Akesios provides its Ad-Direction technology and its large distribution network to large and small publishers to enable them to sell the high quality leads to local businesses at the low prices, whether as an extension to an SEM program or as a dedicated leads-based program.

Ad-Direction’s configurable yield-based algorithms enable publishers to maximize their margins whilst also ensuring delivery of the highest quality leads to their customers.

“Akesios Ad-Direction enables publishers to sell performance-based products, including clicks and calls, to their customers. We ensure clients can access the highest converting traffic at the lowest cost,” said Ben Barney, CEO of Akesios, “and the Microsoft Advertising adCenter search advertising audience is an extremely valuable addition to our distribution network.“

Through adCenter, SMBs can reach the growing, highly-converting audience of Bing users across Microsoft online properties such as Bing.com, MSN and the entire suite of Windows Live sites and services. Soon this reach will be further expanded to Yahoo! and its partner sites across Europe as part of the Microsoft and Yahoo! Search Alliance.

About Akesios

Founded in 2005, Akesios are the specialist technology providers for publishers selling leads-based products. Ad-Direction serves ads in any format including display and text based, manages campaigns in SEM networks, and tracks performance from other products whether proprietary or 3^rd party. It’s proprietary yield management technology sources leads at the lowest cost to the publisher and the highest ROI for the merchant. Akesios utilises best in class architecture and spatial search technologies to serve the most relevant ads in response to a search query at market-leading speeds. For more information, visit www.akesios.com

Ziplocal recently launched LocaLeads, a pay-for-performance digital advertising program that distributes hyperlocal advertising content from small and medium size businesses (SMBs) to web and mobile publishers across North America, with distribution already secured across 92 percent of the U.S. market.

Ad-Direction is the leads-based selling solution for the local search industry. Ad-Direction enables publishers to sell leads in a single budget to their SMB advertisers, by providing the complete platform for management and fulfilment of leads in a scalable way. Leads are sourced from an extensive distribution network of first and second tier traffic owners and aggregators. Ad-Direction’s ad-serving system syndicates both display and listing advertising formats which, in turn, makes hyperlocal advertising content available to all types of websites and mobile content providers—from search engines and online city guides to mobile application publishers. Ads can be updated in real-time to enable syndication of offers, coupons and daily deals.

Ad-Direction’s configurable yield-based algorithms enable the publisher to maximize their margins and also ensure delivery of the highest quality leads to their customers.

“Ad-Direction is the best solution to manage yield at scale across a large and diverse distribution network, across multiple ad types as well as all the different product types which constitute a lead.” said John Elliott, GM of LocaLeads for Ziplocal. “It ensures we get the largest traffic reach and our SMB customers receive highly targeted leads and exceptional ROI.”

“Leads-based selling will become increasingly important to publishers selling to SMBs” said Ben Barney, CEO of Akesios. “The process of buying the cheapest converting traffic is critical to the sustainability of a leads-based program. Ad-Direction combines one of the most flexible ad serving technologies with yield based algorithms. Our aim is to deliver highly targeted local leads to an advertiser at the lowest possible cost, so publishers can maximise their margins and advertisers renew and spend more money with Ziplocal. We are delighted to be working with Ziplocal on such an exciting and innovative product.”

About Akesios

Founded in 2005, Akesios are the specialist technology providers for Yellow Pages publishers selling leads-based products. Ad-Direction serves ads in any format including display and text based, manages campaigns in SEM networks, and tracks performance from other products whether proprietary or 3^rd party. It’s proprietary yield management technology sources leads at the lowest cost to the publisher and the highest ROI for the merchant. Akesios utilises best in class architecture and spatial search technologies to serve the most relevant ads in response to a search query at market-leading speeds. For more information, visit www.akesios.com

About Ziplocal

Ziplocal is a local search company that reaches communities all across the United States with digital advertising innovations delivered through mobile devices, the internet and traditional media. With a dedicated on-the-ground sales force in 33 states, Ziplocal reaches more than 300 U.S. markets. Rich and relevant local content with a strong focus on interactive and immersive media sets the company’s mobile applications and local search site apart from other search sites. Ziplocal’s robust local search products combine comprehensive data as well as the latest geo-targeting technologies with an extreme focus on delivering results for advertisers and the best end-user experiences for consumers. For more information, visit www.Ziplocal.com.

Click Here to read the full article from Greg’s blog www.screenwerk.com

And there is also a video demo on YouTube.

To take the two extremes, SMBs and Yellow Pages companies are defining leads from opposite ends of the spectrum:

For an SMB, the definition is contact (usually by telephone, during working hours, when they are free to answer the phone) with a qualified customer i.e. one who is likely to buy their product or service. For some who posted comments on the Local SEO Guide blog, their definition even seemed to be a customer who would buy their product or service.

For a Yellow Pages company which has spent decades selling inclusion products to SMBs where the price of an advert is based on its size, with no commitment to what it will deliver in terms of leads, or customers, moving to a “lead generation” sell is a big step. The Yellow Pages mindset is still taking that as a set of baby steps, starting with the ability to report on calls, clicks and driving directions prints. Then they offer a “pay per call” or “pay per click” product. Just because lead generation is an important phrase in the industry at the moment does not mean that it is really happening, at least not in the eyes of the SMB.

New technologies such as trackable phone numbers and Yext’s call transcribing technologies have created opportunities for new products which have received a backlash from SMBs. Where SMB phone numbers are replaced with trackable numbers on directory sites SMBs feedback is that they are being denied calls from customers searching for them by name, and that their number is part of their brand identity and this is being compromised. With the Yext system, call transcribing is an exciting development, but from user feedback, not infallible.  Whilst these technologies will continue to be important for advertising, is it possible that the products are ill-matched with customer requirements?

The problem seems to be that the sales pitch does not always match what the product actually delivers. Instead, Yellow Page companies and others selling to the SMB should allow the SMB owner to make a decision about what they want to buy, by stating clearly if they are paying for inclusion, clicks or calls, or conversions and should provide the tools to allow customers to see this clearly. If the product does not work, or there is an error, what will the customer get back?

Admittedly, the sales pitch is easier, especially for an unknown brand, if the product guarantees leads, but customers are determined to get what they believe they paid for.

However, the result is that SME’s are now more confused than ever about where their business is listed. Changing your address or telephone number has become a very difficult process to manage effectively and speedily in order to ensure you do not lose customers in the process.

Listing verification and submission services are opening up to solve such problems. The model is quite simple: you put in some details about your business, the service checks where you are listed and comes back with any discrepancies or areas where you are not listed at all.

As you would expect there are several services in the US like Localeze, Universal Business Listing and GetListed. Here I look at one such service launched recently in the UK, NetTrackz, and I have taken my local Indian restaurant as an example.

I provide basic details like the address, post code and telephone number. The Mogul does not have a website of its own.

Then there are potentially more complicated questions for a local merchant to answer e.g. search terms and search locations, (the latter emphasizing its target audience operates locally).

On hitting “Generate my report now” NetTrackz searches over 30 sites for your business, checking the listing details and in the case of search engines where you rank for particular search terms. To do this it appears to concatenate a search term and search location from the form, so it is important the user selects these terms carefully to get relevant results.

The following report is generated free of charge showing the directory presence and search position of the Mogul:

A phone call from NetTrackz resulted within an hour of the report to validate the business details by the business owner. Armed with the report the rep from NetTrackz is able to then sell a submission package.

Listing submission services presents a tremendous opportunity for those companies with large sales forces operating in the local space e.g. directory publishers, (as long as they are prepared to push listings to their competitors). Aside from the immediate revenue opportunity, there are considerable strategic benefits:

1)     Springboard to sell additional products e.g Video and Websites

2)     Build a wider distribution network e.g. placing videos and websites on Google and Qype

3)     Natural lead to provide reputation management products

4)     Collecting deep content on each merchant can be used on the IYP to enrich the data e.g. opening times, and if a data licensing model is in place, additional revenue can be achieved.

5)     Having a self-service mechanism for businesses to update their business listings reduces costs in the data cleansing department

In conclusion, selling or reselling a listing submission service is similar to selling other 3^rd party products e.g. SEM, where there is a distinct first mover advantage. I would expect major publishers in Europe to be adopting a product like this in 2010.

With thanks to Greg Sterling for his input into this post.

LONDON, UK – Akesios today launched an online directory platform, Business Search, which is a white labeled, fully managed and supported solution. Uniquely, it comes pre-wired with monetisation opportunities either to be packaged and sold by the publisher or provided by 3rd parties as content on a revenue share basis.

Business Search incorporates monetisation on two levels; the elements built into the site (advertising, 3rd party content on a revenue share basis, transactional elements) and a product set designed for sale by internal sales forces. Both are fully configurable and all views and actions within the product are trackable for reporting or monetisation.

From a usage perspective, there is a range of options to create a home page and search and navigation functionality which matches the business requirements. The search technology can be configured for one, two or three box searching and has sophisticated fault tolerance which stems from our knowledge of search usage, by name, category and location. User personalisation is offered via Facebook registration and logins.

The merchant profile pages combine rich content and SEO.  These pages are structured to hold a range of proprietary or 3rd party content including photos, videos and reviews. Mapping is provided as standard. User personalisation is enhanced by the ability to share on social networks.

Social media is incorporated throughout, from logins via existing networks all the way through to generating social verticals.

“We get many requests from verticals and niche directory players wanting advice on monetising their online properties.” said Ben Barney, Co-Founder and Director of Akesios ”In response to this need, Akesios’ Business Search provides an off the shelf solution which can be customised to our customers’ needs extremely efficiently and cost effectively.”

Akesios Business Search has an infinite array of customisation options to suit all budgets and objectives. The functionality can be delivered to publisher-branded style sheets. More information can be found on the Akesios website at www.akesios.com

About Akesios

Akesios is a technology and professional services company operating globally in the local search marketplace.

The Akesios Platform enables publishers to implement online products faster and more cost effectively. This flexible system caters for any products from websites and video to search and social media. Technical integration is handled within the system along with configurable exception handling, allowing new products to be introduced with minimum pressure on publisher IT staff. Uniquely, the system provides aggregated reporting across the products both internally for product intelligence and directly to customers via email or online reporting centre in a unified format tailored to the publishers branding. Publishers can see the ROI from each media distribution partner allowing them to source traffic at the lowest cost and the highest conversion, saving them money and providing better quality leads to their customers.

Other Akesios products and services include:

• Business Search – The online directory from Akesios is a white labelled, fully managed and supported solution. It comes pre-wired with monetisation opportunities
• Search Platform – The Akesios Search Platform provides a simple, cost effective solution for publishers to provide paid search to their customers
• Social Marketing – Social Marketing is the hot topic of 2010, and Akesios have tangible solutions for publishers and agencies to resell to their clients, large or small
• Performance Manager – The Akesios Performance Manager is a web interface providing visibility to the Akesios Platform which uniquely consolidates management and customer reporting across all products and advertisers
• Professional Services – Our in-depth knowledge and insight of the local search marketplace means we advise on a wide array of projects at a variety of levels for different types of clients

However the research also suggests this growth could be much higher if businesses understand these digital channels better. The agencies who took part in the survey cited that 48% of their clients have a general lack of understanding of digital channels which impedes their decision to invest.

This is what the press release from ExactTarget says specifically about the opportunity:

INCREASED investment in social media, mobile marketing, email marketing and search will fuel a 17 per cent surge in digital marketing spend this year, as marketers migrate budgets from television, print and radio.

ExactTarget, in conjunction with Econsultancy, conducted a survey of over 1000 company and agency marketers around the globe. The outlook for offline channels is much less favourable than its digital competitors, where 28 per cent of marketers will shift their overall marketing budgets towards digital in 2010. In contrast, the research depicts a healthier outlook for the burgeoning digital marketing industry, with 66 per cent of companies increasing their online marketing spend, and a further 30 per cent stating that they will maintain the same levels of spend in this area. On average, digital marketing currently accounts for 24% of overall marketing spend.

Peter McCormick, the general manager and co-founder of ExactTarget comments: “The shift from offline to online is in full swing as marketers look to measure direct increases in top-line sales, site traffic and improve overall marketing return on investment. Interestingly, brand reputation is becoming a more significant driver of the migration to digital marketing, particularly when it comes to social media.”

70 per cent of in-house marketers plan to increase their budgets for off-site social media marketing efforts, using agencies to engage with audiences on Facebook, Twitter and other networking sites. But according to agency respondents the biggest impediment to digital marketing investment is a general lack of understanding of digital marketing channels. Just under half (48%) of agency respondents cite this as the key reason, which prevents their clients from investing more money in this area.

“The research shows a healthy outlook for the digital marketing industry with the majority of responding companies increasing their budgets for most digital channels,” said Linus Gregoriadis, research director at Econsultancy. “Social media marketing is the area where companies are most likely to be spending more money during 2010, but areas such as search engine marketing and email marketing will remain buoyant.”

Agencies and publishers need to be able to offer the full gambit of digital channels to its customers in a simple way in order to take advantage of this opportunity now. For SME’s, a publisher may choose to package these channels into a bundle, for larger advertisers a more bespoke service may need to be provided alongside a reputation management service.

The Akesios Platform is designed to manage advertisers exposure across multiple digital channels, including Search, Video, Pay Per Call and Social Networks. The Performance Manager provides a consolidated reporting platform which clients can login to. LocalSocialAds.com is a more bespoke service for the larger advertiser to increase their exposure on Social Networks like Facebook, LinkedIn and Qype, and is available as a white label service for other digital agencies to package and sell as their own.

For more details please contact Ben Barney

The full research report can be bought from Econsultancy

My personal experiences with these customer service options were always disappointing and it seems I was not alone. Forward-thinking online and offline retailers such as Lakeland (Homewares) and Next (Clothing and Accessories) are determined to provide customer service which leaves customers feeling that their experience was a good one: retailer phone numbers published; phone calls answered immediately, long opening hours, replacing or refunding items without a fight and apologising for any problems.

Amazon.co.uk have led in this space for some time giving confidence to online shoppers with their no-quibble returns policy. Their market share continues to grow and customers continue to tell others about their good experiences.

This trend for improved customer service will impact on all companies selling products as it will change the psyche of the consumer, and soon all consumers will expect this level of service and turn away from those which cannot or will not offer it. Businesses are not excluded as their owners and staff are all consumers too.

Publishers must therefore ensure that they also focus on customer services, and as they roll out new products to their audience they have an added challenge to ensure that the information on their products is available to their customer-facing teams. If their legacy systems cannot handle this, adding an online dashboard allows customer services and sales personnel to access the same real-time information over the internet to present a united view to customers.

Typically, yellow pages publishers have not made advertising performance data available to their customers, but as they offer more lead-based products advertisers expect this information. Additionally, customers expect reporting in the same way that they were sold the product – for example, if three products were bundled together at the point of sale the customer must see the reporting bundled together.

Publishers would be wise to review their access to customer and product information and be ready to leave customers pleasantly surprised.

This groundbreaking advertising program from a partnership between Skype and European Directories has been recognised by eConsultancy’s 2009 Innovation Awards, by winning the award for “Innovation in Lead Generation Online”. eConsultancy recognised in particular the product design and business model behind this program.

“European Directories were first to launch the Skype business funded click-to-call product globally” said Andrew Parker, Vice President of Online Business Development for European Directories. “With no direct case studies to work from, Akesios brought strong commercial and workable solutions to the table. This has allowed us to make the Skype business funded click to call product available to  our 700,000 customers across 8 European territories in a very short time. ”

“Akesios are experts in bringing new online products to market for traditional publishers” said Ben Barney, Co-Founder and Director of Akesios. “Creating low risk but high penetration products for Directory companies, allows them to leverage their sales forces effectively and better manage the transition to online. We are delighted that this innovative lead generation program is being appreciated by the industry.”

Alongside its professional services, Akesios has developed is a piece of middleware which accelerates the speed to market of 3rd party products, such as Skype. The Akesios Platform significantly reduces the complexity, time and cost of the IT aspects of the integration. It holds all the business rules for each product sold in each market and performs all the vital validations required by Skype and the publisher for each order.

About Akesios

Akesios have developed a platform and reporting interface to make implementing online products for directory companies fast and straightforward. This flexible system caters for any products from websites and video to search and social media. Technical integration is handled within the system along with configurable exception handling, allowing new products to be introduced with minimum pressure on directory IT staff. Uniquely, the system provides aggregated reporting across the products both internally for product intelligence and directly to customers via email in a unified format tailored to the directory branding.

Akesios is also a local search consultancy assisting directory companies with their online strategy and implementation. Akesios is expert in advising directory companies on local search, whether enhancing their IYP offering, or entering new markets such as search. We have successfully launched search businesses for directory companies across Europe, making Akesios the de facto consultancy in this niche area. Akesios can provide the strategy, methodology and systems to sell all new media products through existing sales forces and via supplementary channels.

Antony Finnegan is an experienced IT professional with roles ranging from development, design, analysis, management and planning within the software development lifecycle.  His career has spanned blue chips like Norwich Union, finance and capital markets institutions, outsourced consultancy services, dot-coms and Local Search.

His background in the Search industry was gained from the 4 years he worked at Thomson Directories on the WebFinder.com (proprietary PPC platform) and ThomsonLocal.com (in-house IYP) platforms including senior involvement with the Google Reseller implementation. He became responsible for the development teams on both of these applications. Antony holds a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Liverpool and an MSc in Integrated Management System from the University of Birmingham

“I am delighted that Antony has become another significant asset in the engineering department at Akesios” said Tony Heath-Smith, Technical Architect at Akesios. “He is precisely the smart, capable person required to pilot our burgeoning data warehousing requirements. Antony’s strong working relationship with our software development team leader Paul Brown will add critical momentum to the expansion of the Akesios Platform.”

About Akesios

Akesios have developed a platform and reporting interface to make implementing online products for directory companies fast and straightforward. This flexible system caters for any products from websites and video to search and social media. Technical integration is handled within the system along with configurable exception handling, allowing new products to be introduced with minimum pressure on directory IT staff. Uniquely, the system provides aggregated reporting across the products both internally for product intelligence and directly to customers via email in a unified format tailored to the directory branding.

Akesios is also a local search consultancy assisting directory companies with their online strategy and implementation.  Directory and media businesses are under threat from declining revenues and increasing competition from non-‘traditional’ areas. With a few exceptions, usage – and therefore revenue – continues to decline in printed products where the majority of their revenues reside, and from which they achieve such high EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization) contributions. Increasing competition from pure-play local search services and search Engines such as Google threatens their usage unless they continue to invest heavily and cease to rely on their printed portfolio.

Akesios is expert in advising directory companies on local search, whether enhancing their IYP offering, or entering new markets such as search. We have successfully launched search businesses for directory companies across Europe, making us the de facto consultancy in this niche area. Working with you, we can provide the strategy, methodology and systems to sell all major Search Engines’ proven tools through your existing sales force and via supplementary channels, for example the acquisition of SEM agencies.