Darby Sieben -

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I am a little late in posting this, however after I got back from Kelsey Conference in Denver, Colorado I ended up getting pretty sick that knocked me out for a few weeks. I am back on the mend.

Alot of people have been asking me for the a copy of the presentation. I have added the presentation to SlideShare, which you can flip through below. I also have an audio recording of the presentation and the Q&A with Matt Booth after the presentation about our API Strategy.

The event itself was probably one of the best Kelsey’s that I have attended. The quality of the speakers was quite good. Typically the DMS conference at Kelsey tends to be more focused on the Yellow Pages industry with a slant towards the print side of the business. This conference really had a very good blend of the traditional side of local along with a strong digital focus. The next Kelsey event in December, in San Francisco (Interactive Local Media West) will be even better as this is the key event for anybody in the local digital space to attend. I will be attending if you are interested in meeting.

The best presentation of the show was the SuperForum: The Social-Driven SMB: Part IV: Social Advertising Case Studies. This was a panel with Will Scott, President, Search Influence and Marty Weintraub, CEO, aimClear. The description of this panel is, “There is no shortage of platitudes about how SMBs are embracing social media. Here, we’ll share real case studies of how small-business advertisers have mastered the art of turning fans and friends into paying customers”. This panel was incredibly dynamic, Marty had an energy level that is contagious and the content of the presentation and the case studies they shared are absolutely incredible. If you really want to understand social marketing you need to check this out.

Now you can download the presentations of this event at the Kelsey Site. If you want to see all the presentations in video format you can purchase access for $199 at the VueTorial.

Below are 2 presentation links. First is the audio portion of the presentation and underneath it is the slideshare slides.

In the audio portion it starts off with Matt Booth giving some details on the state of the market and the challenge for publishers. You can download his slides here.

At the 2 min mark of the audio is when my presentation starts that corresponds to the SlideShare presetnation below.

Here is the SlideShare version of my presentation at Kelsey DMS11.

One of the latest deals to get announced by YPG Canada was 2 days ago with FourSquare, “Canada’s Yellow Pages Group Announces Strategic Agreement with foursquare“. Over the past 48-hours, I have definitely been receiving lots of positive feedback, but a few people have asked me the question – what does this specifically mean for YPG advertisers? Before explaining how this benefits YPG Advertisers, let me explain the deal itself. I am going to grossly simplify this, but in a nutshell, harmonization of data really means connecting the IDs of venue’s listed in FourSquare.com to venue’s listed on YP.ca. Once the IDs are connected, then YPG and any developer using YellowAPI.com can use 1 ID to interface with 2 APIs. Further to our announcement last year with Twitter, in face, usage of the YPG ID is also mapped to venue’s within Twitter, check out “Canada’s Yellow Pages Group Partners with Twitter“.

Why is this important for YPG advertisers? In a nutshell, it means more leads and more business. How is this you might ask? Two things – 1) with the synchronization of venue IDs, you have a scalable way to push future enhanced content to multiple external sources and 2) by adding more value to YellowAPI.com, ie) making developers lives easier, we will see more innovation in the local space which means as more and more applications are created to fulfill user needs, more and more leads will be delivered to local advertisers. In this scenario, the user wins (they have more choices of how they want to interact with local), the developer wins (they can focus on innovative apps), the local advertiser wins (they are getting more business to their location) and YPG wins (as we fulfill our commitment to drive more leads to our advertisers).

In April, I posted the Eco-System in Canada of YellowPages.ca which garnered alot of attention and mostly people commenting to me that they did not realize YPG was involved with so many partners. Here is the updated Eco-System slide, now with FourSquare:

To conclude, the past 48-hours is bring more attention to YPG’s data initiatives. Here is a round-up of the stories covering this announcement.

AboutFourSquare.com – YellowAPI becomes first Canadian partner for foursquare’s venue harmonization project

TechCrunch – Yellow Pages Teams Up With Foursquare For “Venue Harmonization Project”

Kin Lane – Canada’s Yellow Pages Group Joins Foursquare to Harmonize Data

Scribbal – Foursquare, Canada’s Yellow Pages Announce Strategic Partnership

Techplz – Yellow Pages and Foursquare team up in mutually beneficial deal

WashingtonPost – Yellow Pages Teams Up With Foursquare For “Venue Harmonization Project”

Direction Informatique – Groupe Pages Jaunes placera votre entreprise sur foursquare

Next Montreal – Yellow Pages Teams Up With Foursquare to Share Data

Kelsey Group – YPG Canada and Foursquare Team Up for Venue Harmonization

Tech Vibes – Yellow Pages Group announces Strategic Agreement with Foursquare

TD Waterhouse – Canada’s Yellow Pages Group Announces Strategic Agreement With foursquare

If you know of other locations, please post a comment and I will add to the list.