Excellent keynote to start the first day of the BIA/Kelsey conference. Jeremy Stoppelman, Yelp’s CEO, shared with us a lot of interesting data points regarding their business.
- How they define what they do: “connecting people with great local businesses”
- 14 million local reviews as of today
- Top review categories: 26% restaurants, 24% shopping, 9% beauty and fitness.
- Expanding geographical coverage: France, Germany, Austria this year, more coming soon.
- Yelp currently has 39M unique visitors vs. 26M last year (per their Google Analytics).
- Monetization model: video ads, paid (ranking) ads, daily offers (what Stoppelman called the ”transaction business”)
The CEO then discussed the main traffic drivers for Yelp mentioning search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing and he also listed Facebook as a great source of Web traffic. He talked about how search engine optimization (SEO) in the local space (read Google…), is becoming problematic. He doesn’t think Yelp (and other local media sites) will be able to rely on Google for traffic down the road but the good news is that the industry is heading towards “mobile”. People don’t search on mobile, they use applications. At Yelp, mobile is a startup within a startup and it’s been very successful. 30% of their total traffic comes from mobile now and a business is called every 5 seconds.
He also shared his strategies for driving distribution on mobile:
- Leveraging your web assets
- Store promotion
- Partnerships
- Battle for on deck
When prodded at the end of the session, he mentioned that “Mobile is the future of our business”.
What it means: Looking at Yelp, it looks like they are becoming a more mature business (with all the good and the bad that comes with being “mature”). Google’s moves in local is definitely a threat but their move into mobile is creating huge opportunities for them. Monetization is probably still problematic (it’s very difficult to monetize merchant reviews) but “daily offers” might be a great way for them to speed up revenue generation. I think they are a good example of the strategic importance of mobile in local/social.
In the Bay Area Next Week for BIA/Kelsey's ILM:10 Conference
November 29, 2010
Next week, I will spending the week in San Francisco and in Santa Clara for a series of meetings and BIA/Kelsey’s ILM:10 conference. The conference is being held in Santa Clara December 7, 8 and 9. The agenda is jam-packed with interesting topics and speakers. I’m looking forward hearing the following people speak:
Tuesday, Dec. 7
- Opening Keynote: Jeremy Stoppelman, CEO, Yelp. I’m interested in hearing about Yelp’s recent usage and revenue growth, to see if it can maintain its relevancy in a Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare world.
- “The Big Money in Local ” panel with Dev Khare, Vice President, Venrock and Kara Nortman, VP, M&A, IAC/InterActiveCorp. I want to know what kind of investments they are looking at today, probably no Groupon clones…
- Stephen Weis, VP, Digital Sales, Hearst Newspapers (participating in ”Traditional Media, Revolutionary Thinking” panel). Hearst owns very interesting local properties in newspapers, directory publishing and online. Curious to hear how the integration is working and where they’re finding economies of scale and synergies.
Wednesday, Dec. 8
- The “Google at ILM 2010: Refocus on Local/Location Services” session with Wesley Chan, Partner, Google Ventures and
Carter Maslan, Product Management Director, Local Search, Google. Recently, Google has been signaling their huge interest in “Local”. It will be interesting to hear it directly from them. - The “Pandora: The New World of Local Radio” presentation with Cheryl Locagnero, Senior VP of Advertising Sales, Pandora and
Brian Mikalis, VP of Performance Sales, Pandora. We rarely talk about music and radio at the Kelsey conference. I think we could learn a thing or two from these guys… - The presentation from Matt Idema, VP, Yahoo! Local. Are they still a player in local? I think they still are but they need to tell their story to the industry. This will be a good opportunity.
- The presentation from Jim Sampey, COO, Cox Target Media. I just want to know his thoughts about group buying and what’s their strategy and execution plan there.
- The “Checking In on Location-Based Services” presentation with Andy Ellwood, Director of Business Development, Gowalla and Gillian Heltai, Director, comScore. Are location-based services a business or just a feature?
Thursday, Dec. 9
- The keynote address from Steven Johnson, I’ve heard him speak two or three times already and he’s always sharing leading-edge insights. Definitely looking forward that presentation.
- The “Facebook Spotlight: Working With Facebook ” session. Facebook is now a must in “local”. It will be interesting to hear where they are in terms of strategy, how they integrate places, check-ins, deals, etc. in a cohesive way.
- The “local sales” panel with Court Cunningham, CEO, Yodle, Todd Rowe, Head of Global Channel Sales, Google and Geoff Stevens, Executive VP and GM, Global Business Development, WebVisible. Local sales is hard. Curious to hear about their success and discuss retention rates as well.
On Monday December 6, I’ll also try to attend Mobile Monday Silicon Valley to hear about “2010 Year in Mobile Review and 2011 Predictions”
If you’d like to connect while I’m in California, send me an e-mail at seb AT needium.com
Continuing my coverage of the latest BIA/Kelsey conference Marketplaces 2010. In last session of day one, we had the opportunity to listen to Craig Donato, Oodle‘s CEO. I’ve been a fan of the Oodle model since they launched (aggregated classifieds platform with a centralized database and distributed content). They power Facebook’s classifieds section (quite a partnership in itself). I hadn’t heard Donato speak in a long time and I was happy to see that his thoughts were right on the money as far as I’m concerned.
Highlights/insights:
- Social media will fundamentally change the game of classifieds
- Classifieds are inherently social as they always finish with a face-to-face interaction
- Identity and reputation play a big role in the future of classifieds
- Discovery through trusted recommendations is bringing a new era of social discovery
- We’re going from search engine optimization to social media optimization. He gave the Facebook page and Twitter profile examples, where you build a fan base and followers that share and join the conversation
- An interesting insight from their Facebook integration: the newsfeed is the new important real estate for businesses.The more people comment on an individual “activity” on Facebook, the more it gets viral and gets pushed to your friends.
The BIA/Kelsey blog has a small summary of that presentation.
Jon Brod, executive VP, AOL Ventures, was keynote speaker today at the BIA/Kelsey Marketplaces 2010 conference. He gave us a good update on AOL’s local strategy centered around Patch, the hyperlocal/citizen journalism initiative at AOL.
Highlights from his keynote:
- Local is the largest opportunity YET to be won online
- AOL’s five pillars: content, advertising, communications, ventures, local
- Patch’s mission: to improve communities and the lives of their residents through information.
- Patch consists of i) a scalable technology platform, ii) structured data, iii) professional journalists in every community
- Monetization: i) self-serve ads 2) Ad sales reps
- Operating Patch is 4.1% of the cost of a like-size daily newspaper
- AOL will soon to relaunch City’s Best brand (was dormant)
- AOL will soon relaunch MapQuest as well
Additional notes from Local SEO Guide:
- Patch has grown from 3 markets one year ago to 41 communities on four different states.
- They have a LocalFund to invest in local startups.
- AOL on the record as investing $50MM in Patch and City’s Best this year.
Brod mentioned they had this quote about local: “local is not a one-ton gorilla, It is 2,000 one-pound monkeys”.
