicated streams.

This is all very familiar, well established, no big deal. That’s the “pull” dimension. But there’s another “push” (AdSense-like) dimension to all this (per the NY Times):

In the next phase of Twitter’s revenue plan, it will show promoted posts in a user’s Twitter stream, even if a user did not perform a search and does not follow the advertiser.

For example, if someone has been following people who write about travel, they could see a promoted post from Virgin America on holiday fare discounts.

Anyone who uses Google has grown accustomed to seeing ads alongside their search results, but Twitter users could resent seeing promoted posts in their personal content stream.

Twitter is aware of that risk. It is still figuring out how to determine which promoted posts should appear. It could be based on topics they are writing about, geographic location or shared interests of people they follow.

This second, “involuntary” dimension of the program will apparently roll out later and very carefully. Though all the ads are substantially text-based, what you’ve got in the two components is direct response and awareness ads.

Predictably there’s positive and negative reaction to the second part, which is premature. We can’t begrudge Twitter a way to make a living.

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It’s worth revisiting the Twitter “business model contest” that happened a little over a year ago. Search and contextual advertising are of course among the many suggestions in the submissions.

Clarinova: The Rebirth of StepUp?

I spoke to the founders of Clarinova a couple of weeks ago and last week the company formally put out a press release announcing its existence. As I heard them describe their relationships with product makers and brands and their efforts to build websites and manage them for independent local retailers I was strongly reminded of StepUp, which sold several years ago to Intuit for $60 million.

Clarinova builds microsites for individual brands and their corresponding local retailers. Effectively the firm tries to help people locate places to buy products offline, but there are some interesting other angles as well.

Here’s how Clarinova describes itself:

Clarinova is a collaborative marketing company working with manufacturers and retailers to grow and satisfy market demand for manufacturers’ products by creating a powerful online presence. Clarinova bridges the gap between creating a brand and making certain it is well-represented on retail websites and across the Internet.

On a standalone basis or in conjunction with your existing Web marketing staff, Clarinova adds greater efficiency to your operation by creating a systematic path for your brand to increase visibility rapidly across the Web. We help retailers and consumers find you—on shopping websites, search engines, comparison engines, social shopping sites, and retail store websites. Clarinova’s Front Window platform advances your online branding efforts so you can focus on the rest of your job.

Because this is in large part about the brands and manufacturers, only a single brand is showcased on any individual store microsite. Consequently a store that carries multiple lines and brands would thus have multiple microsites (and all that implies for SEO). Here are examples of three different actual microsites for three brands all sold at the same store:

Clarinova said that its one-brand-per-site approach wasn’t a problem for the independent local retailers, who appreciated the promotion. Furthermore, the company believes that it has tapped into a large retail segment that represents 80,000 manufacturers and distributors, their 270,000 retailers, and $76B in US retail sales.”

Because the company works directly with brands/manufacturers, Clarinova also has some decent visibility on in-stock items at independent retailers, though the systems (or lack thereof) in use make real-time inventory determination a problem. But because the company knows when and how many products have shipped and generally how long they remain in stores, there is some probabilistic calculation that could go on. But real-time inventory is not the thrust of the company’s immediate efforts.

Clarinova is working with brands to help consumers, using search engines, find local stores where they can buy products. It’s quite a bit more involved and sophisticated than a pure store locator strategy. It doesn’t rely on the consumer finding the brand’s website and then finding the store in his or her area. It “syndicates” that information out through search to the broader Internet. And there’s lots of SEO value for both the stores and the brands here.

In terms of competition, there are general Web design firms and several companies (Krillion, Milo, NearbyNow, Google) working on real-time product inventory. And there are lots of firms providing local marketing services to local service businesses. But there isn’t anyone doing exactly the same thing that Clarinova is: working with manufacturers to bring small retailers online and connect buyers to their local stores.

It’s another example of the momentum building to help deliver consumers from “Web2Store.”

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Related: Here’s Clarinova’s overview deck on SlideShare.

Google Buying Ads Against My Name?

David Mihm was the only individual to have had this distinction in the past (as far as I know): Google buying his name as a keyword. This morning in a discussion about a search feature on Google I discovered that a search for “Greg Sterling” shows an ad for the Google Local Business Center (click to enlarge if you like):

It’s also true for “Mike Blumethal,” “Mary Bowling,” “Andrew Shotland” and still true for “David Mihm.” There are probably others. We can make it into a game . . .

Survey: Internet Most ‘Essential’ Medium

In a way this is nothing new. Surveys have reported that the Internet was a top or the top medium for consumers in the past. However a newly released survey about the future of radio from Arbitron contains a number of interesting datapoints that are not radio specific:

When asked which medium was “most essential” to their lives, here was the breakdown:

• Internet: 42%
• TV: 37%
• Radio: 14%
• Newspapers: 5%

TV “still leads among those over the age of 45, Internet dominates among younger persons age 12 to 44.”

WiFi in home: 62% of homes with Internet access have wireless networks. Can you say: “Hello iPad”

Texting ubiquitous: 45% of mobile phone owners text multiple times a day. Here’s how it breaks down by age category among those answering that they send or receive texts several times a day:

• Teens: 75%
• 18-24: 76%
• 25 – 34: 63%
• 35 – 44: 42%
• 45 – 54: 37%

Of course these other media can’t compete with the Internet because it’s the only “all in one” medium and it contains the others: TV, radio, newspapers. So it makes sense that if you had only one to choose, you’d want the Internet because it means at least partial or compete access to the others.

Yelp: We Were Sued Because of Funding

As the various Yelp class actions proceed and rumors about sales practices swirl he company is making stepped up efforts, using the unfortunate phrase, to “open the kimono.” We’re seeing more PR outreach and visibility from Yelp, now a major Internet brand.

Yelp executives have been speaking at more conferences and there have been many more news articles, in part driven by the controversy, about the company. When Yahoo dropped out of the “local search engines” panel at SMX West at the last minute it was logical to replace them with Yelp, given the stature of the company.

In a piece appearing on the CNN Money website the argument is made that Yelp is being sued by lawyers who want a piece of the company’s recent $100 million funding:

The lawsuits, [Corp. Communications VP Vince] Sollitto points out, came after Yelp’s $500 million dalliance with a Google buyout fell through, leading to a new $100 million investment from Elevation Partners earlier this year. Yelp believes it’s dollar signs, not business practices, which brought out the attorneys. “Lawsuits often come to companies around financing rounds, that is a fact of life,” says Sollitto.

While it’s the financial prize that undoubtedly caused some lawyers to find the plaintiffs to bring the various suits, the confusion and frustration animating them were building for some time — partly a result of some early arrogance on Yelp’s part. Now that the company has “grown up,” as the article headline asserts, it has taken a much more balanced view and made greater outreach to local businesses recognizing that it much educate them in order to get their ad dollars.

As I’ve said before I tend to be very skeptical of the review manipulation claims but the facts will out.

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I like how Yelp CEO and co-founder Russell Simmons look less like startup execs than members of an indie rock band in the photo associated with the CNN Money article:

Credit: David Yellen

Watching the iPad Drama Unfold

In one corner is Adobe and its rageful supporters: “F-U Steve Jobs and your damned closed system!” In another the tech fetishists: “Why doesn’t the device have this and that and several other components?” Then there are those who love it (like me), and still others who like it but see it as the death of books (it’s not).

It’s fascinating to watch all the bile as well as the speculation about how the device will impact computing. Of course, it already has.

My belief is that the iPad launch (maybe Kindle too before it) will stand in retrospect as a “watershed moment” in computing, just as the iPhone launch dates the beginning of the “mobile Internet.” Indeed, the Internet is more and more about mobility; the iPhone started the movement and the iPad accelerates the trend.

The iPad and maybe its future imitators offer a tremendous potential boon to traditional magazine and newspaper publishers if they don’t blow it. Without exception they should develop iPad apps that really optimize the experience for the device. If they get it right and the pricing too they’ll be able to reap subscription dollars from the iPad.

People will pay, I’m convinced, for great content well presented on the iPad while they remain unlikely to pay for PC-based content subscriptions. The art however will be in the pricing.

Meanwhile the imitators are gearing up. Most visible is HP with its Windows 7 Slate:

H.P.’s version of the iPad is expected to be released by midyear. Notably, it will have a camera, as well as ports for add-on devices, like a mouse. Also, it will, the company says in a promotional video, “run the complete Internet,” including videos and other entertainment.

Phil McKinney, the chief technology officer in H.P.’s personal systems group, said in a recent interview that the company had been working on its tablet for five years. It delayed releasing the product, he said, until the price could be lower.

This “complete Internet” strategy is misguided and the product will fail, unless it’s dirt cheap and/or totally capable of replacing a laptop. If it is a cheaper-than-a-netbook laptop replacement some people will buy it. If it comes in below $300 people will buy it. But HP, from what I’ve seen so far, doesn’t “get” what this new tablet experience is about. Sure it’s about the Internet but its mainly about a new way to consume content that’s redesigned for a tablet — specifically.

The Internet is an efficient but ultimately horrible way to read the NY Times. And while the NY Times has a sub-optimized iPad App it’s already a much better experience than the conventional Internet.

The app is king of this new realm. And that’s what an HP, or Acer or Dell don’t fully recognize (yet) and can’t compete with. These companies can produce good devices that are more convenient and “personal” than a laptop — and some of them will — but no matter how many ports and how much Flash are on these devices they’re unlikely to trump the iPad. I could be proven wrong but I don’t think so.

Android will be interesting to watch. Just as the inaugural Android device was shifted from a BlackBerry clone to an iPhone imitator, Google’s Chrome OS/netbook strategy is probably shifting as we speak. There were a couple of Android tablets before the iPad (though none successful). However the ultimate realization of Google’s Chrome OS cloud strategy will be a tablet that perhaps runs Flash as well as Android apps. Google had planned to put out Internet-books by Thanksgiving 2010 but I suspect now we’ll see a few tablets as well.

Those who haven’t lived with the iPad for several weeks but critique it don’t really know what they’re talking about. The smug “I’m waiting for version 2.0″ crowd is also missing out.

Sure it’s a luxury item but it’s a great (and of course imperfect) device that in most respects is a lot more satisfying to use than a PC or a smartphone.

A Quick Look at the IAB FY2009 Numbers

I was out a few days this week and didn’t get to a lot of the news. One of those items was the release of IAB Internet ad spending numbers for FY 2009 ($22.7 billion). Here are some of the charts (click to enlarge):

The graphic above shows the Internet now in third position after TV and newspapers in the US. Next year it will be number two as newspapers continue their decline.

Here are the revenue breakdowns by category and pricing model:

Most of the local advertising (listings, YP) is grouped within the “Classifieds” category by the IAB, worth 10% of the overall $22.7 billion. The other main category where local or geotargeted ad revenues would appear is search, which was far and away the dominant category of online ad spending.

Mixpo Now Offering ‘Dynamic Video’ Ads

Video advertising platform Mixpo has partly shifted its business from a focus on local publishers and SMBs to larger advertisers and agencies. I just got finished with an update from Mixpo CEO Anupam Gupta who said that the business is now largely about “dynamic video” advertising, which can include but is not limited to local or geotargeting.

I asked Gupta to elaborate on what “dynamic” means in terms of Mixpo’s platform. He said it can take several forms:

• Dynamic overlays on video creative that can include text, email capture, social media links and so on. Those can correspond to location or other targeting parameters
• Short video add-ons or addenda to uniform or “national” creative (e.g., a short plug for a local dealer following a national car commercial)
• Entirely different creative/video depending on any number of variables, such as demographics or location (e.g., one type of ad creative for women another for men).

“The ads really come together at runtime,” said Gupta.

He also said that in the context of a single ad campaign agencies and advertisers can swap in entirely new ads on a daily or weekly basis, as the advertiser wishes. This is a huge, if somewhat hidden, benefit of the platform. Deal with the “bureaucracy” of the ad buy once and then substitute new or different creative at will.

He used Scott Brown’s Massachusetts Senatorial campaign as an example. Gupta said that within the same media buy the candidate substituted entirely different video ads to respond to changing issues in the campaign over time.

Gupta also told me that the platform can accommodate any form of targeting or multiple layers of targeting, and complements existing systems and technologies. In other words, you don’t do behavioral targeting within Mixpo, but Mixpo can be used to deliver dynamic video ads with third party behavioral targeting tools or data.

Mixpo works with existing display ad networks but doesn’t offer pre-roll. Gupta argued that this was a more cost-effective way of doing video online vs. pre-roll. He said that engagement with these video units is typically very high after a click initiating the ad.

We spoke about the iPad and mobile a bit. Currently Mixpo doesn’t do mobile but will be investigating and likely developing it very soon. One issue: its units are all Flash-based.

I asked Gupta about competitors and he said that the companies that he’s “hearing about” or being compared to are Tumri and Teracent (now part of Google) that offer dynamic display advertising, rather than other video platforms.

Trulia Adds Rental Search Capability

Trulia, like some of its competitors (e.g., Zillow), has branched into rental property search, the company announced today. This is a response to changes in the market. According to Trulia CEO Pete Flint approximately 30% of those in the market are equally looking at buying and renting.

Flint told me that the rental data on Trulia are coming directly from brokers/agents, aggregators and a range of other sources. He said that anyone can add a rental listing for free. Flint asserts that Trulia’s rental database is more comprehensive than any other rental property site online. He also said the company’s search functionality and filters allow for a wide range of searches and lookups than competitors’ sites.

Another interesting feature being launched is user ratings for neighborhoods, which will be featured on property listings pages. According to Trulia, users “can rank neighborhood attributes on 12 different traits including parking, cleanliness, safety, public transport and weather, along with many more topics. There will even be details about whether a neighborhood is good for a family vs. singles, etc.”

Listings can also be shared on Facebook.

There will also be an updated mobile website that is optimized for the iPhone and other smartphones featuring the rental search capabilities and listings. Flint told me that he sees the rental market as even more suited to mobile than the for sale market. That’s because “it’s a less considered purchase . . . and the inventory is more perishable,” according to Flint.

He added that roughly 10% of all Trulia’s page views are now coming from mobile devices.

Yodle CEO Writes Local Ads for Dummies

Yodle CEO Court Cunningham is one of the co-authors of the forthcoming Local Online Advertising for Dummies. I haven’t seen/read the book, although the WSJ says that it promotes Yodle services:

The 384-page book, written in part by Yodle executives, isn’t shy about promoting the company. A note on the cover says, “Inside – find out how to get a $100 advertising credit from Yodle!” With that type of blatant self-promotion, a reader can’t help but wonder how much bias is in the book.

While Cunningham is a very smart guy and I think Yodle is doing good work, I question this approach by publisher Wiley (if what the WSJ says is correct). Nonetheless, this could be the biggest branding gift and vehicle that Yodle has yet undertaken.

The paradox could be that the DIYers who buy the book might not be the best prospects for a service like Yodle, although I could be completely wrong.

What do you think about Yodle writing the book in the first place? And how do you think it could affect the market or their position in the market?

AT&T Formally Announces YP Brand Change

This morning AT&T put out a press release formally announcing YP.com as the flagship brand for its yellow pages site:

AT&T Interactive today introduced YP.COM, the new YELLOWPAGES.COM, as its evolved flagship web property and brand. Powered by its proprietary local search technology, YP.COM draws from AT&T’s history and success in local search to provide innovative solutions that connect consumers with businesses. . .

From the start of the search experience, YP.COM promotes discovery through predictive text search technology that automatically suggests potential search terms as a user enters a business name or category. Search results, supported by YP.COM’s database of over 21M business listings[i], allow users to filter results by neighborhood, Video Profiles and business coupons. Giving users more reasons to explore, YP.COM leads to more consumer engagement, which means advertisers have a better opportunity to connect with engaged consumers who are ready to make a decision about where to dine, catch a movie or stay while away from home. While in beta testing, advertisers averaged a 28 percent increase in calls and clicks per search[ii] as a result of placement on YP.COM.

The site expands beyond traditional YP to include events and other information. I wrote about the change yesterday when I stumbled upon it.

I agree with the brand change because it makes the site much more flexible for the inclusion of additional types local information and content.

Yelp Makes Changes to Promote Trust

In an effort to create more trust and “transparency,” Yelp said this morning that the company was taking two additional steps:

• Adding the ability to see reviews filtered by the company’s review filter
• Discontinuing the “Favorite Review” feature that’s part of the Yelp advertising package

According to CEO Jeremy Stoppelman’s post:

Why? Because while Yelp has seen tremendous growth in just a few years, we’re still new to a lot of people. Despite our best efforts to educate consumers and the small business community, myths about Yelp have persisted. We’ve said all along we believe these incorrect notions stem from the combination of the filter and this advertising feature — and we’re practicing what we preach. Lifting the veil on our review filter and doing away with “Favorite Review” will make it even clearer that displayed reviews on Yelp are completely independent of advertising — or any sort of manipulation. We also hope it will demonstrate the importance of a safeguard such as our filter and the unique challenge we face daily to maintain the integrity of the review content on our site.

As indicated by Stoppelman, this is a direct effort to combat perceptions and claims that Yelp is manipulating reviews on the basis of whether or not a local business is an advertiser. It’s obviously a positive step for Yelp and is in part motivated by the lawsuits pending against the company.

Do you believe these moves will address some of the (mis)perceptions of local advertisers?

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Here’s the press release.

Yellowpages.com ‘Redirecting’ to YP.com

AT&T’s Yellowpages.com site is now “redirecting” to YP.com:

I misspoke as a technical matter when I said that. It’s not actually redirecting; rather it’s showing YP.com as the brand for the URL “yellowpages.com.”

Apparently is the Yellowpages.com “brand” that BellSouth and SBC paid nearly $100M to acquire a number of years ago. However the YP.com site offers an expanded “definition” of yellow pages in accordance with a rapidly shifting local online landscape.

AT&T Interactive’s new effort Buzz.com is slated to launch in the relatively near future.