Mobile marketer 
With chess-like deliberation, Google launched its Local Business Center (LBC) dashboard and moved further towards its goal of conquering the massive untapped advertising market of almost 20 million local businesses.
Since the introduction of the Kindle in late 2007, the online retail giant has marketed the device almost without interruption on its home page, which drew 65 million unique visitors in April. That audience, combined with Amazon’s fervent Kindle advertising, generated more than 60 million ad impressions in May and click-through rates averaging 1.6% this year, with a high of 3.4% for the week ending Feb. 14, according to the analysis by Compete. 
As local media sites continue to look for ways to create and sell low cost high quality video to small businesses one contender is Spotmixer. The product is simple enough, a set of 200 video advertising templates by industry, that media can customize with voice overs, text, music, photos, mood and pacing by following a wizard (or use SpotMixer’s experts for a fee).I spoke with Leslie Latham, Vice President of Business Development just after she signed up Comcast Spotlight in San Francisco. Read More »
Everyscape, a provider of software that creates interactive panoramic video tours, called “webscapes” has an interesting play for local media companies. So far the company has partnered mostly with merchant associations using its own sales force to sign up the merchants. But there is no reason media companies can’t do the same thing, obtaining video content for “experiential” guides like dining and nightlife, or for hyperlocal communities. Read More »
“Best of” contests gain new life online when media companies partner with Web-savvy CityVoter, a site that let’s visitors vote for their favorite establishments. So far mostly broadcast sites with no established “Best of” brand have taken advantage of the opportunity. “TV is a no-brainer. Its like a megaphone,” says Joshua Walker, founder and CEO. “I’m still looking for the print that can activate as well as TV. Print companies tend to get caught up in Church and State issues.” According to the Kelsey Group about half of the traffic from contests comes from the media, the other half comes through the CityVoter site. Read More »
