Acxiom to be Acquired by Private Equity Firms – Marred by Insider Trading
Silver Lake Partners and ValueAct Capital Partners LP will buy out Acxiom Corporation (ACXM) for $ 3 billion. As you may be aware, Acxiom is one of the top yellow pages data aggregaters, assembling a nationwide database of business listings by compiling information they obtain from printed yellow pages books of all the major directory companies.
Unfortunately, Bloomberg reports that a lot of Acxiom options were abruptly and suspiciously traded on May 10th, six days prior to the announcement of the acquisition. The spike in trading in that security was ten times higher than average.
The SEC is now investigating, and it’s probably not going to be hard for them to determine if some employees acted on insider knowledge.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/21/2007
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Filed under: Yellow Pages Acxiom, Insider-Trading, Yellow Pages
Superpages Launches LocalServe Affiliate Program
I see that my former company, Idearc Media, finally launched the Superpages LocalServeSM Affiliate Program.
LocalServe was developed by one of the development teams reporting to me during the past year before I left, and it was quietly in beta release up until now.
This is a great way for local info sites and vertical industry-related sites to make money, and the content is perfectly compatible for those niche markets. Superpages has a very rich set of general listings and local search advertisers which can enhance the content of local and vertical sites, while also providing a good revenue stream.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/18/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Yellow Pages Affiliate Marketing, Affiliate-Programs, Local-Serve, LocalServe, superpages
Local Guides Beta Launch
Local Matters yesterday announced the launch of their new site, LocalGuides.com, which mashes up Local + Social + Vertical content and utilities. The site is really strong with some compelling features, so I’ve kicked the tires and have a few technical comments.
The press release they sent me contains the following quote from their CEO, Perry Evans:
“Consumers want more involvement with local information. While some progress has been made in a few entertainment categories, the search industry has failed to give consumers useful tools for personalized local information and opinions. LocalGuides.com fills this void by creating a relevant and engaging shared-consumer experience, while also helping local merchants find new ways to connect with their local audience. This is a big part of what has been missing in Local Search.�
The UI is beautifully clean and quite attractive. I can easily imagine that the simplicity and carefully local-oriented design would be readily adopted by users.
The conceptual format, which allows users to build out their personal local guides, is very, very strong. Just clicking into their “Explore Guides” link allows one to view custom local directories created by other users. One for Oxford, Mississippi immediately caught my eye, because it’s located very near where my grandmother used to live, and I’m quite familiar with the small town.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/17/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, Yellow Pages Local Search, Local-Guides, Local-Matters
Bill Gates Predicts Demise of Yellow Pages
Last week at the Microsoft Strategic Account Summit 2007, Bill Gates interacted with Microsoft’s Corporate VP and Chief Media Officer, Joanne Bradford in an interview/Q&A session, and he predicted that among those under 50, yellow pages usage would drop down to zero within five years!
Now, he was apparently speaking solely about the print yellow pages, but the statement still seemed a tad bit bearish, considering that Microsoft is partnered closely with my former company, Idearc Superpages.com, one of the largest yellow pages companies (print or otherwise) in the world, to license the yellow pages data and service for use in Microsoft’s Live Local Search, and for the MSN Yellow Pages.
Now, Gates isn’t alone in predicting the demise of printed directories, since many others have also foreseen their eventual extinction, including me. But I think that other analysts out there have stated terms more in the ten-year range. Even if the numbers of some directories are declining, I still note that usage and sales are still very strong, so I’d be inclined to expect that print YP will likely go on for longer than five years.
It could be even longer, if there’s some more revolutionary tech introduced, such as I earlier suggested in “Could Nanotechnology Save Print Yellow Pages?”
UPDATE: Don Dodge, Director of Business Development for Microsoft’s Emerging Business Team, also posted on his blog about the Summit, and he quoted a Seattle Times report which gave a further quote from Bill Gates about the yellow pages:
The traditional Yellow Pages are doomed as voice-activated Internet searches combined with on-screen interfaces on smart mobile devices get better and proliferate, Gates said. The company’s recent acquisition of voice-technology provider TellMe is accelerating the trend.
Dodge further states:
Microsoft’s recent acquisitions of MotionBridge and Screentonic, coupled with the acquisition of TellMe will support Gates vision of search and advertising on smart phones.
      Â
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 05/16/2007
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Filed under: Local Search, MSN Search, Yellow Pages Bill-Gates, Live-Search, MicroSoft, msn, superpages, Yellow Pages
Superpages Launches New Redesign
I noticed that my old company, Idearc Media, just launched a major new redesign today for their primary web property, Superpages.com:
Read on for a few of my comments about it.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/27/2007
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Filed under: Design, Local Search, Yellow Pages idearc, Local Search, superpages, Superpages.com, Yellow Pages
Superpages to Factor CTR into Ad Rankings
I noticed that Greg Sterling just reported over at Search Engine Land that Idearc Media’s Superpages is going to begin factoring in ad click-through-rates into the measures used for ranking ads on the vast networks of sites where Superpages content appears. I was aware of this plan prior to my departure from Superpages, and I think it’s one of the cooler things my old teammates are developing.
Naturally, this follows other major ad networks who do similar things. Google, for instance, has begun using quality scores to decide ad rankings and the pricing of the ads.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 04/26/2007
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Filed under: Advertising, Paid Search, Yellow Pages Ad-Rankings, Advertising, CTR, idearc, Idearc-Media, Pay-Per-Click, ppc, superpages, Superpages.com
Could Nanotechnology Save Print Yellow Pages?
Technological evolution continues to change our everyday lives, and the speed of changes over the last two decades has caused an acceleration of impacts to traditional forms of business. Nowhere is this more evident than in the impact to usage of printed yellow pages directories. Once the mainstay for locating businesses, many consumers now treat the books as doorstops or fireplace kindling.
The Yellow Pages Association‘s annual report and other research indicates that consumer usage of print directories is on the decline while usage of online yellow pages and local search are increasing. The main divergence of opinion seems to be in how long it will be before print dies completely – ten years, fifty years, or a century? Simba research indicates that profits of core yellow pages are down while independent publishers are increasing at double-digit rates, indicating that advertisers continue to see value in print YP exposure. Even though the print biz still has lots of money and usage, those who have watched tech trends during the Information Age know that transitions of this sort can often reach a tipping point rapidly, perhaps rendering print YP irrelevant at the closer end of the timeline estimates.
In all the rush to sound the death-knell for print most folks are looking upon it as merely a dinosaur, soon to die as a result of the meteor-strike of internet search technology. But, could there be another future in store for print directories?
I’ve been watching developments in a number of converging lines of technology for a while now, and I foresee another potential fate for the print directories: nanotechnology. Read on and I’ll explain.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/20/2007
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Filed under: Futurism, Local Search, Online Directories, Research and Development, Yellow Pages iyp, nanotech, nanotechnology, Online Directories, Online-Yellow-Pages, print-yellow-pages, Yellow Pages
Book Review: Getting The Most From Your Yellow Pages Advertising
Last year, I criticised a press release promoting a book by Barry Maher titled “Getting the Most from Your Yellow Pages Advertising, saying the press release was self-serving and irresponsible. I disparaged Maher, referring to him as a “so-called expert” and calling the press release “self-serving”. Maher’s press release touted advertising in print yellow pages and questioned the value of advertising online in comparison, so I was highly critical of it since I believe there’s significant value in advertising online. At the time, I thought I was justified in my criticism, since I felt he was promoting his book at the expense of bad advice to small businesses.
However, others pointed out some irony in my criticism — after all, self-promotion is by nature supposed to be beneficial to one’s self, and it’s not at all unusual to emphasize a bit of controversy to make press releases more interesting to readers. Further, Maher’s responses and comments to my blog posting were well-written, wonderfully mild, and professional — leaving me to wonder if I’d been unreasonable in my attack of the press release.
As for the book itself, I found it to be very valuable for small businesses, particularly newbies who’ve never done yellow pages advertising before. Even the business owner who thinks they already know it all ought to read this and check some of their assumptions. Read on for a further review of the book.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 03/19/2007
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Filed under: Advertising, Online Directories, Reference Material, Yellow Pages barry-maher, directory-advertising, Online Directories, small-business-advice, Yellow Pages, yellow-pages-advertising
Skype Adds Yellow Pages Tools – Local Search for VOIP
Skype released a new beta version for Windows a few days ago, and it includes a new feature called SkypeFind. SkypeFind allows users to search for businesses, add in new business listings, and edit existing listings. It also allows users to review/comment on businesses, following the trend of other online directory and social media sites.
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/28/2007
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Filed under: Advertising, Local Search, Online Directories, Yellow Pages Local Search, online-advertising, Skype, voip, Yellow Pages
Tempest in a Local Teacup
Okay, so in the ongoing minor brouhaha sparked from my “Extreme Local Search Optimization Tactics“, Dave Naffziger has posted a rebuttal of my recent post.
Just to clarify, if there was any doubt, and to steer the unwary newbies of search engine optimization from bad practices, I’m posting another follow-up rebuttal of the rebuttal of the rebuttal. Terribly recursive, I know, but bear with me and you might find this entertaining and informative. (more…)
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Posted by Chris of Silvery on 02/05/2007
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Filed under: Best Practices, Local Search, Local Search Optimization, Yellow Pages black-hat-seo, Local Search, local-search-engine-optimization, local-SEO, Online-Yellow-Pages, SEO
