Study reveals gap in brands’ perceptions of local digital advertising activity compared to reality of implementation; calls attention to need for education and assessment of localized business strategies

ST. LOUIS – GMS Local, a service of GroupM and provider of local online services for national brands, announced research revealing a gap in the perceived local digital media activity expressed by national brands with brick and mortar locations versus what is actually being implemented. While 69 percent of marketers surveyed indicate they spend greater than the national average of 25 percent of budgets allocated to local marketing, 33 percent have yet to implement basic local digital efforts that positively impact business performance, such as online business directory listings. An exploration of the research is detailed in the white paper “Perception vs. Execution: Examination of Brands’ Local Business Strategies Reveals Gaps to Act On.”

As the Internet speeds to the forefront of local advertising, marketers are bullish about their current and future investments in local advertising – particularly in local digital media, the research revealed. Eighty-three percent of marketers surveyed expect their local online spending to increase at a greater rate than the projected national growth (25 percent) over the next three years. Such growth supports the expansive consumer activity happening in the local digital marketplace, where up to 20 percent of searches conducted have local intent (jumping to 40 percent on mobile devices), and the adoption of location-based check-in services is happening in the masses, with companies such as Foursquare topping 1 billion check-ins. According to Borrell Associates, local digital advertising is expected to grow 18 percent in 2012, with local online spend projected to surpass all other channels by 2015. This growth, compared to the gap in what marketing executives perceive their brands are doing at the local level and the reality of their execution over the past 12 months – and into 2012 – shows national advertisers are missing the opportunity for sizeable gains.

“Every single data point we see shows consumers becoming more mobile and reliant on digital for their local information. This rapid consumer shift has created challenges for brands as they attempt to keep up, and we are seeing a willingness to invest, as validated in this research,” said Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search. “The research also shows a clear disconnect between what brands believe they are doing with those investments and what is actually being done. We speak to advertisers daily that have enormous blind spots in local digital coverage, and who welcome the education and strategy needed to resolve their willingness to spend and target which is hindered by the inability to determine what to do first and next.”

Additional insights from the research include:

- One of three national brands has yet to invest in the basic local digital effort of online business directory listings.

- Only 55 percent of national brands surveyed have initiated geo-modified paid search campaigns.

- While half of all consumers are making business selections off consumer ratings and reviews, less than 50 percent of national advertisers invest in local online review sites.

- Thirty-two percent of marketers attribute their insufficient engagement to a lack of awareness, with respondents specifically stating they are unaware of offerings, don’t understand them or believe them to be unnecessary.

- Fifty-eight percent indicate that funding prevents them from engaging more in the local digital space.

Brands will continue placing big bets on the online local space given the consumer shift to this space for their discovery efforts, with 70 percent of marketing executives for national brands reporting their local online investments as a percent of total local advertising outpace current national averages. As detailed in the whitepaper, national advertisers can overcome these challenges with deeper education around opportunity in the local digital space and self-assessment of the reality of their allocation and programs.

Additionally, following a three-step action plan will help advertisers reach optimal performance and local digital success:

- Conduct an online local listing business audit

- Diagnose the ‘local storefront’ for your brand by applying social media tools that listen to consumer sentiment at the local store level

- Practice education, innovation and experimentation

“Technology and mobility have opened the gateway for national brands to be able to create personalized experiences with consumers at the local level,” said Steve Scherfy, Local and Mobile Manager for GMS Local. “From business location listings to local social intelligence, managing the entire digital storefront is key.”

For the study, marketing executives and managers of national brands with a minimum of 500 physical locations were surveyed. The comparative study, conducted between September and November 2011, set forth to investigate the challenges that brands within the digital marketplace face, including the ability to understand emerging technology, analyze what is relevant and act on these tools based on their business needs. It also explored how engaged each national brand is with local marketing. Survey questions with local digital marketing averages and best practices from national data were utilized to gain reaction and comparative “self-assessments” against those averages by participating respondents and brands.

About GMS Local

GMS Local is a service of GroupM, and comprehensive digital solution focused on creating meaningful connections between brands and consumers at the local level. Using paid, earned and owned media solutions, GMS Local maximizes local consumer engagement opportunities for national advertisers with an extensive local footprint. Local digital marketing perspective can be found at www.gmslocal.com, or on the GMS Local blog.

Industry’s First Local Rich Media Ad Platform to Incorporate In-Store Product Availability Data

IRVINE, Calif. – -Local.com Corporation (NASDAQ: LOCM), a leading online local media company, released the industry’s first rich media ad platform to incorporate dynamic, in-store product inventory availability and current pricing data for products sold by local retailers.

Rovion, a division of Local.com, has integrated this unique solution into the Rovion Ad Management Platform (RAMP). RAMP is initially being offered on a limited basis to select multi-channel retailers, consumer brands, agencies and publishers and will be rolled out later this year.

The revolutionary web-based RAMP platform:

Allows clients to easily create, serve, and track dynamic, original rich media ad units that incorporate local product and shopping data, without time-consuming and complex coding requirements
Includes dynamic information on pricing, retailer sales, product details, store locations and near-real-time in-stock availability powered by Krillion™
To date, more than 100 million impressions have been served by RAMP. The platform generates revenue on a CPM basis when participating agencies’, brands’ and publishers’ ads are served.

According to Borrell Associates, local rich media display advertising now represents approximately 10 percent of the total local online advertising landscape. Rich media display advertising is expected to grow to $5.1 billion, or 37 percent of all banner advertising by 2016.

“RAMP combines Rovion’s rich media advertising platform with the availability of Krillion’s local shopping data to provide a truly unique, local display ad unit,” said Michael Sawtell, Local.com chief operating officer. “RAMP enables any company to create sophisticated rich media ads that incorporate dynamic local product data within a platform that requires no technical proficiencies. We believe this combination will prove to be valuable to a wide range of multi-channel retailers, consumer brands, agencies and publishers looking to drive better performance from their local online advertising spend.”

Krillion’s localized shopping data adds local relevance at the product level, increasing the targeting capabilities of rich media ads so that national campaigns can reach web-influenced local shoppers across the U.S. Today, the growing Krillion local search index includes more than 1,200 brands from more than 60,000 retail locations.

According to Forrester Research, nearly half of retail sales are “web-influenced,” and these web-influenced retail sales are expected to reach $1.2 trillion by the end of 2012.

For more information visit: http://www.rovion.com/ramp/.

About Local.com®

Local.com Corporation (NASDAQ:LOCM), a leading online local media company, enables brick-and-mortar businesses to connect with online customers using a variety of digital marketing products. The company reaches more than 20 million consumers each month on the flagship Local.com website, approximately 1,500 regional media sites and more than 100,000 geo-category websites. The company distributes daily deals to hundreds of thousands of email subscribers in 14 markets via Spreebird, rich media ads via Rovion.com, and real-time product inventory information from more than 60,000 retailers nationwide via Krillion.com. To advertise, or for more information, visit: http://www.local.com/.

NetAcuity Edge provides the industry’s first highly accurate hyperlocal IP geotargeting solution

LONDON – Digital Element, the leading provider of IP geolocation technology, today announced a global expansion of NetAcuity Edge™, the first product of its kind to offer highly accurate IP-to-postcode targeting. This non-cookie-based dataset meets the pressing demand from advertising networks, web publishers, search engines, social networks, e-tailers and analytics platforms to offer a richer, safer, more personalized online experience while protecting user privacy.

Based purely on Internet network infrastructure analysis of ISP nodes, and insight derived from Digital Element’s global partners, NetAcuity Edge maintains the traditional user anonymity associated with IP geolocation data while delivering an unprecedented level of IP-to-postcode targeting precision. Originally launched in the United States in 2009 and the UK in 2010, NetAcuity Edge now extends hyperlocal targeting capabilities across all of Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.

NetAcuity Edge is currently being deployed by Alterian (LSE: ALN), the leader in customer engagement technology and solutions, in its WebJourney Analytics solution. WebJourney provides a new kind of web analytics that focuses on creating a more personalized web experience. NetAcuity Edge allows WebJourney to conduct postcode segmentation of web visitors in real-time, giving Alterian clients an extremely powerful tool for understanding and engaging with prospects, customers and website visitors.

“We are finding that our clients clearly recognize the need to be able to segment online audiences and target their messages, however previous technologies touting ‘hyperlocal’ geotargeting simply did not offer the reliability or accuracy that they required,” said Rusty Warner, Vice President, Product Marketing, Alterian. “NetAcuity Edge erases the limitations once associated with postal-code targeting and now offers technology with exceptional granularity—not only in Europe but around the world. Our clients also feel comfortable knowing that no personally identifiable information is collected or stored.”

Postcode precision geotargeting with NetAcuity Edge

Since its initial launch, NetAcuity Edge has revolutionized the IP geolocation space by providing the only validated IP-to-postcode geographic data on the market. While IP targeting techniques traditionally rely on routing infrastructure analysis to an approximate city-level location, NetAcuity Edge combines traditional infrastructure analysis with anonymous insight gleaned from a network of global commercial partners to better map the Internet. The result is the most granular and accurate hyperlocal dataset that maintains user anonymity and complies with the highest standards of end-user privacy.

“With competition intensifying in the digital landscape, this is a breakthrough moment for any business looking to gain a competitive edge by delivering truly relevant messages online,” said Frank Bobo, Digital Element’s Vice President of Business Development. “Online businesses can now better meet consumer demand for personalized content while preserving complete user privacy.”

Digital Element’s clients include the Internet’s leading online retailers, publishers and advertising networks who understand the value in using hyperlocal targeting to make the online experience more personally relevant for their customers.

About Digital Element

Digital Element delivers the de facto standard in IP Intelligence, providing coverage for 99.9999 percent of the Internet. Digital Element’s patented technology combines Internet routing infrastructure analysis with hundreds of millions of partner-derived online end-points, resulting in the most accurate IP geolocation data available today. Most of the world’s largest networks, websites, video portals and social networks deploy Digital Element’s IP technology to target advertising, localize content and video streaming, manage geographic rights, and enhance analytics. As the industry pioneer, Digital Element has long been the technical leader in evolving non-invasive IP Intelligence technology and now offers many IP datasets including Country/Region/City/Postcode Geography, Connection Speed, Domain Name, ISP, Company Name, Industry, Home/Business, Language, and Proxy information.

For more information on how to uncover new levels of insight about online users, please visit www.digitalelement.com. Digital Element is a business unit of Digital Envoy.

Local advertisers benefit from expanded digital reach and audience-targeting capabilities

MCLEAN, Va. & SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) and Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, today announced they will expand their local advertising partnership to all 19 broadcasting division markets by February 2012. The partnership brings together Gannett’s powerful local media organization brands, sales solutions, and digital platforms with Yahoo!’s market leading reach and display advertising leadership.

“We’re focused on delivering strong results for our customers through unique marketing ideas and solutions,” said Dave Lougee, president of Gannett Broadcasting. “Gannett’s local advertising partnership with Yahoo! provides dynamic targeting based on geography, demographics, behaviors and interests, which enhances our ability to drive those results. Based on the success we have had to date in nine of our markets, we are expanding the Gannett Broadcasting and Yahoo! partnership to all 19 of our markets by early next year.”

Gannett’s broadcast media properties deliver a suite of multimedia solutions for customers through their trusted brands and deep understanding of the local markets they serve.

In addition to nine of Gannett’s Broadcasting Division markets, all 81 of Gannett’s local publishing organizations offer Yahoo! advertising as part of their integrated marketing services. Gannett’s local media organizations typically reach 80% or more of the total digital audience in each of the markets that offer the Yahoo! advertising partnership.

Yahoo! offers all the elements needed for great advertising today: the science to understand and target an audience, the art to create lasting engagement with consumers through context, and the scale to reach the right person in the right setting in meaningful numbers.

“Yahoo! is committed to making sure local businesses reach high-quality target audiences,” said Lem Lloyd, Yahoo!’s vice president of North America channel sales. “By expanding our relationship with Gannett, we’re reinforcing our commitment to extend Yahoo!’s local offering, providing advertisers access to the technology and scale they need to effectively reach these audiences.”

About Gannett

Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE: GCI) is an international media and marketing solutions company that informs and engages more than 100 million people every month through its powerful network of broadcast, digital, mobile, and publishing properties. Our portfolio of trusted brands offers marketers unmatched local-to-national reach and customizable, innovative marketing solutions across any platform. Gannett is committed to connecting people – and the companies who want to reach them – with their interests and communities. For more information, visit www.gannett.com.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) is the premier digital media company, creating deeply personal digital experiences that keep more than half a billion people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the globe. And Yahoo!’s unique combination of Science + Art + Scale connects advertisers to the consumers who build their businesses. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.com) or the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal (yodel.yahoo.com). Yahoo! is the trademark and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.

Following on yesterday’s announcement from Local Yokel Media on the launch of the first hyperlocal online ad marketplace, we had a Q&A session with Dick O’Hare, CEO and Founder of Local Yokel Media.

Otilia Otlacan: You have recently launched Local Yokel Media – Congratulations! – the first hyperlocal online ad marketplace. What were the main drivers of this launch, what made you look into hyperlocal opportunities?

Dick O’Hare: With the tremendous growth of the Internet, consumers continue to migrate online for local information.  More local businesses are moving their advertising spend online, to follow this audience.  As a result, online local advertising is now a $16.1 Billion market and growing rapidly.  Meanwhile, “hyperlocal” content is booming—filling the editorial void left by the waning coverage from traditional local media organizations.  This valuable, community-level content presents a compelling, targeted advertising opportunity.  Research shows that 80% of consumer spending happens within 20 miles of home.  Local Yokel Media (LYM) focuses on those 20 miles (or less) to help local marketers reach only those communities within their immediate service area on publisher content those community audiences know and trust.  This level of granular ad targeting delivers “geo-contextual” relevance which drives overall ad performance and media efficiency.

Local Yokel Media is the Internet’s first hyperlocal online ad marketplace.  We are aggregating hyperlocal websites, local blogs and websites of community newspapers to empower marketers to reach granular, local geographies in contextually relevant content.  Hyperlocal campaigns can now be done efficiently and at scale through LYM’s unique platform.

Otilia Otlacan: Geotargeting comes in many flavors already and it’s been years that targeting by zip code is possible in many ad servers, networks and exchanges. How does a hyperlocal targeting compare to zip code targeting, and why would it yield better results for local businesses?

Dick O’Hare: The big difference between more “traditional” geotargeting and what Local Yokel Media is offering boils down to contextual relevance.  Zip code targeting through more traditional means does not deliver contextual relevance between the advertiser and the content the reader is consuming.  It is mainly executed through data overlays.  Content is the proxy for geography in our business model, therefore we deliver “geo-contextual” relevance to the advertising.  It’s all about local businesses reaching local audiences in their service area on local content those audiences know and trust.  We aim to deliver this at scale…all from one platform.  Our campaign data shows that this level of granular, local targeting in context can outperform more traditional geotargeting by multiples.

Otilia Otlacan: What can you tell us about how audience pools are formed in a hyperlocal targeting context? Take, for example, a typical employee who spends maybe 9 – 10 hours a day in location X (at work) and the rest of the day in location Y, some 20 miles distance from X.

Dick O’Hare: Industry research confirms that 80% of consumer spending occurs within 20 miles from home.  Local Yokel Media is all about focusing on those 20 miles for local businesses to communicate their ad message only to the communities within a short drive to their location or within their service area.  That said, from your question above, we mainly focus on where these audiences live (and work if work is within a close proximity).  We see different media consumption patterns with local media vs., say business media.  For example, we often see an increase in ad reception on the weekends when there is more leisure time to consume local media.

Otilia Otlacan: What other targeting options are available through LYM? Any word of advice for those tempted to go about setting targeting options in the same way they’d do it in a standard ad network that supports geotargeting?

Dick O’Hare: Our main targeting offering is hyperlocal targeting, but we also offer behavioral, demographic, zip code targeting, mobile and search engine marketing for advertisers looking for a broader solution.  As far as geotargeting through standard ad networks, that has rapidly become a commodity.  Local Yokel Media is aggregating highly valuable “geo-contextual” ad inventory that can perform better and is truly unique.  We are aggregating, organizing and monetizing this level of inventory and look to become the market specialist in hyperlocal ad inventory monetization.

Otilia Otlacan: I understand that LYM is already in use by a good number of publishers. What was their #1 feature request during the trial period?

Dick O’Hare: Publishers are looking for innovative ways to monetize their inventory to appropriate advertiser sets at more realistic, premium price points.  We are starting to deliver this for our early publishers and also offer them full control and transparency on the direct advertisers Local Yokel Media supplies to them.

Otilia Otlacan: What post-launch plans do you have for LYM? Is it possible that we will get to see it working with non-US publishers and advertisers?

Dick O’Hare: Our plan is to continue to scale LYM across the US market and build a rich, robust marketplace consisting of hyperlocal ad inventory in the “nooks and crannies” of the US DMA’s with thousands of advertisers leveraging this off one platform.  The US market will be our focus for the immediate future.

About Dick O’Hare
Dick O’Hare has been a digital media industry veteran for the past fourteen years with DoubleClick, AOL and Yahoo.  At Yahoo, Dick created and managed the Global Strategic Partnerships and Emerging Marketing Channels team to forge strategic partnerships with Yahoo’s top 25 global clients.  In addition, Dick and his team developed and executed monetization strategies for video, mobile and social media.

Prior to Yahoo, Dick was with AOL Media Networks where he managed sales and account management teams across six US sales regions.  Before joining AOL, Dick served as General Manager of the Business and Technology Network within  DoubleClick’s media business.

Dick also has over ten years of experience in the offline media industry at CMP Media.  While there, he was Publisher of Home PC Magazine, leading it to the #1 position in its category.  During his tenure, CMP Media went public and  later was sold to United News and Media.

Dick holds a BA in Economics from the College of the Holy Cross and resides in New Canaan, CT his wife Claire and three children.

Unique Cartographic Technology Brings Media Buying Efficiency and Scale to Target-Defined Local Service Areas

New York – Digital media industry veteran Dick O’Hare today launches Local Yokel Media (LYM) the Internet’s first hyperlocal online ad marketplace specializing in monetizing hyperlocal ad impressions.  For the first time in the Internet’s history, any local or national business serving a defined geography can target audiences in their immediate service areas on local online content communities have come to know and trust.

“We have seen a seismic shift in traditional local media over the past five years,” says Mr. O’Hare, Local Yokel Media’s CEO and Founder.  “Hyperlocal content, specifically, community- level content being produced both by individuals and institutions, has proliferated as local coverage by more traditional, offline local media organizations has waned.  It is said that 80% of consumer spending happens within 20 miles of home. This presents a compelling ad targeting opportunity for local, regional and national brands looking to target extremely tight geographies.  We have found this level of local contextual relevance drives ad performance.  In some instances, it can even outperform search engine marketing.”

The hyperlocal market segment has been growing rapidly over the last few years with market entrants such as AOL’s Patch, Gannet, Post Local and others.  Where many of these players are focusing on content creation, LYM’s unique market position is that of monetization specialist.

“Genuine local targeting and ad creative can produce dramatic response-rate improvements for marketers,” says Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence and Opus Research. “There are billions of dollars in the local market; this is a giant opportunity that has been waiting for a scalable platform and approach.”

“Hyperlocal is a growing market with lots of companies coming into that space. Dick has the right background and perspective to help these new niche sites generate ad revenue while at the same time making it painless for national and local marketers to zero in on their customers where they live and work,” says Wenda Harris Millard, President and COO of Media Link, a leading media advisory firm.

With its proprietary ad serving platform and unique, cartographic technology, LYM aggregates hyperlocal websites (websites whose content address a specific community), local blogs and websites of community newspapers, organizes them by zip code and makes them easy to target.  Local Yokel Media’s internal campaign data show this level of “geo-contextual” ad targeting (targeting down to the community level in contextually relevant content) drives ad receptivity and overall ad performance.  This now can be done from one platform.

LYM’s unique value proposition lies in its ability to deliver very granular, local ad campaigns at scale while offering professionally created ad templates advertisers can leverage for optimal results.  These campaigns can be executed at a small fraction of the cost of more traditional offline local marketing efforts like direct mail.

Early ad campaigns confirm that consumers are more receptive to ads that target their specific needs in their own local community, thus improving overall ad performance.  By contrast, a consumer targeted by zip code, a traditional big-media approach, might have to drive 50 or 60 miles to reach an advertiser’s storefront.

“The results we received from our campaign with Local Yokel Media were multiple times what we previously saw from our offline ad campaigns, ” says Dan Hageney, Founder of Connecticut Green Organic Lawn Care Company serving Fairfield County, CT.

More than 60 publishers have signed up for LYM’s ad marketplace and many are already seeing positive results.  “Local Yokel Media has done a terrific job in delivering curated ads with more premium revenue to our local websites,”  says Marty Hersam, COO at Connecticut’s Hersam Acorn Newspapers. “We look forward to working more closely with them to capture more local advertisers looking to target the communities we serve.”

Dick O’Hare, a digital media industry veteran for the past 15 years holding senior management positions at DoubleClick, AOL Media Networks and Yahoo, Inc. has assembled a seasoned digital media team with decades of experience from such industry stalwarts as Yahoo, AOL, DoubleClick, iVillage and Quigo.  The LYM team is committed to making geographically targeted local advertising easier on both the local advertisers and publishers.

“Local Yokel Media is poised to finally crack the code of making local advertising work online.  Dick is one of the smartest online execs I’ve ever met and his hyperlocal ad strategy is certain to be successful,” says Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, former founder of Real Media and TACODA and an investor in LYM.

Local Yokel Media (http://www.localyokelmedia.com) the Internet’s first hyperlocal online ad marketplace specializing in monetizing hyperlocal ad impressions has raised angel funding from seasoned industry veterans like Mr. Morgan, Joe Apprendi, CEO and Founder of Collective Media and Joe Zawadski, CEO and Founder of Media Math.

Yodle now boasts 21,000 clients and a full suite of local online marketing products.

New York, NY – Yodle, a leader in local online marketing, announced it has completed a transaction to acquire ProfitFuel, Inc.  ProfitFuel, based in Austin, TX, is the largest and fastest growing provider of local search engine optimization (SEO) services to small businesses across the United States.  With over 11,000 clients, ProfitFuel has achieved breakout growth serving small businesses that have a moderate marketing budget.  Outrank, the company’s main service, is designed to generate inbound phone calls and emails cost effectively by delivering prominent rankings on top search engines for clients.

Historically, Yodle has focused its local online marketing services on small business advertisers that typically spend larger budgets of $1,000+ monthly and national brand advertisers; Franchise, Multi-location, and Manufacturer/Dealer organizations that advertise locally across hundreds of locations.  With the acquisition of ProfitFuel, Yodle now adds a product and a sales force capable of serving a much broader set of clients who have smaller marketing budgets, but who still want the accountability of measuring their marketing performance.

“With ProfitFuel, Yodle is doubling down on its approach of providing a clear ROI to the local advertiser, delivered through a combined 450 person sales and client service team,” said Yodle CEO Court Cunningham.  “ProfitFuel’s dedication to customer results and sales excellence made it a natural fit with Yodle.  I look forward to bringing Yodle’s expanded suite of SEM, SEO, Social and Display marketing products to market more quickly in collaboration with ProfitFuel’s world class team.”

David Rubin, previously CEO of ProfitFuel, will join Yodle as SVP of Sales. Mr. Rubin has a proven 20 year track record as a successful CEO and sales leader in the technology space.   Prior to ProfitFuel, Mr. Rubin was founder and CEO of HomeCity, an online real estate brokerage that pioneered utilizing web-based content to acquire clients. Before founding HomeCity, David held leadership positions at various companies including Intraware as Vice President of New Services Development, BITSource as founder and CEO and Computize as National Sales Director.

“We felt Yodle was the perfect choice to maximize our future potential for our clients, employees and shareholders,” said Mr. Rubin.  “We spoke to many companies in the industry and felt that Yodle offered the best set of products, highest caliber talent and the most comprehensive vision to outperform the competition and transform this industry for many years to come.”

Founded in 2000, ProfitFuel has 220 employees and is consistently recognized as one of the best places to work by multiple sources, including Austin Business Journal and Texas Monthly.  Yodle will now boast a 300-person sales force and many more talented staffers across marketing operations, client services and corporate departments.

Yodle plans to grow ProfitFuel’s Austin, TX office, making it a major hub, and to fully integrate the company’s infrastructure and technology by year’s end.

About Yodle: Yodle, a leader in local online marketing and named #35 on the INC 500 List of fastest growing private companies in the U.S., connects thousands of local businesses with consumers in a process so simple and cost-effective that business owners can’t imagine any other way to advertise. Yodle has developed an integrated approach to signing up and serving local businesses that are transitioning their marketing budgets online. Yodle is headquartered in New York, NY.

Google and ReachLocal Sign First-of-its-Kind Global AdWords™ Agreement to Accelerate the Delivery of Google’s AdWords Advertising Program to Small-and Medium-Sized Businesses Around the World

WOODLAND HILLS, Calif. – ReachLocal, Inc. (NASDAQ:RLOC), a leader in local online marketing solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Google that designates ReachLocal as a global premier Google AdWords™ partner.

The strategic partnership is intended to accelerate the delivery of Google’s AdWords advertising program to local businesses internationally by combining ReachLocal’s feet-on-the-street sales model and SMB-focused search engine marketing platform with Google’s existing worldwide AdWords™ marketing and partnership support organizations. The partnership is designed to drive both growth in existing markets and expansion into new international markets over the next three years. ReachLocal already has a presence in four international markets, including Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and Germany.

“This new partnership builds on a long-standing relationship ReachLocal has had with Google throughout our expansion into 50 local markets over the last seven years,” said Zorik Gordon, co-founder and CEO of ReachLocal. “International markets now represent more than 20 percent of ReachLocal’s business, and accelerating our international growth is a strategic priority for us. We strongly believe that having the support and backing of Google’s global AdWords team and brand, together with financial incentives, will be a significant contributor as we execute against that strategy.”

“Since 2004, ReachLocal and Google have worked together to drive the adoption of Google AdWords to SMBs in both domestic and international markets,” said Todd Rowe, Google’s Head of Global Channel Sales. “We believe this partnership will give SMBs around the world an additional opportunity to use Google AdWords to drive awareness and new business. Our partners are carefully vetted for their ability to effectively serve SMBs. They provide professional, full service AdWords account management, from account setup and activation to ongoing campaign monitoring, optimization, and quality customer support.”

ReachSearch™, ReachLocal’s proprietary search engine marketing solution, allows SMBs to drive customer leads from Google and other search engines to their phone with a scalable, automated and transparent Internet advertising platform. ReachLocal’s international feet-on-the-street sales force of Internet Marketing Consultants (IMCs) helps educate and support SMBs in their online marketing efforts.

Google AdWords is a cost effective, efficient way for businesses of all sizes to advertise online by delivering relevant ads when users search for specific products and services on Google properties and/or the Google Display Network. With Google AdWords, advertisers can find new customers online and better connect with them at the precise moment they are searching for specific products and services on their desktop or mobile devices. Google Display Network is comprised of hundreds of thousands of high quality websites and allows advertisers to choose how to communicate their marketing message using text, video and image ads.

About ReachLocal

ReachLocal, Inc.’s (NASDAQ: RLOC) mission is to help small- and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) acquire, maintain and retain customers via the Internet. ReachLocal offers a comprehensive suite of online marketing solutions, including search engine marketing (ReachSearch™), Web presence (ReachCast™), display advertising (ReachDisplay™) and remarketing, online marketing analytics (TotalTrack®), and our out-of-the-box assisted chat service (TotalLiveChat™), each targeted to the SMB market. ReachLocal delivers this suite of services to SMBs through a combination of its proprietary technology platform and its direct, “feet-on-the-street” sales force of Internet Marketing Consultants and select third party agencies and resellers. Bizzy™, a personalized local business recommendation engine, and DealOn™, a deal commerce company, are wholly owned subsidiaries of ReachLocal. ReachLocal is headquartered in Woodland Hills, CA, with offices throughout North America and in Australia, the United Kingdom and Germany.

Facebook becomes major player in PPC campaigns; Mobile internet, local search are most significant trends impacting industry

WAKEFIELD, Mass. – SEMPO announced results of its 2011 State of Search Marketing Report. With over 900 companies and agencies participating in the global online survey conducted by Econsultancy, the report estimates that the North American search marketing industry will grow by 16% in 2011 to a value of $19.3B, up from $16.6B in 2010.

A significant percentage of companies are now using Facebook. Just under half of respondents say they use Facebook for pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns – 47% in North America and 45% outside the US and Canada. The rising popularity of Facebook is even more apparent within agencies. Nearly three quarters of North American agencies (74%) and two thirds of those outside the U.S. and Canada (69%) say their clients use Facebook.

The rise of the mobile internet is the trend which is having the most impact on search marketing, according to the survey. Local search is the next most significant trend, yet primarily from the perspective of agencies. Respondents also indicated the growing importance of behavioral targeting. The number of companies doing SEO, paid search and social media in-house, has decreased, with more marketers seeking help from service providers.

“The healthy growth reported for the industry in 2011—surpassing the 14% growth in 2010—is gratifying,” commented SEMPO president Chris Boggs. “The industry is evolving to encompass much more than the search engines. The increasing role of social media is re-shaping the industry in surprising ways.”

Other top findings include:

Mobile internet

* 40% of company respondents said that the growth of the mobile internet was “highly significant”, an increase from 26% last year. A further 39% said it was “significant”.
* Agencies are feeling the impact of the mobile internet even more strongly, with almost half of supply-side respondents (47%) describing its impact as highly significant.

Local search

* The next most important trend is local search, according to agencies. Forty-three percent (43%) of supply-side respondents said this was highly significant. A further 41% say that it is significant. According to agencies, 34% of client search budget is spent on local PPC advertising (i.e. at a regional, city or sub-market level).
* Client-side advertisers are not yet affected by local search as much as their agency counterparts. Only 26% of company respondents say that the impact of local search has been highly significant. Local, on average, represents just under a quarter (23%) of client-side search budget, which is significantly less than the agency average (34% of client budget).

Use of social networks, including Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn

* Beyond PPC, the percentage of companies using Facebook more broadly for promoting themselves now stands at 84%, up from 73% last year.
* Three quarters of companies (75%) use Twitter to promote their companies or brands, while 52% use business networking site LinkedIn. More than a quarter of North American companies now run PPC campaigns on LinkedIn.

More companies outsourcing SEO, paid search and social media

* Only 44% of companies are now carrying out search engine optimization in-house, compared to 51% last year.
* Only 38% of companies are doing paid search marketing in-house compared to 47% last year.
* Only 55% are doing social media marketing in-house, compared to 62% last year.

Behavioral targeting

* The proportion of company respondents who say that behavioral targeting is highly significant or significant now stands at 78%, up from 68% last year.

This year’s annual SEMPO study – now in its seventh year – is an aggregation of information provided by organizations from 66 different countries, from marketers across a range of business sectors and types of agency.

“Once again the SEMPO survey has collected a rich set of data that provides valuable industry perspective and insights as seen through the eyes and dollar investments of both advertisers and agencies,” said Marc Engelsman, VP Client Programs and Services at Digital Brand Expressions and the lead for this SEMPO initiative. “All marketers, not just search marketers, should want to leverage this information as they look to improve the performance of their digital engagements.”

“A mature industry maintains a balance between today and tomorrow,” said Stefan Tornquist, U.S. Research Director at Econsultancy. “Search engine marketers have learned how to roll with algorithm shifts and price increases and are constantly improving their efficiency. At the same time, they’re taking the time to focus on the emerging opportunities where search, social and mobile meet.”

The report is based on an online survey, conducted in February and March 2011, which SEMPO and Econsultancy promoted to their respective members and to search marketing professionals. A complimentary copy of the report is provided to SEMPO members and those who participated in the survey. A total of 920 total respondents from 66 countries took part, including 325 advertisers and 595 agencies or consultants conducting search marketing on behalf of clients.

To obtain a copy of the SEMPO 2011 State of Search Marketing report, visit: http://econsultancy.com/reports/sempo-state-of-search

About Econsultancy

Econsultancy is a community where the world’s digital marketing and e-commerce professionals meet to sharpen their strategy, source suppliers, get quick answers, compare notes, help each other out and discover how to do everything better online. It was launched in 1999 and since then has grown to a dominant position in the digital marketing industry with more than 100,000 members worldwide. Its website and blog attracts more than 300,000 unique users per month and its range of training courses and conferences are attended by more than 5,000 marketers every year. For more information, visit http://econsultancy.com or follow @econsultancy on Twitter.

About SEMPO

SEMPO is a global non-profit organization serving the search marketing industry and marketing professionals engaged in it. Its purpose is to provide a foundation for industry growth through building stronger relationships, fostering awareness, providing education, promoting the industry, generating research and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing. SEMPO includes thousands of professionals across 50 countries. The organization’s mission is to represent the common interests of companies and consultants worldwide and provide them with a voice in the marketplace. SEMPO’s education and outreach initiatives are funded in part by Google, American Express Open SearchManager, and Baidu, and supported through partnerships with SMX, SES, OMS, and MediaPost. For more information or to join the organization, visit http://www.SEMPO.org.

Enabling Retailers and Brands to Drive In-Store Sales and Measure Actual Sales Lifts

CARY, N.C. & MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – MaxPoint, the leading digital retail advertising platform, and SymphonyIRI Group, Inc. announced that they are partnering to deliver a first-of-its-kind digital advertising solution to retailers and brands that seek to drive in-store purchases. This solution utilizes a unique combination of rich point-of-sale (POS) data, geographic precision, and advanced data mining techniques to allow digital advertisers using MaxPoint’s neighborhood-level solution find their most qualified audience and measure the effectiveness of their campaigns through SymphonyIRI’s independent post campaign return-on-investment (ROI) analysis. For the first time, this enables retailers and brands to measure the link between digital advertising and actual incremental product sales in retail locations.

“The agreement between SymphonyIRI and MaxPoint is a significant step forward; it is the first time marketers can generate in-store demand using digital advertising for specific retail locations, measure their campaign’s impact and give marketers the confidence to continually optimize and grow their digital ad spend,” said Joe Epperson, CEO of MaxPoint. “Furthermore, this solution leverages MaxPoint’s easy-to-use platform to provide store level targeting on a national scale.”

SymphonyIRI Group is widely known as the world’s leading innovative partner that helps clients transform insights into impact at every level of their organization — across sales, marketing, merchandising, category and brand management, as well as shopper marketing — to achieve high performance and growth.

“As digital media captures an increasingly larger share of consumers’ time and attention, retail targeted digital advertising is set to play in what was traditionally the domain of local radio and free-standing inserts (FSIs),” said Srishti Gupta, executive vice president, Emerging Media Solutions, SymphonyIRI Group. “SymphonyIRI and Maxpoint’s solution can help retailers and brands not only drive in-store sales but also measure and optimize such efforts. Understanding the return on these initiatives provides marketers the much needed tools to leverage the speed and precision of digital.”

For more information about MaxPoint’s digital retail advertising platform and how to incorporate it into your retail or brand’s digital campaign, visit MaxPoint at www.maxpointinteractive.com.

About SymphonyIRI Group, Inc.

SymphonyIRI Group, formerly named Information Resources, Inc. (“IRI”), is the global leader in innovative solutions and services for driving revenue and profit growth in CPG, retail and healthcare companies. SymphonyIRI offers two families of solutions: Core IRI solutions for market measurement and Symphony Advantage solutions for enabling new growth opportunities in marketing, sales, shopper marketing and category management. SymphonyIRI solutions uniquely combine content, analytics and technology to deliver maximum impact. SymphonyIRI helps companies create, plan and execute forward-looking, shopper-centric strategies across every level of the organization. For more information, visit http://www.SymphonyIRI.com.

About MaxPoint Interactive

MaxPoint, the leading digital retail advertising platform, enables retailers and brands to execute highly efficient and effective digital advertising that drives in-store sales. Our proprietary and customizable technology uniquely combines both demographic and point of sale datasets to pinpoint your qualified customers who are both able and interested in purchasing your product. MaxPoint’s Digital Zip™ is two times more precise than traditional zip codes, offering accurate neighborhood-level targeting with national scalability and reach. Founded in 2007, MaxPoint is headquartered in Cary, NC, with offices in New York City and Austin, TX. Learn how our easy-to-use platform can generate brand safe, rapid ROI for you, by visiting www.maxpointinteractive.com.

NEW YORK – Yodle, a leader in local online advertising, announced the launch of its full-service online display advertising product, Yodle Display. Designed with the specific needs of Franchises and multi-location businesses in mind, Yodle Display is the perfect complement to Yodle’s Sponsored and Organic search products.

Yodle Display targets and optimizes display ad placements in a unique manner. First, it targets the following:

- sites that have content related to the advertiser’s specific service (contextual targeting)
- consumers who previously visited the advertiser’s website (re-targeting).

Then, Yodle Display uses a proprietary algorithm that tracks and optimizes ad placement based on leads, spending more of the budget where advertisers can expect better results. This unique approach delivers high impact branding that is confirmed by leads tracked in our powerful reporting platform.

“The conventional wisdom is that online display advertising is strictly for branding and cannot also deliver quantifiable business results,” said Yodle CEO Court Cunningham. “We decided to challenge that notion by building a product that delivers both targeted branding and measurable leads – using advanced optimization techniques that drive the best possible return on investment for our clients.”

Yodle Display addresses many of the complexities inherent to franchises and multi-location businesses – including supporting multiple billing parties, targeting dense regions of franchisee locations for the same Franchisor account, and directing leads to a specific local franchisee. Additionally, Yodle Display provides a central management and reporting system that even the largest Franchisors can use to effectively monitor and coordinate the advertising campaign of each local franchisee.

“We are very excited to launch Yodle Display for the Franchise community,” said Vice President of National Accounts and Co-Founder John Berkowitz. “Working with premier franchisors over the last several years like Two Men and a Truck and Meineke, we learned quickly that franchise systems have very unique needs and challenges. From feature definition to our premium customer service, we feel Yodle Display is the most custom Franchise display offering on the market.”

Research also shows that display advertising drives improved performance for paid and organic search marketing, which Yodle offers through their Yodle Sponsored and Yodle Organic products, respectively. Specifically, results have shown display advertising drives more searches for a company’s brand terms, increased click-thru rates on search engine results pages and improved conversions on websites and landing pages.

Yodle, a leader in local online advertising and named #35 on the INC 500 List of fastest growing private companies in the U.S., connects thousands of local businesses with consumers in a process so simple and cost-effective that business owners can’t imagine any other way to advertise. Yodle has developed an integrated approach to signing up and serving local businesses that are transitioning their marketing budgets online. Yodle is headquartered in New York, NY with a presence in 25 major cities across the United States.

Social Media World Forum 2011
LONDON – With the trend in location based marketing predicted to take off around the globe in 2011, this year’s Social Media World Forum Europe is placing the trend at the heart of its agenda.

The increasing spread of ever more sophisticated smartphone handsets, combined with the continuing development of apps powered by geolocation technology, like that from companies like Navteq, is crucial to this developing trend, providing a whole new angle of relevance for marketers and brands.

Navteq, one of the leading providers of location data for developers, said:

“Hyper-local mobile advertising can target consumers in a non-intrusive way when they are near a merchant’s location and then guide them to the front door. This effectively transforms mobile into a direct response channel for retail, restaurants, cinemas, petrol stations, and any business that benefits from getting consumers in the door.”

Savvy marketers are now using location-based technology to reach potential customers in the immediate vicinity. Business listings on services like Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt, Brightkite, and Google Places are set to become crucial weapons in the marketing arsenal as the industry waits for this trend to explode across the world.

The rise of social check-in apps has added a new dimension to the trend, using reward, word of mouth recommendation and viral to directly influence peoples’ purchasing behavior. They allow businesses to interact directly with customers, creating communities with an added level of engagement based in real-world behaviours.

Josh Williams, CEO and founder, Gowalla will be joining other industry leaders at the Social Media World Forum Europe 2011 in London on 29-30 March, discussing the latest developments in location-based marketing.

About Social Media World Forum Europe 2011:
29-39 March 2011, London, Olympia
www.socialmedia-forum.com/europe/

Location marketing forms just part of a varied programme around social media-based, marketing, B2B, mobile, gaming, virtual currencies and much more. Europe’s biggest social media event will be attended by marketers, brands, businesses, telecoms professionals and social media experts.

The event is part of a series of five international events spanning Africa, Asia, the Middle East and America. For more information see: www.socialmedia-forum.com/

Register to attend online at http://www.socialmedia-forum.com/europe/register/workshop-pass
Fax on +44 (0) 117 946 8871
Telephone +44 (0) 117 946 8870

Platform manages digital signage systems worldwide

Digital Signage Expo 2011
SAN FRANCISCO – MARSYS (www.marsys.com) introduced the MARSYS Advanced Digital Media Platform, the premier solution enabling advanced digital media management and delivery, proof-of-play monitoring and unified analytics across multiple digital media networks via a single integrated platform.

The MARSYS Advanced Digital Media Platform both simplifies and expands the capabilities of advertisers and media planners to create national, regional and hyper-local ad campaigns by providing a single integrated platform that provides interconnectivity to multiple ad network platforms. Advanced venue profiling, demographic research capabilities and the ability to import existing research provide a highly flexible platform designed to meet the growing needs of advertisers for more precise messaging. The platform performs analysis of user interaction at the point of play, providing an unprecedented amount of data to allow media planners to optimize messaging, control costs and mitigate risks.

Additionally, hyper-local campaigns are enabled by the platform, wherein a single advertisement is day-parted across multiple ad network screens at different locations within a single geographic area for maximum impact.

“The launch of this platform is a benchmark event for the digital signage industry,” said Rick Maharaj, CTO of MARSYS. “A single, unified platform that provides quality data and analytics, massive ad network integration and content management capabilities – with an interface that appeals to both businesses and end users – will intelligently expand the reach of media buyers to more potential customers than ever before. These services are the realization of years of work at MARSYS, and we are proud to unveil the MARSYS Advanced Digital Media Platform to the world.”

Created using a mixture of new and existing MARSYS technologies and the worldwide infrastructure supporting the existing MARSYS global service portfolio, the platform operates from fifty-plus points of presence in twenty-two countries. The platform is initially available for MARSYS Media Gateway products—a line of digital signage systems developed jointly with IBASE Technology.

The MARSYS Digital Platform will be available for viewing at the IBASE booth (#1203) at the Digital Signage Expo in Las Vegas from February 22-24, 2011.

About MARSYS

MARSYS is a global provider of advanced IT business solutions, with 29 years of service to the global Fortune 500 and a robust technology infrastructure on five continents. MARSYS helps companies enable, deliver, and optimize IT business services.

New study proves the power of hyperlocal online ad targeting in driving sales

SUNNYVALE, Calif. – Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO) announced the launch of Yahoo! AdLabs, a group focused on providing scientific leadership to the industry and accelerating innovation in digital advertising products through Yahoo! Labs (http://labs.yahoo.com/), one of the world’s premier industrial research organizations.

“Yahoo! Labs has been instrumental in developing Yahoo!’s advertising products, laying a foundation of scientific research and innovative data analysis, supporting everything from the world’s most advanced display advertising marketplace to the world’s most effective ad targeting capabilities,” said Dr. Prabhakar Raghavan, Yahoo!’s chief scientist and head of Yahoo! Labs. “AdLabs will build on this success and break new ground in combining scientific rigor with a deep understanding of the practical needs of marketers.”

Since its founding in 2005, Yahoo! Labs has produced powerful studies on online advertising, created the new scientific discipline of Computational Advertising, and generated numerous insights into consumer behavior and advertising metrics (see addendum for a sample of recent projects).

With the launch of AdLabs, Yahoo! also released the latest results of its breakthrough, multi-part study of online advertising in the retail industry, that uses a controlled experiment conducted at unprecedented scale to quantify the effects of one of the most important new levers available to online marketers in 2011, hyperlocal ad targeting. The results included:

- Hyperlocal targeting of a retail display campaign generated more than five times return-on-ad-spend, measured by sales lift at the retailer.
- 75% of the total return in this phase of the study was generated by in-store purchases.
- Customers who live within two miles of one of the retailer’s stores represented 10.6% of the audience seeing the ads, but generated 56% of the revenue.
- Return-on-ad-spend was four times the spend for customers living within five miles of a store, and 21 times the spend for customers living within two miles of a store.

“Successful campaigns change perceptions about brands and increase sales. Marketers need new, breakthrough, scientifically-tested methodologies to drive these important metrics,” said Ken Mallon, vice president and head of Yahoo! AdLabs. “Yahoo! has the scale to measure the impact of many campaigns and the breadth of expertise to produce the new models and innovations that will move the digital advertising industry forward.”

“As media models fragment, so too do the models for understanding their effectiveness. At the same time, with more people doing more online and ad spend going up, marketers need answers more than ever,” said Ted McConnell, executive vice president, Advertising Research Foundation. “Yahoo!, with its diverse but integrated palette of options, provides a great Petri dish for experimenting with new measures. I, for one, am delighted that Yahoo! is taking this challenge head on, and I feel certain the entire industry will benefit.”

For more information on Yahoo! AdLabs, please visit the Yahoo! Advertising blog (http://www.yadvertisingblog.com/blog/).

At Yahoo! Labs Winter Science Week on February 1-4, 2011, Yahoo! gathered the company’s leading scientists to examine the most important trends and questions about the future of the Web. Research at the event showcased the company’s expertise in the field of online marketing and advertising – most notably in Yahoo!’s ability to rigorously measure and quantify the effects of advertising.

Highlighted topics include:

Location, Location, Location: Understanding the Effectiveness of Online Advertising in Driving In-Store Retail Sales – Using a clinical trial-like methodology never before conducted at true Internet scale (more than 3 million users), this multi-part, ongoing study quantifies the return on investment of online advertising campaigns. The most recent results focused on the impact of hyperlocal targeting on in-store and online sales, finding that hyperlocal targeting of a retail display campaign generated more than five times return-on-ad-spend, with 75% of the total return generated by in-store purchases.

Birds of a Feather, Shop Together – Measuring the extent to which friends’ behaviors predicts your own, this study found that in several consumer domains the effect is substantial, complementing traditional demographic and behavioral predictors.

Reach, Frequency, and Relevance – This study examined the impact of frequency, or number of times someone is exposed to an ad, on user engagement. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the experiment, conducted on the Yahoo! homepage, found that individuals are just as likely to click on the 20th impression as they would the first impression.

The Demographics of Web Surfing – This project examined the demographic composition of the top 100,000 domains on the Web, finding numerous prominent sites to have highly homogeneous audiences, which allowed researchers to uncover insights into consumer behavior.

Ad Relevance and Context – This eye-tracking study revealed that the relationship between editorial content on a webpage and the content of an advertisement has a direct effect on the amount of time a person spends looking at an advertisement. Further, when the editorial and advertising content are related, ad recall also increased.

Who Searches for What and How? – In a paper to be released at the 2011 WSDM Conference in Hong Kong, Yahoo! Labs conducted an in-depth segmentation analysis of an anonymous query log of 2.3 million Yahoo! users to evaluate and identify online search behavior in terms of who users might be (demographics), what they search for (query topics), and how they search (session analysis). A sampling of the full results revealed that:
- People with higher educational levels made fewer navigational queries.
- Searches related to actors and actresses were about three times higher in L.A. than in any other region.
- San Francisco had the highest percentage of travel queries out of any region.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) is an innovative technology company that operates the largest digital media, content, and communications business in the world. Yahoo! keeps more than half a billion consumers worldwide connected to what matters to them most, and delivers powerful audience solutions to advertisers through its unique combination of Science + Art + Scale. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.com) or the company’s blog, Yodel Anecdotal (yodel.yahoo.com).

Adility Also Announces Agreements with Leading “White Label” Companies for Further Syndication of its Pipeline of Local Deals

SAN FRANCISCO – Adility Inc., the developer of a new location-based advertising platform for retail merchants, announced a number of new publisher partnerships, including AOL. AOL will have access to Adility’s growing feed of digital offers from thousands of local retail merchants across the U.S. and it will distribute select offers from Adility through its site www.wow.com.

In addition to AOL, Adility announced additional new media publishers and “white label” publishers. New media publishers in Adility’s network include CBS Interactive, DailyDealster, Intelius, One Big Planet and Interactive One. When combined with previous publishers, such as Coupons.com, Adility’s media publisher network now reaches more than 80 million consumers.

Adility provides them with compelling and relevant local content for their audiences, as well as an easy platform for monetization from the revenue share generated by each offer transaction. Adility’s new “white label” publishers that operate online digital deals for companies include NimbleCommerce and ChompOn.

“Adility has been a great partner to work with on our strategy,” said Joyce Cruickshank, vice president of AOL Inc. Paid Services. “In every case they have leaned in and delivered to us on what we have requested. Everyone we work with shows the highest levels of professionalism and commitment to the partnership. We look forward to continuing the partnership with the same results and tenor.”

“DailyDealster features the best in online discounted offers from leading national retailers, but we have never been able to unlock the largest market opportunity for online deals – those being offered by local retailers like a nearby restaurant, salon or dry cleaner,” said Lou Morales, CEO of DailyDealster. “With its extensive field sales operation that works directly with local merchants, Adility can deliver these local deals to us, providing DailyDealster with a much more comprehensive and locally relevant experience for our members.”

Adility Merchant Platform

Adility is the only business-to-business company that gives local retail merchants the greatest number of choices to increase sales by providing an all-in-one location-based advertising platform to create and manage digital deals and coupons. It distributes these offers through a vast aggregation of publishers (traditional publishers, mobile applications, social games, location-based services, etc.) as well as the merchants’ social network of customers. By providing local “feet on the street,” Adility helps retail merchants through the complex process of setting up digital deals.

Local retail merchants benefit from new customer acquisition as well as existing customer retention by controlling their offers in ways not possible through group buying sites and other channels. This includes the flexibility to create deals customized to a merchant’s specific business, spreading new business across longer periods of time, and controlling the duration of the promotion, the amount of times the offer runs, the number of units sold, and the number of customers the deal is offered to. With its vast experience in direct marketing, Adility reaches out directly to local retail merchants through its relationship with 350 local sales offices and over 5,000 sales representatives.

“Location-based offers are growing rapidly with the proliferation of mobile technology, but we have found that less than five percent of the more than 10 million local retail merchants in the U.S. are currently using this new marketing channel,” said Thomas Cornelius, co-founder and CEO of Adility. “Those that are using group buying and other self-service platforms have found that they have little control over the process and that they sometimes deliver unintended consequences. With an extensive sales force presence at the neighborhood level, Adility is able to reach out to the 95 percent of local retail merchants that are not participating in location-based offers and make it easy for them to learn about and implement this new marketing opportunity.”

Retail Merchant Testimonials

“Since Glamour Shots started using Adility, we have had great results,” said Mike Reiff, marketing manager for several Glamour Shots franchises. “Unlike other group buying sites, Adility delivers customers that will return even after they redeem the initial offer and Adility enables us to manage and control our offers in ways that are not a part of group buying sites, including capping the length of time an offer runs and limiting the number of customers or units sold. And the network of publishers Adility can push our deals to is unmatched.”

“Being able to run multiple daily deals at the same time was a great way to test what worked for getting new customers,” said Angie Fishman, manager of Operations at Interstate All Battery Center in Peoria, AZ. “We were able to directly compare results from our various deals, and then tailor our following offers accordingly. Adility makes the process fast and painless, and someone is always around to answer your questions.”

“Adility has helped to bring new business to my Salon in a steady and manageable way,” said Anna Asgharzadeh, owner of Ahn Skin and Beauty Salon in San Diego. “The deal creation process was easy and straightforward. They were able to run my deal within a few days of it being created, and I started getting my new customers shortly thereafter. I would definitely recommend their services!”

About Adility, Inc.

Adility is the only B-to-B company that gives local retail merchants the greatest number of choices to increase sales by providing a location-based advertising platform to create and manage digital coupons and deals. By distributing their offers over the Adility network of publishers (including traditional publishers, mobile applications, social games, location-based services and on their own websites and social media presence), local retail merchants benefit from new customer acquisition as well as existing customer retention, spreading new business across longer periods of time and maintaining maximum control of their digital offers. Publishers within Adility’s network benefit from the leading solution that aggregates local retail merchant deals and enables them to easily embed them into their site or application via an API. Adility is headquartered in San Francisco.

SAN FRANCISCO – Reach Media Group (RMG), a leading digital place-based media and entertainment company, and Harrah’s Entertainment, the casino and hotel operator, announced that they are launching a new place-based Hospitality Entertainment Network.

The new network will be one of the first of its kind within the space, breaking new ground in an aggressively expanding industry. This will be RMG’s sixth place-based video network and will consist of 50,000 screens in high-traffic, long dwell-time locations in Harrah’s Entertainment-owned hotels and casinos including Caesars Palace, Harrah’s, Horseshoe and Planet Hollywood resorts.

RMG will have the ad sales rights to represent the full network of screens outside the hotels, on gaming floors and in hotel rooms. RMG plans to manage, build and grow the network to 75,000 screens by the end of 2011.

“Advertisers now acknowledge the value of place-based video and the ability to target active consumers as a great complement to the marketing mix. By launching a new network in partnership with Harrah’s Entertainment, RMG delivers further expanded reach and an active audience base to marketers by providing them with the opportunity to tap into this highly-coveted segment,” said Garry McGuire, CEO RMG Networks

Harnessing interactive channels, the new network will also enable advertisers to further engage their target audiences by enhancing the consumer experience via geo-targetable mobile display ads, mobile coupons, online loyalty programs and touch screen systems.

”We’ve been very impressed with RMG’s expertise and record of success with a variety of consumer brands, and look forward to a mutually rewarding relationship,” said David Norton, senior vice president and chief marketing officer for Harrah’s Entertainment.

Advertising on RMG’s new network will begin running in early December 2010.

This announcement comes on the heels of a 14 month period of aggressive growth as RMG expanded to 190,000 screens reaching over 60M active monthly viewers. RMG’s five other place-based networks connect with consumers on their path to purchase in fitness centers, cafes, eateries, colleges, doctor’s offices, pharmacy locations, airplanes and taxis.

Juno Management Partners, a business development and transactional firm, served as an advisor to Harrah’s in the completion this relationship.

About Reach Media Group

Named on AdWeek Media’s 2010 OOH Hot List, RMG is a digital media company that owns, operates and powers place-based video networks that reach active consumers across multiple high-engagement media platforms. Traveler Entertainment, Fitness Entertainment, Point-of-Care, mtvU, NYTimes.com Today and Hospitality Entertainment networks engage 60 million highly desirable and elusive viewers every month, leveraging over 190,000 video screens nationwide. RMG is backed by National CineMedia, LLC (NCM), operator of the largest digital in cinema network in North America, and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB), a leading venture capital firm with a rich history of building entrepreneurial investments into successful enterprises. For more information, please visit www.RMGnetworks.com.

About Harrah’s Entertainment

Harrah’s Entertainment, Inc. is the world’s largest provider of branded casino entertainment. Since its beginning in Reno, Nevada more than 74 years ago, Harrah’s has grown through development of new properties, expansions and acquisitions, and now operates casinos on four continents. The company’s properties operate primarily under the Harrah’s®, Caesars® and Horseshoe® brand names. Harrah’s also owns the World Series of Poker® and a majority interest in the London Clubs International family of casinos. Harrah’s has recently completed installation of E-GuideTV, which carries in-room advertising space alongside real-time listings, at some of the company’s properties in Las Vegas. Harrah’s is focused on building loyalty and value with its customers through a unique combination of great service, excellent products, unsurpassed distribution, operational excellence and technology leadership. For more information, please visit www.harrahs.com.

- Highlights the Unrivaled Effectiveness of Local Television Advertising

- More than Doubles the Number of Spots Outlining the Strength and Value of Local Television Advertising and Provides Stations With Tool Kits to Create Targeted Hyper-Local Promotional Messages

IRVING, Texas – Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc. (Nasdaq: NXST) announced that based on a year of success, it is expanding its Company-wide informational and educational campaign, “101 Reasons TV Advertising Works.” The expansion more than doubles the number of spots available to its stations and provides them with full promotional tool kits to create custom, hyper-local targeted promotional messages featuring testimonials from clients describing the value they have garnered from local television advertising. The expanded on-air initiative reflects Nexstar’s commitment to developing innovative methods of highlighting the advantages and value of local television and its role as the most effective advertising medium for local businesses.

Originally launched in October 2009, Nexstar’s “101 Reasons TV Advertising Works” campaign included 39 corporate-produced, easily customizable promotional spots for the Company’s owned or managed television stations in 34 markets. Since introducing the campaign, Nexstar has generated consistent increases in new-to-television local direct billings and reported a 9.6% total increase in gross local revenues for the nine months ended June 30, 2010. In expanding the “101 Reasons TV Advertising Works” campaign, Nexstar is adding 42 spots which complement existing station on-air promotional platforms to inform and educate advertisers on local television as the most persuasive and influential medium with the highest consumer reach, and most time spent by consumers. Each of the 81 now available five-to-thirty-second spots are fully customizable so every Nexstar station can ensure that advertisers receive specific data that best showcases the strengths and value of local television advertising relative to other forms of media.

Perry A. Sook, Chairman, President and Chief Executive Officer of Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc., commented, “The success of our ‘101 Reasons TV Advertising Works’ campaign speaks for itself. Our stations are more effective than ever before in illustrating the benefits of local television as the advertising platform that consistently delivers the best results. Rolled out just a year ago, our forward thinking campaign clearly brings forth the compelling results and value of local television advertising. In doing so, we helped hundreds of local businesses offset the impact of the challenging economic climate by demonstrating how local television was the most effective method for companies to connect with local customers.”

According to research sourced by The Television Bureau of Advertising, television consistently reaches the most consumers with daily household viewing times across all demographics again attaining record levels at 8 hours and 21 minutes in 2009. Television advertising also continues to rank by wide margins as the most influential medium and the most persuasive medium (85.7% and 78.1%, respectively) based on surveys with adults 18+.

Mr. Sook concluded, “The initial success of this program has been impressive and our station personnel have taken an active role in expanding this initiative with 17 of the 42 new spots based on concepts submitted by our local stations. We’ve also taken the 2010 ‘101 Reasons’ campaign to the next level by providing stations with a full promotional tool kit with various wildlines complemented by the look of the main campaign. Stations can use this collateral material to create locally generated client testimonials showcasing the reasons television advertising works with their clients and we expect that these locally generated testimonials will complement the main campaign with an emphasis on hyper-localism.”

For more information about the “101 Reasons TV Advertising Works” campaign or for a complete list of all 81 vignettes, please visit www.nexstar.tv.

About Nexstar Broadcasting Group, Inc.

Nexstar Broadcasting Group currently owns, operates, programs or provides sales and other services to 62 television stations in 34 markets in the states of Illinois, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Montana, Texas, Pennsylvania, Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama, New York, Rhode Island, Utah and Florida. These stations are affiliates of NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, MyNetworkTV and The CW and reach approximately 13 million viewers or approximately 11.5% of all U.S. television households.

Go Daddy’s Ad Solution Gives Smaller Businesses ‘Big Time’ Internet Presence in 24 Hours

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. – Move over, Yellow Pages. Good riddance pricey online marketing. Go Daddy introduces AdSpace, a marketing product designed to help small businesses conquer online advertising without huge investments in time, money or technology. Instead of spending hours to create an effective online ad campaign, users can now hand over a few key pieces of information to Go Daddy’s Search Marketing Experts and be advertising on the Web’s largest stage within 24 hours.

According to a study by The Kelsey Group and ConStat, Inc., more than 70 percent of consumers today start with search engines when looking for a local business. One of the most coveted spots on the Internet is prominent placement on Google, but the “do it yourself” method of getting there can be somewhat overwhelming.

AdSpace offers the “do it for me” approach, and it’s easy. All business owners need to do is provide basic data about their services, then Go Daddy creates a website specifically designed to drive phone calls and generate e-mail inquiries from potential customers. Go Daddy’s team of search marketing experts then create a keyword-based local advertising campaign on Google’s search results page, linking back to the site.

Phone calls are literally recorded and e-mails captured in the AdSpace dashboard – to help users organize new contacts and measure their sales performance.

Just like most of Go Daddy’s services, AdSpace is available to customers for a fraction of what other providers charge. There are no set-up fees, and AdSpace can be used on a month-to-month basis.

“Building a business, in this economy, can be tough,” said Go Daddy CEO and Founder Bob Parsons. “AdSpace was designed for small businesses wanting to leverage the power of the Internet – businesses that know they need to advertise online, but don’t have big budgets or tech experts to feel comfortable taking financial risks.”

Frank Yaconis, owner of the Scottsdale Discover Hyundai dealership, is familiar with the ease and performance of AdSpace firsthand. While testing the product during its pilot phase, Yaconis saw a return on investment almost immediately.

“AdSpace is providing results for our dealership,” said Yaconis. “Within minutes of our ad campaign going live we were getting sales calls and emails from prospective buyers – the third call turned into a sale!”

The product can also be used to improve customer service. The AdSpace phone call-recording feature provided Yaconis the data he needed to conduct additional training with his employees.

“We can listen to our calls online, which has helped us improve the sales process for our staff,” Yaconis said. “Based on a review of our very first call, I improved our standard telephone greeting when we answer the phones.”

Raymond Boggs, a senior analyst with International Data Corporation (IDC) specializing in SMB research, identified the benefits of the ease of use and pricing structure of AdSpace.

“Many small businesses are still missing the boat when it comes to online promotion,” said Raymond Boggs, vice president of small/medium business research at IDC. “It can be complicated to establish and manage an effective online marketing effort, and also to measure results, but a resource like Go Daddy’s AdSpace brings advanced but affordable capabilities to even the smallest firms.”

AdSpace is backed by Go Daddy’s world-class 24/7 customer support.

To get started with an online advertising campaign for local business, visit http://www.GoDaddy.com/Business/Local-Advertising.aspx.

To learn how to build and grow your business online, visit www.GoDaddy.com.

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About The Go Daddy Group, Inc.

Go Daddy is a leading provider of services that enable individuals and businesses to establish, maintain and evolve an online presence. Go Daddy provides a variety of domain name registration plans and website design and hosting packages, as well as a broad array of on-demand services. These include products such as SSL Certificates, Domains by Proxy private registration, ecommerce website hosting, blog templates and blog software, podcast packages and online photo hosting. The Go Daddy Group has more than 43 million domain names under management. Go Daddy registers, renews or transfers a domain name every second. GoDaddy.com is the world’s largest Web hosting provider and is the world’s No. 1 domain name registrar according to Name Intelligence, Inc. During the first half of 2010, The Go Daddy Group registered more than one-third of all new domain names created in the top six generic top-level domains, or gTLDs, including .com, .net, .org, .info, .biz and .mobi.