Take a look at how New York Magazine incorporates mobile (content and advertising) into their product set. It’s a great idea and one that can be adopted by publishers of newspapers or niche magazines, servicing larger cities.

http://nymag.com/mobile/

New York magazine has a readership of 1.6 million per issue and it is published by New York Media Holdings, LLC.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: Mobile Advertising, New York Magazine

LightPole Inc, a new mobile software and services company, has finally come out of beta with their flagship product cleverly called LightPole. What makes LightPole of special interest to us is their partnerships with Yahoo! Local and Yelp.

The way LightPole works, is that mobile users can download the LightPole software to their phones and by doing so, no matter where they are in their city, they can quickly access information about restaurants, shops, Wi-Fi hotspots and pretty much any type of business in the LightPole database, aggregated from their partners.

The LightPole model is an ad supported one – so while users are sourcing information they are seeing relevant ads segmented and in alignment with what they were searching for. For the most part, the only credible partners on LightPole are Yahoo! and Yelp, but with Yahoo! working on strengthening their newspaper consortium with product offerings and services, you may soon find that some of your retail advertisers are being accessed via LightPole. A play I am sure Yahoo! has already discussed because of the revenue share model in place with LightPole.

If anything, this release tells us is that mobile advertising is coming closer and closer to a natural point of integration for publishers.

With its first public release after a year in quiet beta, LightPole’s free application looks promising. While not swimming in features, LightPole is fairly easy to use on any Java-enabled phone.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: LightPole, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Directories, Mobile Technology, Yahoo! Local, Yelp

Superpages.com announced its release of added user functionality to their site. Superpages users can now update business profiles, add photos and participate in business specific blogs. The added UGC elements will go far in differentiating Superpages against the many existing local online directories.

Traditionally, the directory business has been seen as a utilitarian device. The more aged, well-entrenched directory players consider their jobs to be as an information portal only and because of this mind-set, they have pained as advertisers are finding other online user centric and interactive ways to spread the word of their businesses existence.

The changes idearc is making to their Superpages.com product are headed in the right direction. They are taking considerable efforts to focus more on the consumer and as a result, improving their ‘customer reach and loyalty’ story.

written by Beverly Crandon \\ tags: Directories, Superpages.com, UGC