I’ve just spend two days attending the Yellow Pages Today event in Milan, Italy, where publishers engaged in a very compact program that focused on “Repositioning the Yellow Pages.” The event was really about how directory publisher have to transform their organizations in order to have viable businesses in five years and beyond.

It was clear that different publishers have different senses of urgency based on conditions in their markets, and perhaps based on their own internal culture. I spoke with Yellow Pages Group-New Zealand CEO Bruce Cotterill whose focus is currently on improving basic execution and improving customer satisfaction. From there he will turn his sights on longer-range strategic objectives.

Cotterill’s market is not seeing as dramatic a shift to online as some of the others represented at the conference, though he understands that eventually it will. Other markets, like Belgium, the Netherlands and the Nordic markets, are experiencing a very dramatic shift. Cotterill’s challenge, nine months into his tenure, is to make a legacy monopoly culture much more customer focused. He also is committed to defending his print business, while others at the conference have moved beyond defending print to focusing on creating a much stronger online business. None of them are necessarily wrong, they just face different conditions on the ground.

Mathias Hedlund, who leads all online efforts at the Swedish publisher Eniro, spoke Wednesday and outlined how his company is building more products that extend the brand further and further away from the Yellow Pages core, into search, social media, B2B and so on, with an emphasis on building a robust database and driving transactional revenue. Eniro is making a clear transition from a print dominant business to one where print is an increasingly secondary distribution channel.

One of Eniro’s many initiatives is a new online Yellow Pages platform that combined “evolutionary” and “revolutionary” components. The evolutionary element focuses on making search more relevant by category, for example, using map based search for hairdressers but not for plumbers. The “revolutionary” piece involves building a different kind of directory on a much richer content database that brings together reviews, products and brands, and is far more intuitive than the current model.On the second day, Eniro’s Oscar Berg made some notably revelations about how far Eniro has moved down the path of discreet mobile monetization. This year, the company began selling discreet mobile profile pages to advertisers in Norway (they had previously been bundled with online), and will expand that program to Sweden in January. Berg, mobile manager for Eniro Initiatives, said that 20 percent of the online customers adopted the new discretely priced mobile profile pages, and the company was able to increase the rate in August after launching it in the second quarter.

Berg also made a case for why so much development effort has gone into the iPhone, versus yhe broader mobile internet market. He said that iPhones account for nearly 40 percent of Eniro’s mobile search traffic, and weekly sessions among iPhone users are almost three times those for mobile Internet users.

Simon Greenman from European Directories followed Hedlund and similarly outlined how EDSA will focus on a broad range of products and distribution points and monetization methods.

EDSA has been making a number of alliances and investments built around extending well beyond the Yellow Pages brand. These include Tupalo.com, a social media site; and Werkspot.nl, which handles requests for bid for home repair and improvement projects in the Netherlands.

Greenman detailed a pretty complex ecosystem that publishers have to engage in. But he boiled the challenge down to three simple categories — do you have the right product mix, can you make complexity simple to the advertiser, and can you demonstrate value?

Copenhagen based mobilepeople has been making moves throughout North America over the past year, starting with its deal to power the DexKnows suite of mobile products for directory publisher R.H. Donnelley.

It’s latest deal, announced today, is to power the mobile apps for Canada’s Trader corporation. Trader is the top publisher of classifieds advertising in Canada, known best for its AutoTrader property. It also has 160 publications and 20 websites — a rich base of content on which to build mobile local apps in different verticals.

In the near term, it looks like they’ll start with AutoTrader and include iPhone, BlackBerry and mobile web versions. From the release:

As more people embrace mobile as a primary source of information while on the go, with 4.3B worldwide users, mobile presents a natural touch point for AutoTrader to meaningfully engage with customers. AutoTrader is addressing this expanding trend in mobile use by tapping mobilepeople to develop native search applications that will allow users to find vehicles and dealers that meet their specific search criteria.

More specifically, mobilepeople has a forward looking philosophy behind its mobile technology that expands the traditional local search model to include discovery components. This moves beyond the “what” and “where” boxes that represent the first generation of mobile local products inherited directly from the desktop.

The idea is that mobile local product evolutions should better capitalize on the unique aspects of the hardware: It’s portable, location aware and users don’t want to do a lot of finger tapping. All this points to discovery aspects of mobile products that are beginning to come out through the work of mobilepeople and others we’ve profiled.

Expect to see this trend continue and expect to see more deals formed by mobilepeople in the coming months. In the meantime, buy your ticket to LA to join us for the Interactive Local Media conference next month. mobilepeople VP and GM Jeff Porter will join us on stage to talk about these market developments and what the future could hold.

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Related: Our mobilepeople report has more (sub. req.).

One of the often asked questions we receive regarding sales from all local media sectors “is multi-product selling by a single sales force really possible.” The natural follow on question invariably is what would be the benefit of a single sales force as opposed to specialized sales teams for each product area – traditional media products and online/digital products. 

I will go on record as saying I am a strong believer in the ability of a core sales team selling multiple products combining both traditional media and online media. Solution selling is what is being demanded by the local business owner. Our Local Commerce Monitor survey has indicated over the last several waves that SMBs (small and medium-sized businesses) are trying desperately to figure out how all of their media choices fit together. Subdividing media choices into separate sales channels invariably confuses the customer and empowers individual sales force to sell against each other. PaidContent.org recently reported on this very scenario in a recent story about Hulu the online partner of NBC Universal, Fox and ABC. “Hulu, which is under increasing pressure to prove its value as a business in its own right, the battle over ad revenues (with its TV broadcast sales channel) has become more acute as its competes for ad revenue.” Channel conflict is often the case when competing sales channels within the same organization compete for ad budgets. It is rare that an online rep will rein in their recommendation so the next internal sales force has the opportunity for budget. Every sales channel has an objective and every sales person is paid on maximizing every selling situation. 

AdOperationsOnline.com revealed a recent IAB Bain & Company study providing further support for an integrated sales approach saying, “Marketers want integrated campaigns instead of platform-specific media programs.” While the IAB/Bain & Company focused primarily on brand advertisers, the same thinking certainly applies to the SMB marketplace. One of the key findings was, “Ultimately, marketers are looking for media companies to offer a true triple-play service model from direct response to awareness to high impact brand engagement.”  Advertisers are already multi-media buyers, it’s just that the sales process hasn’t yet caught up to where the advertiser is at the moment. Our ongoing survey of SMB, Local Commerce Monitor, indicates that SMBs use on average 3 or more local media to market their business with much higher numbers in categories such as retail, restaurants, and professional services.

Yes it is easier to segment the sales force from a management stand point, and it is more challenging to train a sales force in a new method of selling, but ultimately it comes down to what the advertiser wants and needs. Multi-product selling is about providing a solution to support the advertisers’ business objectives, shows how each media offering supports and relates to each other, and it demonstrates the value of the sales force to the advertiser by educating and demonstrating how the solution meets or exceeds their goals at a price that makes sense. For the organization it maximizes the investment in the core sales force, eliminates channel conflict and focuses on increasing the overall customer value. Let’s make peace with our advertisers and our sales operation. 

Mobile Social app Foursquare is getting lots of attention and growing quickly into new cities throughout the U.S. and Europe. For those unfamiliar, the app lets you check in at local establishments to alert friends where you are.

The value exchange involves gaining “mayorship” of places where you check in more than anyone else. This gaming element keeps people engaged through a sort of competitive spirit among friends (and strangers). There is also competition on a weekly leaderboard of check-ins, and the ability to acquire badges for your status as a local socialite.

The app has been a media darling and an urban necessity among mobile mavens in places like New York and San Francisco (I’m hooked). But the business model question has been asked many times in the analyst corps, and has been a source of doubt over the product, like many popular local search players before it (i.e.Yelp).

But over the past few months there have been implications that a revenue source could come from local businesses interested in driving foot traffic. This plays out as businesses bring the gaming element into their doors — offering freebies to mayors or anyone that checks in.

This of course requires the buy in and participation of the owner — something that sounds good on paper but comes with the scalability challenge often faced in self provisioned local advertising. But it’s an interesting concept that’s starting to rear it’s head in a few different ways.

Today, I saw it for the first time; I’ve heard people talk about it but haven’t seen it yet firsthand. Below are a few screen shots that show the call to action on the check-in screen and the resulting click through. Unfortunately I didn’t have time to go “find Schlomo” (nor start drinking at 3:31 pm).

No definite indication whether or not Foursquare is directly monetizing these ad units yet or just getting the ball rolling. Either way, expect to see much more of this — and other flavors of this concept — emerge in social local apps that are building foursquare-like features, such as Loopt.

National Public Radio has been recently getting more aggressive  in promoting sponsorship packages in advertising industry trades. Indeed, NPR has positioned itself as an advertising alternative to other news outlets – positioning that hyperlocal sites such as Sacramento Press are also assuming.

How far can NPR and the local public radio affiliates go as an alternative news and advertising source? Former Knight Ridder Exec Ken Doctor has an excellent take on it, inspired by last week’s “Future of News” summit held by  Minnesota Public Radio.  Doctor talks to MPR head Bill Kling, who notes that “Everything you’d need to start an alternative media company, we’ve got. What’s missing is the leadership.”

Kling tells Doctor he hopes to provide that leadership in his region, partly by bringing in reporters and others who have been downsized from local dailies. Doctor also notes that the dollars are there for public radio to continue the expansion at the local and national level. MPR, with 70 news staffers,  recently got a $5 million individual grant to boost its news operations, to be matched over time.

Separately, NPR has announced a $3 million grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and The Knight Foundation to  fund “blogger/curators” in 12 cities.  Doctor notes that this is in addition to a major effort run by top NPR execs Vivian Schiller (ex New York Times)  and Kinsley Wilson (ex USA Today) to “weld together” a true national network from its affiliates and other sources.

In addition, Doctor notes that CPB has announced a $5 million fund to  allow for the creation of four or five regional, multi-state centers, with a handful of staffers each, to help local public radio stations do better origination, editing and sharing of stories of regional concern, both on air and online.

While news development is being meticulously planned, there is precious little information about public radio’s efforts to win more local and national ad/sponsorship dollars . Obviously, as a nonprofit institution that is supported, in part, by government dollars, it can only go after such dollars with major constraints.  We’ll undoubtedly hear more about both news and sponsorship efforts from NPR’s Kinsley Wilson when he speaks at ILM:09 Dec. 9-11 in LA.

One of our favorite mobile products is ShopSavvy, the Android based app that essentially turns your phone into a bar code scanner. It now joins the 100,000-deep library of iPhone apps.

Technically, what the app does is overlay a horizontal scanline on the camera’s viewfinder to scan an image and then scrape its product database and pull up pricing, specs and reviews. It also recently integrated local inventory data from Krillion to tell you that the Best Buy down the street has the same item for $20 less and they have 4 left.

This is a pretty powerful position if you think about the ability to drive and track conversions where buying intent is high — literally, when someone is standing in front of the store shelf. The app was among the winners of the first Android developer challenge and we think it represents an area of innovation we’ll see explode in mobile over the next couple years.

It will also grow to include other data sources such as promotions coupons and sponsored links. See the conversation we had with ShopSavvy developer Big In Japan, where they discuss the revenue model that includes affiliate revenue but also a Google-like bid marketplace that treats scans as search queries.

The reasons it wasn’t previously available on the iPhone involve some development roadblocks and the fact that it doesn’t work as well on pre-3GS models that don’t have an auto-focus lens. This is a downside for non 3Gs owners like me - it’s tough to get a scan. But still i’m happy to have it.

A similar iPhone app was recently released called Red Laser. It works better without auto-focus in the tests I conducted, but it doesn’t have the local inventory data that ShopSavvy has. Oh yeah, and it costs $1.99. ShopSavvy is free.

We’ll see a lot more competition bubble up in this area, and we’ll provide a more thorough comparison of what’s out there, once we get our hands on the optimal hardware (upgrades forthcoming).

Following in the footsteps of ESPN Local and CBS Sports, Comcast will develop local sports sites on the back of its existing TV  properties. Comcast has already launched Comcast SportsNet News England, which it calls “the most comprehensive and dedicated online local sports destination.” The site features local media celebrities and has added 40 new positions – a remarkable investment. ESPN and CBS have only added a few new positions at this point.

The New England site is acting as the template for similar upgrades in San Francisco, DC/Baltimore  and Chicago.  Philadelphia, which upgraded earlier this year, is being run with a different look.

The overall effort is being lead by Comcast Sports Net Chief Digital Officer Eric Grilly, former head of Philly.com and longtime leader of Media News Group’s digital efforts. Grilly told Sports Business Journal, which we saw via Paid Content, that the sports effort is “the single largest investment outside of making an acquisition in the business.”

Grilly also said that Comcast will start “with beat writers for every professional team in the market, then expanding to local colleges and high schools.” Later, it will add lifestyle and entertainment sections. Some of the Web programming is likely to migrate to TV, he added, such as post game shows. The sports upgrade is likely to be further enhanced if Comcast succeeds in its pursuit of NBC-Universal, and its owned and operated stations.

ESPN Local SVP Jim Pastor is a featured speaker at ILM:09 December 9-11 in Los Angeles.

Following up on the previous post about BIA/Kelsey’s Mobile Market View study, the big jump in smartphone penetration deserves a closer look.

Specifically the data show smartphone penetration to be 29 percent of U.S. adult mobile subscribers (up from 18 percent last year). This will immediately strike many as too high, as it did for me at first. Indeed, recent data from comScore put U.S. smartphone penetration closer to 20 percent of mobile subscribers.

But a few variables come into play to reconcile this difference and put these figures in better context. First, MMV’s sample includes ages 18 and up, while many other surveys such as comScore measure ages 13 and up. Higher smartphone penetration makes sense with greater purchasing power and proclivities of an adult sample. Teen use conversely skews toward feature phone-centric capabilities such as SMS.

Second, if you consider the rapid growth and falling prices of smartphones (especially touch screen devices), the jump from last year makes more sense. The recency of this survey, fielded in October, also put it closer to a current snapshot (albeit smaller sample) than data from comScore and others. In a quickly developing market, recency is obviously important.

To that point, consider other recent data that support a quickly accelerating smartphone market in the U.S. Specifically, Verizon recently reported that 40 percent of its handset sales are smartphones and T-Mobile predicts the same for Q4. If this is representative of the larger U.S. market, it means that smartphone penetration could approach this 40 percent during the hardware replacement cycles of the next 24 months.

Lastly, Nielsen reports we’re on track to see smartphones cross the 50 percent threshold by mid-2011 (yes, 18 months from now). Add it all up, and it makes more sense that 29 percent of U.S. adult mobile subscribers carry smartphones today. Still somewhat surprising, but the data show what they show, and carry strong implications for the direction of the mobile market and its monetization opportunities.

This and other mobile news are further discussed in our podcast this week, if you’re inclined.

BIA/Kelsey’s Mobile Market View survey releases today, showing a big rise in smartphone use as well as corresponding mobile Web activity and data consumption.

The annual U.S. consumer survey, currently in Wave III, indicates a surprisingly high jump in smartphone use to nearly a third of adult mobile subscribers (I’ll address in a separate post). Supporting this, many forms of user engagement increased, as smartphone ownership correlates to higher data consumption

Specifically, the data reveal a growing class of “heavy users” of non-voice modalities. The percentage of users making more than 10 mobile Internet accesses per week increased significantly, now representing more than one-fifth of all mobile users. Drilling down, among mobile users:

• 48.2 percent sent or received more than 10 text messages per week
• 21 percent had more than 10 Internet accesses per week
• 20 percent sent or received more than 10 e-mails per week

As for the local angle, we saw growth in the percentage of respondents who are using mobile devices to search for products or services locally. Among mobile users:

• 18.5 percent searched the Internet for local products or services (up from 15.6 percent last year)
• 11.1 percent searched the Internet for products or services outside their local area (down from 14.3 percent)
• 15.9 percent obtained information about movies or other entertainment
• 13.3 percent obtained information about restaurants or bars
• 4 percent purchased a physical item that needed to be shipped (e.g., a book)
• 3 percent used a coupon from their mobile phone

Subscribers of BIA/Kelsey’s Mobile Local Media program can log in and access the full report. We’ll also continue to report on many of the findings, including user interest in local coupons and promotions. And we’ll present and dive into all the data at the Interactive Local Media conference next month. We hope to see you there.