Insider Chatter by Donna Bogatin

Are Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s ears ringing? After all, Spot Runner CEO Nick Grouf is borowing his Googley one-stop online advertising agency lines!

Grouf announces SpotRunner’s acquisition of SEM firm Weblsitic:

“This acquisition further strengthens our leadership position as the comprehensive resource for the full spectrum of local businesses’ advertising needs. Our objective is to help businesses drive awareness and attract new customers through multiple media channels, in an integrated manner, and online advertising is a top priority for us and for our clients.”

The SotRunner goal is to offer a “complete solution”: ”including media planning and buying for TV, radio and online,” because, Spot Runner assures:

TV and Internet advertising, when utilized together, have proven to be a particularly effective combination. According to Jupiter Research, TV advertising is the number one impetus for people to search for a particular company or product online, surpassing all other forms of advertising.

Remember when the Googler-In-Chief’s favorite fantasy was a multi-million dollar “complete solution” one:

The long-term fantasy is we walk up to you and you give us, say $10 million and we’ll completely allocate it for you across different media and ad types.

Long-term is apparently VERY long-term, though, as Google’s billions remain steadfastly 99% “traditional” AdWords and AdSense pure, as I steadfastly report:

SEE Google CEO In-Car Radio Ad Vision Fading and
Google TV Ads Auction: NO AdWords Buyer’s Remorse and
Google Execs Silent On NYC Print, Radio, TV Promises and
MySpace To Google: Learn How To Sell Advertising, OMMA Report and
MySpace To Google (Round 2): Text Clicks Do NOT Rule! VideoEgg Report and
The Web Economy Rejoices: Google IS Overrated and Due For BIGGER Fall!

If Google is not easily able to achieve one-stop online ad agency domination, does SpotRunner have a realistic shot? Unlikely.

Google has ONE very big advantage over SpotRunner, a $139 billion dollar one: Google owns the number one search engine inventory SpotRunner needs to resell! Reseller status is NOT a winning ad sales formula, just ask Google: Google Radio, Google Print, Google TV, Google MySpace…

Nevertheless, Ketan Shah, CEO of Weblistic, confirms his “passion” for “making online advertising easy and turnkey for small and medium-sized businesses.”

Unfortunately for new coproprate parent Spot Runner, however, local passion is hard to monetize.

MORE: Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows and Local Video Ads Battle: YellowPages.com Taps TurnHere, Spot Runner Gets 1200 TV Producers

PLUS: Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and
Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and
Local Ad Sales War: Why Google is a Guaranteed Winner and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS 

PLUS: PAY PER BLOG? WHAT KILLER BUSINESS MODEL

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

What a local online classifieds coincidence!

I enjoyed breakfast this morning with Craig Donato, along with a hearty helping of “innovators dilemma” discussion about how the Web company he founded and leads–Oodle–is seizing a $30 billion market opportunity ripe for exploitation due to mass media incumbent inertia.

At the same time, the latest touted “online marketplace for local services” was making noise: GenieTown. The newly funded startup has been operational for many months, but is apparently now hailing an “official” launch. Founded and run by a Stanford PhD candidate, Hassan Chafi, the site’s raison d’etre reads like a computer scientist’s thesis proposal!

Although GenieTown sprung from Chafi’s humble need to “find someone to clean his apartment while working under stringent paper deadlines,” Chafi obtained his startup financing by proclaiming an esoteric sounding “local service lifecycle model.”

In GenieTown “Whitepaper” speak:

At the core of this model, is a customer-centric continuum that runs through a series of action phases, beginning with a customer’s intitial interest in a service, through the fulfillment of the service and the customer’s recommendation of the provider to others. For ease of reference, we name these action phases: Explore, Communicate, Transact and Manage. 

In GenieTown consumer facing marketing speak:

What is GenieTown? Chafi–who has declared himself Mayor of GenieTown–asks and answers: It is where “clever people connect to buy and sell local services.”

“People with skills, expertise, and passion in a wide range of areas use GenieTown to offer their services. These “Genies” build credibility and trust through answering questions from customers, submitting articles and giving competent advice. Through their contributions and jobs well done, Genies increase their ranking on GenieTown. GenieTown enables service markets to emerge and thrive by creating opportunities for people to express and demonstrate their abilities, ambitions and passions.”

Whether in feel-good marketing prose, or feel scientific engineering text, however, GenieTown is not delivering on its “clever” experience promise, and real world “genies” are not readily apparent. Browsing GenieTown’s “featured” listings surfaces an array of impersonal, canned, standard handyman sales pitches, and spam-like hawking of online ecommerce franchise properties. FOR EXAMPLE:

We are L’bel Paris 40 Years in the Direct Selling Industry selling fine french fragrances,skincare and cosmetics company. We are in 14 different countries and growing!
We are now expanding here in the United States.
We are looking for business minded individuals looking to start their own business selling cosmetics from our L’bel Paris catalog.
EXELLENT MONEY MAKETR! Make anywhere from 25%-50% commission.
We are Not a Mult-Level MARKETING COMPANY!
EXCELLENT OPPORTUNITY TO MEET PEOPLE
LOTS OF COMPANY SUPPORT! FREE TRAINING!
PLEASE CONTACT: AREA SALES MANAGER

How does one “Become a genie?”: “Join now, it’s quick and easy!”…AND free, and apparently anonymous and unverified!

How does a “Genie” get featured on the GenieTown home page? GenieTown advises one “Genie” called “Power Of Cash”  of GenieTown’s Stanford PhD advanced algorithm:

If you are wondering how to be displayed on the front page: the two genies featured are selected from our list of genies with portfolio pictures. To add portfolio pictures, log into your account, click on profile and scroll to the bottom of the page. This allows you to upload and organize your pictures.

GenieTown “Genie” “Power of Cash”’s profile:

Cash Leveraging Genious. I Help others receive Financial Glory..

You go, Mr. Power, thanks to GenieTown’s open (too open) platform! Despite all of GenieTown’s Stanford engineering credentials, the founding team has unleashed a supposedly local Web platform that is friendly to global, online spam.

Oodle has been striving to “improve the way people buy and sell locally” for several years, fueled by $19 million in venture capital backing. Oodle CEO Donato told me today that Oodle is on track to be cash-flow positive by the end of the year.

Both a destination site and a third-party distributor and aggregator, Oodle cites “30 million listings from over 80,000 classifieds sites,” except Craigslist. Donato believes that Oodle is nevertheless complementary to Craigslist, recommending that consumers use Craigslist, plus Oodle for breadth of reach.

Straddling both direct-to-consumer and link-to-classifieds sites approaches poses Oodle business model challenges, however. Last June, I asked Donato for his reaction to the eBay launch of Kijiji. SEE: Oodle CEO Q & A on eBay, Kijiji & Craigslist Classifieds

The Oodle CEO told me last year about Kijiji:

It’s great for consumers and it’s great for Oodle. Providing consumers with choice is alays a good thing. And consumers are increasingly getting more options to post free classifieds listings. Obviously as consumers use more and different marketplaces, Oodle becomes more useful. It’s also important to note that consumers don’t publish listings directly into Oodle. As a search engine, it is our goal to partner with all the classifieds marketplaces on the Internet, big and small, local and national.

It is important to note now, though, that consumers ARE publishing listings directly into Oodle. How will the Oodle business model be impacted by the new, Oodle direct stance?

STAY TUNED TO INSIDER CHATTER FOR MORE: PART II ON OODLE COMING SOON!

MORE:  Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS and
Google Beware: Facebook Takes Local Advertising Gloves Off, ILM REPORT and
Judy’s Book: What’s On Sale? WE ARE! Ten Reasons Why and
Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows

ALSO: Craigslist Q & A: Classifieds Community NO ‘Walled Garden’ and Craigslist PR: Same OLD Media?

PLUS: Like.com to Entrepreneurs: It’s the Revenues, Stupid! and VideoEgg Rocks: Unveils AdFrames in Silicon Alley: Google Next?

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Google reminds us of that old cliche, “all news is local,” and aims to use its new-fangled algorithms to prove it. The Poynt service hopes its “first local search service over instant messaging (IM)” will make all new-fangled chatting local.

I recently chatted, in-person, with the founder of Poynt, John Lowe, the CEO of Canadian Multiplied Media, on the heels of the joint Idearc announcement of:

The availability of Poynt, the multimedia local search service, on the AOL Instant Messenger network (AIM). Multiplied Media has collaborated with Idearc Media Corp., home to Superpages.com and publisher of the Verizon Yellow Pages, to deliver Superpages.com’s full directory of local U.S. business listings over instant messaging platforms.

According to Lowe, Poynt is now available to approximately 70 million North American users through Windows Live Messenger and AOL Instant Messenger.

So, let the local chatting begin? Availability, unfortunately, does not equal instant traction. Nevertheless, Lowe is confident of the local IM opportunity.

The Multiplied Media agreement with Idearc Media offers distribution of Superpages.com advertisers’ content on the Poynt service through Windows Live Messenger and AOL Aim. Local merchant data featured includes business name, address and phone number, as well as Web links and click-to-call options.

Lowe is particularly proud that the Poynt platform is “agnostic,” able to run on any wired or wireless network. Next platform stop: the BlackBerry!

Lowe showed me a demo of the prototype beta application of Poynt on the BlackBerry; Multiplied Media expects to add the BlackBerry platform to its distribution agreement with Idearc within the coming months.

Poynt on the BlackBerry will be more than Yellow Pages lookups, though. Poynt told me the Multiplied Media business model includes adding robust search functionality for all data that is local: Bus routes, movie schedules and ticket ordering, restaurant reservations…

Poynt’s business also includes taking a revenue share on all of the functionality.

MORE:  Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS 

PLUS: Local Video Ads Battle: YellowPages.com Taps TurnHere, Spot Runner Gets 1200 TV Producers and Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows

ALSO: Google Apps Meets Les Miserables: Enterprise IT Team DREAMS Big and Why Silicon Alley VCs Should Do Blogging Due Diligence, Too

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Who are the biggest winners in the latest Internet fueled business model disruption? Independent filmmakers and videographers. YouTube may not be a big money maker for Google, but it has spurred the money making ambitions of unsung video creators and the monied interests that seek to leverage their low-cost video production skills.

On the local video advertising battlefield, ambitious players TurnHere and Spot Runner not only duke it out for lucrative video production and distribution contracts, but fight for the highest quality, most prolific independent video producers as well.

TurnHere has built its 3200 member “Filmmakers Network” from the ground up, Spot Runner has fueled its ”Production Network” with the absorbtion of GlobeShooter, a 1200-person strong group of local video professionals.

TurnHere leverages its base of independent video creatives for a variety of vertical applications–travel, publishing, local directories–while Spot Runner has its roots in a core local advertising message.

SpotRunner CEO Nick Grouff: “The acquisition of GlobeShooter is a natural extension of our strategy to be a central resource for local businesses’ broad spectrum of advertising needs.”

TurnHere “has established a strong foothold in the directory and local markets,” said John McWeeny, Business Development, TurnHere, in announcing a video production agreement with YellowPages.com this week, on the heels of its non-exclusive vendor agreement with Superpages.com, announced last month. TurnHere has been supplying video production services to Citysearch since last May.

Why such local business interest in videos?

According to Matt Crowley, CMO, Yellowpages.com, “Advertisers recognize that video can play a key role in delivering a unique and memorable message that engages the consumer and influences action.”

TurnHere’s McWeeny offers: “We continue to see rising industry demand as small merchants embrace online video as a platform to attract new customers and drive businesss growth.”

Citysearch itself, however, is more nuanced in evaluating video traction among merchants online. In November, President Jay Herratti spoke of the need to lower cost of video entry for advertisers in order to spur greater adoption, while keynoting at the Kelsey conference in Los Angeles.

The local video battle for advertisers and production contracts is NOT solely an online one. The Spot Runner founding claim to fame is ”the first Internet-based ad agency that makes it easy and affordable for local businesses to advertise on TV.” Nevertheless, GlobeShooter’s video producers serve to “expand the company’s ability to offer highly customized ads for both TV and the Internet.”

The TurnHere founding Internet message was Web-centric, offering “studio quality Internet adverising and Web distribution for building online traffic.” TurnHere is now poised to leverage good old fashioned television as well, however.

When I spoke with TurnHere CEO Brad Inman about the Yellowpages.com online video deal this week, he began by underscoring how TurnHere is key to bringing “television quality advertising” and television like distribution to the reach of local merchants. What’s more, the TurnHere video product is “more micro-targeted than cable television.”

Inman also hailed the television worthy work of the TurnHere “Filmmakers Network.” Will videos by TurnHere soon be playing then on a TV near you? Stay tuned!

ALSO: Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows and TurnHere Video Gets the Book Marketing Party Started

PLUS: Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS and Google TV Ads Auction: NO AdWords Buyer’s Remorse

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

Adrian Holovaty was granted $1,100,000 by the “Knight News Challenge” to “release open-source software that links databases to allow citizens of a large city to learn (and act on) civic information about their neighborhood or block.”

The EveryBlock “project” which opened for “business” yesterday, however, is not content to do its unique civic duty. Instead, Holovaty also takes the typical Web 2.0, easy user generated content redistribution tack, diluting the hard, real local news that drives the real workings of real urban centers’ citizens everday with the same old personal musings of a minority of Internet users, anonymous ones. 

Holovay knows that the real value he brings to the local table online is what is unique to EveryBlock, aka “civic information”:

Building permits, crimes, restaurant inspections and more. In many cases, this information is already on the Web but is buried in hard-to-find government databases. In other cases, this information has never been posted online, and we’ve forged relationships with governments to make it available.

Flickr, Craigslist and Yelp, however are NOT buried, are NOT hard to find, and are already on the Web, ALL over the Web in some cases: Yelp redistributes, free of charge, its anonymous babble about food to any takers.

Holovaty calls the tack on snippets of non-representative, anonymous Web posters “fun from across the Web.” EveryBlock’s value proposition, however, is NOT Web 2.0 UGC “entertainment.”

EveryBlock ought to be about what it is uniquely supposed to be: Real world “civics” real goings on, undiluted.

ALSO:  Yellow Pages Get Reprieve? The Myth of King Google Local Advertising ROI and Judy’s Book: What’s On Sale? WE ARE! Ten Reasons Why

PLUS: Facebook To Particls: What IS Your Data Portability End Game? and Craigslist Q & A: Craig Newmark Philanthropy Matches Google’s Page and Brin and Facebook Davos PR Blitz: Beware Scoble Hype, Users Still at BIG Risk

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN

I headlined earlier this week: Kelsey: You’ll Still Have Yellow Pages To Kick Around Some More. Kelsey CEO Neal Polachek now underscores that yes, Yellow Pages will live another day, or two.

Polachek’s Scrooge worthy “Christmas Story” of his car being rammed, his house being infested by vermin and his commode refusing to perform, has a happy Yellow Pages ending. Polachek shares that he turned to his “phone book” NOT to the World Wide Web to find eager, ready to serve auto repair, pest control and plumbing professionals.

BUT, what about the Polachek family’s Festival Of Lights? WHERE did Neal turn to search for how to spend his Hannukah gelt on toys, apparel, dining out…? Typical searchers do their everday “look ups” at Google, as Yellow Pages know all to well.

Recession Hits AT&T Online: Kelsey Local Search Advertising Predictions Too?, however, I analyzed earlier this week, underscoring the persistent roadblocks that continue to thwart en masse online advertising adoption on the part of local businesses.

Nevertheless, Kelsey analysts’ 2008 predictions echo persistent conventional local wisdom of a seemingly preordained inevitablity of “big increases in local search inventory” and an unstoppable victory of the new, (purportedly) more rational Web model over the old, (supposedly) frustratingly irrational print directory framework:

In the past, small and medium-sized businesses have protected their print Yellow Pages investment at the expense of other media. Given the structural changes in the local ad market, we believe the next downturn will favor media choices that are more flexible and provide a lower cost per lead than print directories, which would signal a profound shift: the Kelsey Yellow Pages point man, Charles Laughlin.

In the long term, we remain bullish that online and mobile products will bring in better than one-to-one conversion rates because of their superior return on investment: the Kelsey online verticals evangelist, Peter Krasilovsky.

BUT, are the Google inspired claims that an online ad spend is structurally inherently better than an offline one bankable? NO, not for the legions of single store, owner/operator local merchants that comprise the long and challenging sales cycle bulk of the ever elusive, but big, local business advertising opportunity.

Google’s superiority is clear on one front: Its ability to envelope a Google-centric, non-transparent, advertisers bid up their own rate cards, not marketer friendly, black box GOOG fuel money making machine in claims of irreproachable “accountability” and unbeatable “pay (only) for performance,” which even analysts willingly succumb to.

The big, bad Google “performance” ROI myth is that the “performance” being sold is a click, NOT a sale. The supposed impending holy grail of Pay Per Call products also is based on “performance” ROI myths: Advertiser costs are driven up for the extra perceived “accountability,” but the “performance” being sold is a call, still NOT a sale.

A call may be more valuable than a click, BUT it is also not a true performance metric for the only advertising result that counts at the end of the local merchant day: A local sale.

The Kelsey Group continues to hail the power and potential of call tracking: Polachek seized his Yellow Pages to the holiday rescue adventure to plug the up sell service to a Yellow Pages advertiser. Here at Insider Chatter, however, I WARN local merchants of the perils of call tracking as it is currently packaged and sold.

1-800 Pay-Per-Call: Marchex Buys VoiceStar, $4 billion Local Advertising Bonanza? I anlayzed in August.

The big, bad ”secret” dark side of the pay-per-call opportunity is that local advertisers often loose exposure of their REAL phone numbers by accepting call-tracking with random vendor supplied 800 numbers, as the Citysearch specs for its Pay For Performance-Calls product indicate:

Merchants are charged a fee per call and when an advertising cap is reached the toll free number (which appears throughout the site) is removed and replaced with the local, non-metered number…Citysearch provides a toll free number wherever the local merchant’s contact information appears: PFP ads, search results, merchant information page, and/or Best Of Citysearch listing.

LOCAL MERCHANT ROI PROBLEMS?

Customers jot down the toll free number to call another time, but end up unable to reach the merchant because the “ad cap” has been reached?

Customers print out the merchant info page for an out of town trip, but end up unable to reach the merchant because the “ad cap” has been reached?

Customers want to call the merchant a year later but don’t have the merchant’s real phone number…

The REAL bottom line local advertising problem? Old media or new, from Yellow Pages to Google, media companies spend their money and their energy in trying to PROVE to local merchants that their ad products are good for their businesses, rather than making sure they actually are.

MORE: Frugal Google.org: How NOT To Save the World On $159,000 a Day and
Reach Local Advertising? How Google Squeezes SEMs and AdWords Buyers and
Yellow Pages Trash Talking: The SEO Dog in the Google Local Fight and
Google AdWords Plus Box: Local CPC Bidding War Unleashed! and
Google Apps & Maps: Enterprise and Local Business STILL Missing and
Local Advertising Online: SMEs Hold the Billion Dollar Keys, ILM ANALYSIS 
Google Beware: Facebook Takes Local Advertising Gloves Off, ILM REPORT and
Judy’s Book: What’s On Sale? WE ARE! Ten Reasons Why and
Spot Runner Sells For Rival Google: Local SEM Bandwagon Grows

CONTACT DONNA BOGATIN