Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Local is heating up. “Try our Yellow Pages on the Phone!” Jingle Networks shouts. And why not, it has a U.S. patent to back its business model up, the company announces today:

U.S. Patent 7,212,615 (Criteria Based Marketing for Telephone Directory Assistance) discloses the technique of examining the caller’s information request and targeting an advertisement to the consumer based on that specific request. Since its introduction, 1-800-FREE411 has provided advertisers and direct marketers with the opportunity to deliver targeted messages as callers are making a directory assistance request, creating a new advertising medium for reaching consumers in ready-to-buy mode.

Oodle CEO Craig Donato believes online classifieds are creating a lucrative new advertiisng medium for reaching consumers in ready to buy mode. In fact, the Web is but “one giant classified market” Donato told met when I spoke with him this week.

Oodle may have begun as a simple aggregator of classifieds listings when it launched two years ago. Today, though, Donato views his company mission as providing a “great shopping experience.”

“Any site can push listings,” Donato told me. Oodle “pushes” many, many classifieds, in fact: 75,000 sites are indexed to present more than 20 million lisitngs and “a couple of million people use the site each month,” Donato said.

For Oodle, the value ad is the personalized services it layers upon the Web’s aggregated classifieds.

Donato pegs the classifieds market at $30-$40 billion. Oodle recently received $11 milliion in additional VC funding to go after the opportunity, from existing investors Greylock Partners and Redpoint Ventures, as well as new investor JAFCO Ventures.

Oodle’s revenue model is to sell “featured listings” across Oodle and the Oodle Network, an array of third-party sites that use Oodle to power their online classifieds, such as the Washington Post and Local.com.

For Donato, the real value of Oodle is in how it “connects” users that want to “hunt for great deals,” via interactive, social tools such as “instant alerts” and anentertainment calendar:

Consumers can browse Oodle’s entertainment calendar to find something to do on a Friday night; use Oodle’s real-time pricing guides to determine the right price for a two-bedroom apartment in their neighborhood; and receive instant Oodle Alerts to jump on great deals the minute they become available.

Donato believes that by making the classifieds shopping expereience more personal and immediate, Oodle is well poised to become the go-to online classifieds destination.

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN