Sacramento is the oldest Hearst-Argyle market with CityVoter. Since launching on KCRA.com in February 2007, the “KCRA A-List” has attracted more than 60,000 registered users, who have logged more than 200,000 votes. The 2008 Best of the A-List received more than 120,000 votes –a third higher than 2007.

In addition, users have posted more than 45,000 business reviews and added more than 2,000 new businesses to the guide - which now features over 3,000 local business profiles. Sacramento Sponsors of the A List include McDonalds, Tires Direct and Cache Creek Arts.

President Mike Orren says The iPhone 3G with built in GPS is made for city guides. It knows where you are, so it can make default recommendations based on actual locations. The hours-and- location orientation also makes total sense. iPhone users aren’t planning their weekends; they want to know where they can have breakfast, when happy hours start and where they can go after hours, he says. “Now is the default.”

“Everything about it is about finding things today,” adds Orren. The only exceptions are going to be garage sales, which are mostly active Thur-Sun.

Orren also sees advertising opportunities, with Pegasus’ base of advertisers offered upsells to featured listings for $100 a month. Average Pegasus advertisers are already spending $1,000 per month. They are likely to include restaurants, bars and nightclubs. Coffee houses may also be advertisers, since they are basically synonymous with Wifi locations already featured on the service, says Orren.

Orren says that the site is going to “go guerilla” in marketing the app. On launch day, the staff will be split up and will go to every Apple store and many AT&T stores , handing out free coffee adorned with Pegasus stickers. The stickers are courtesy of one of the site’s advertisers.

-At $3.5 Billion, the price is substantially less than the $5.0 Billion the owner, Landmark Communications had hoped for. As such, this demonstrates “how depressed media assets have become”, according to the Wall Street Journal.

-The deal is being financed by NBC and two major private equity players (Bain Capital and the Blackstone Group). This type of arrangement is said to be the wave of the future for big deals, now that banks have drastically reduced their participation in such deals.

-The prize in this Cracker Jack box is Weather Channel’s online assets. The leading online property, weather.com, enjoys 37 million monthly uniques. It’s also expected that NBC will use Weather Channel content to boost its other websites, such as MSNBC and NBC News.

Now, why should the TKG audience care about this?

Simple: Weather is an extremely local subject. One of the first things a weather.com visitor sees on the site is a box to enter their zip code, to get the forecast for their home city or travel destination. (Overlaying the zip code with the user’s IP address helps determine if they’re in their home city or not).

To date, most of the ads served up on weather.com are national. Going forward, however, we think weather-related web sites will be attractive places to reach local audiences.

Investment sidebar: If you believe that global warming is real and here to stay, investing in the leading weather-themed media property is also a great way to “go long” on global warming. Weather news is going to become increasingly valuable as the weather becomes increasingly newsworthy and dare I say it, withering.

YouTube: Helping or Hurting Video Quality?
Related to the previousl post, NewTeeVee asks whether YouTube is feeding creativity or killing it. Lots of examples are given of homemade videos that have made it big, and have fueled the growing online video culture we find ourselves in. As pointed out in TKGs recently released video forecast, this is one of the drivers for video’s popularity at the local level and its nearing status as an expectation for local search and business profiles. (read more…)

If I Can Just Put on My Sneakers
At Princeton’s Fourth of July fireworks last night, I got into a discussion with a friend who is concerned about his son who works as a journalist for a small NJ newspaper. I referred him to a “tell it like it is” story in Search Engine Watch by Kevin Heisler under the foreboding headline “Newspapers Bleed Red Ink: Death by Internet.” I particularly liked this article because he quotes experts in the Internet/media business, Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt, the NY Times, News Corp CEO Rupert Murdoch and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. (read more…)

Bain Readies Plan for Restructure of Key Newspaper Cos
Media News Group, Hearst Newspapers and Freedom Communications have retained Bain Consulting to help realign their cost structures, says MNG Chair Dean Singleton, who was speaking at a World Association of Newspapers meeting in Sweden. “We asked Bain to answer the question: If we started the business today, know what we know today, what would our infrastructure look like?” (read more…)

Google Launches Voice Search for Mobile Maps
The Google Mobile blog today announced that the company will bring voice search capability to mobile mapping queries. This will utilize the Goog411 voice search technology, and will be available initially on Blackberry Pearl models (8110, 8120 & 8130). It will also play off the MyLocation feature launched in November. (read more…)

AskCity Drops Maps, Outsources to MSFT
Microsoft’s Virtual Earth Blog posted yesterday that AskCity will now use Virtual Earth to power its mapping and local features. This will take the place of Ask’s homegrown mapping tool that was the first to come out with multi-point directions, drawing tools and lots of other features that have since been adopted by other mapping engines. (read more…)

Digg Gets More Social
Social bookmarking and news aggregator Digg has announced that it will integrate a new recommendations engine. This will track users’ activity and recommend stories according to the behavior of other presumably like-minded users. This is mostly a filter to increase relevance — a move toward letting users cut through the clutter, now that “Dug” stories are reaching 12,000 to 14,000 per day. (read more…)

TeachStreet, Find-A-Local-Teacher Site, Gears Up for Market No. 2
TeachStreet, which lists and profiles local independent teachers for everything from test prep to tennis lessons, is close to its official launch out of beta in Seattle and readying a second market in Portland, Oregon, according to founder Dave Schappell. From there, it will add the Bay Area. (read more…)

Local.com Pushes Display Ads for Brand Marketers
Local.com yesterday announced an ad distribution deal with Hearst-owned White Directory Publishers. The deal will bring Local.com’s display ad inventory to White’s national sales force. In this way it presents an opportunity for White to appeal to national advertisers that want to target locally. (read more…)

Microsoft Acquires Natural Language Search Company Powerset
As speculated, Microsoft today announced the acquisition of natural language search technology developer Powerset. The acquisition is hoped to help Microsoft better serve search results, based on a natural language analysis of user queries, and better index of Web content. (read more…)

Recruiting and Training Online Reps a Global Challenge
Over the past several months, The Kelsey Group has been talking with a number of sales managers and directors of companies in the directory, newspaper and online space to understand the challenges of recruiting, hiring and training online reps. The sense from our interviews is that the market for skilled reps who understand and have sold online products with success is extremely competitive. (read more…)

Landmark had apparently been hoping to get $6 billion for The Weather Channel, which was launched 26 years ago and includes weather.com, Weather Services International and a maker of weather radar systems based. The Weather Channel’s content is seen on thousands of sites and broadcast stations that syndicate it.

NBC-U actually already owns a minor weather service. But one of the key attractions of owning the Weather Channel is the high volume of targeted business travel and local traffic it receives. Everything on the channel and the Web site is geo-targeted by city name or zip code. By some measures, in fact, Weather.com is one of the biggest “local” sites. Theoretically, Weather.com could be combined with other high volume local verticals such as sports and news to form the foundation of a powerful set of content that can work as a destination and as syndicated package on other sites. NBC-U’s various sales channels could also be put to work.

The Weather Channel also has strong potential for mobile content, where it has been a pioneer in working with various carriers and top news sites.

Summer reading tip: Anyone wanting a good read about the real challenges of creating a vertical channel should read Frank Batten’s account of starting The Weather Channel.

My message today is directed at all of those employed in any way with any of the following: SEO, SEM, PPC, SSM, or any other acronym that starts with the letter “s”. Unlike you, I am not quite as bright and new concepts don’t come quite so easily. I am, however, still very competitive and have the ability to write big checks for who or what I want.  

While I often hear sales reps and online companies complain about the lack of online sophistication of small and medium-sized business owners over the age of 50, the reality is that this group of “traditionalists” controls the purse string and makes the decisions. CEOs may not intuitively understand the opportunities presented by online media, but they are still open to ideas that enhance the competitive nature of their marketing programs. Learning to clearly explain how SEM and SEO works and demonstrate the potential value it would deliver to the business are fundamentals all online salespeople need to keep in mind if they want to be successful.

Bottom line is that the guys writing checks have a lot to learn … from the search industry. Remember when all is said and done that we are all in the people business, so handle with care. And some of that wealth will flow quickly to those with the ability and patience to work with us, even though our pace may be slower than you are used to, or comfortable with.  The Search Marketing Industry is on the front end of what could prove to be the greatest business opportunity in history. The rewards will only be realized however if each member of this elite and young group of professionals understand his or her own responsibilities to the overall health of the industry.  

Online sales teams need to remember and recognize the need for education and relationship building as key tenets when selling a technical product to an audience that needs advice and reassurance that this new media will actually deliver the results promised. While features and benefits are important to impart on the sales call, the fundamentals of understanding the business, clearly explaining how online marketing supports business goals, and building a trusting relationship remain the fundamentals of good selling.   

The two properties complement Telstra’s 51 percent share in SouFun, China’s top real estate site. “Telstra now owns majority interests in three of the leading Chinese companies operating in the three key online advertising industry segments: real estate, auto and digital devices,” said CEO Sol Trujillo in the announcement. “These acquisitions provide further high-growth opportunities for Sensis,” which is described as “our buy, find and sell business.”

Telstra, in its announcement, notes that online advertising revenues in the Chinese auto segment are predicted to almost triple by 2012, rising from US$230 million this year to more than US$690 million in 2012. New car sales in China are already almost half those of the United States, with 7.2 million cars sold this year. China is expected to overtake the United States as the world’s largest auto market in the next decade.

It also notes that the online “digital device” advertising market is expected to triple by 2012 – up from about US$235 million this year to US$700 million. Last year, 48 percent of the Chinese population had access to a digital device. By 2015, that percentage is predicted to increase to 84.5 percent, or 1.18 billion people.

ShopLocal’s efforts generally center on localized circulars, targeted e-mails and “Smart Media,” which allows time-sensitive localized promotions to be inserted into other media sites on demand. The Chicago-based company was valued at $85 million in 2006.

The acquisition of ShopLocal is likely to elevate the role Gannett’s PointRoll plays with the Smart Media business. PointRoll initially partnered with ShopLocal for Smart Media. Recently, however, ShopLocal has been working more with DoubleClick. Since Google has purchased DoubleClick, PointRoll has been openly coveting DoubleClick’s employees and accounts. Gannett Interactive head Chris Saridakis was previously PointRoll’s head.

Related to the previous post, NewTeeVee asks whether YouTube is feeding creativity or killing it. Lots of examples are given of homemade videos that have made it big, and have fueled the growing online video culture in which we find ourselves.

As pointed out in TKG’s recently released video forecast, this is one of the drivers for video’s popularity at the local level and its nearing status as an expectation for local search and business profiles. Meanwhile, on the advertiser side, lowered barriers for video production (along with user demand) has driven interest among SMBs.

But to NewTeeVee’s point, do these lowered barriers mean lower quality or creativity? I would argue the opposite (at least at the local level). The examples it gives of cheesy infomercials and commercials are a thing of the past for many SMBs (these are mostly parodies but the point is still made). The new video environment – at least at the local SMB level — has surpassed the low-quality shaky camera work that is the stuff of SMB do-it-yourselfers.

This is mostly because the above factors have driven the supply of affordable one-stop-shop local video producers (TurnHere, PixelFish, Mixpo, etc.) who can create professional looking spots for SMBs. Using digital production that is tied to the benefits of Moore’s law, a quality standard previously cost prohibitive to SMBs is now within their grasp. And online distribution (via IYPs, search engines, etc.) makes it all the more affordable when compared with cable spot advertising — to which SMB options were previously limited.

More can be read in the video forecast (sub req) and past video blog commentary (scroll).

If you haven’t heard of YouKu, you’re not totally alone. But the leading Chinese video site is proving itself worthy of broader attention. The site raised $40 million this week from new and existing investors including Brookside Capital Partners, Sutter Hill Ventures, Farallon Capital and Chengwei Ventures. The site launched in December 2006, and currently gets more than 100 million daily video views, according Nielsen/NetRatings.