The move is an extension of the Hadopi law aimed at protecting intellectual property. The new charter is the brainchild of industry minister Eric Besson, who hopes to combat counterfeit goods with it. The above portals signed the above agreement banning suspected counterfeiters from posting further ads for a period of five years. The move sparked some controversy with news site Numerama, which objected to the fact that the charter requires no proof of passing-off counterfeit goods – a mere suspicion is enough to slap the ban on advertisers.

The charter also proposes the pre-screening of adverts before publication and collecting of information to identify the user, including IP address, online history, postal addresses etc. The proposal will come into force in six months for a test period of a year and a half, when it will be re-evaluated.

Carl Freelove, marketing officer at Jobs.ac.uk, said “the improved design and navigation, resume search functionality and additional content about our services will help recruiters make more informed buying decisions, when it comes to recruiting the very best job seekers”.

Elsewhere in academia the news from Milkround suggests that graduates searching jobs are turning to the site in droves. More precisely, visitors jumped by some 20 percent from November 2010. An ABC audit shows visits up by 107,027 to 536,257.

Read this blog post by Carl Freelove for the full picture.

In a report Saturday quoting “a person with knowledge of the discussions,” Bloomberg said AutoTrader.com might take advantage of the hot market both for cars and for Internet stock offerings to go public. However, the report hedged by saying the discussions are “in early stages and the owners could decide against a deal.” No timetable for an IPO was given.

Reports about a potential AutoTrader.com IPO are nothing new; we first covered the possibility last March. At the time, AutoTrader.com CEO Chip Perry told the AIM Group: “We don’t talk about that – no decisions have been made. It’s up to our owners.”

Providence Equity Partners owns a 25 percent stake in the company. Last month, Bloomberg reported that AutoTrader.com might be on a “wish list” of acquisitions developed by Yahoo.

Italy’s web industry is worth 2 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) and employs 700,000 people. The field of classified ads is saturated and local web companies, other than the “daddy’s boys” mentioned above, must rely on their own means to get ahead.

Few Italians are willing to invest and few foreign venture capital and investment funds operate in Italy. The country is perceived as isolated and nobody wants to invest as long as it is uncertain whether the state is able to service its debt. Despite these stumbling blocks, there are good business ideas and success stories in Italy, such as Bakeca.it (a generalist website), Jobrapido.com (a recruiting vertical search engine), Immobiliare.it (real estate) and Adboom.it, a web company operating in the classified ads business with a unique model.

The entrepreneurs interviewed were unanimous in saying that the crisis stimulates the intellect, that in order to succeed you must focus on technology and innovative ideas, study international success stories to replicate elements suitable to the Italian market in your own business model, carry out massive marketing operations and invest in advertising.

Among the generalist ad sites Bakeca.it, founded in 2005 by Paul Geymonat, a pioneer in the Italian web industry who died prematurely at age 45, is competing with Subito.it, owned by Schibsted Media Group, and Ebay Annunci (read the story here).

The turnover of Bakeca.it, according to its Ceo Alessandro Rivetti, came to €2.5 million ($3.25 million U.S.) in 2011 and the target for 2012 is to grow revenue aggressively to €3.5 million. Bakeca.it has acquired more than 1,000 customers since 2010 and invests about 25 percent of its revenue on advertising.

Jobrapido.com was at first very similar to other vertical search engines born in the U.S., such as Indeed.com and SimplyHired.com. Founded by Vito Lomele in mid-2006, the company hosted its server in a small kitchen.

Today the portal has more than 2.5 million unique visitors and 90 percent of the traffic comes from abroad. Jobrapido.com’s turnover amounts to €25 million ($32.5 million U.S.) with EBITDA of €5 million. The company employs 70 people (source: Corriere.it, November 2011) and operates in 50 countries.

CEO Vito Lomele couldn’t contribute to this story, because of prior engagements, but according to the Jobrapido.com case story presented at IAB, key to the portal’s success in 2011 were: offering a useful service for those looking for a job, the easy-to-use interface, a powerful SEO and SEM platform and strong link-building.

In Vito Lomele’s view it is not important to copy what others do. In fact, what really counts is implementing just the right features that users need, especially for companies with limited resources, and doing your job on a day-to-day basis, with a strong focus on technology, always keeping in mind your goals, because it is innovation that makes for a competitive company and service (source: Lomele speech at Venture Camp di Mind the Bridge, Milan November 2011).

Immobiliare.it, owned by Gruppo Immobiliare, and flagship of the most visited network of real estate websites in Italy, closed 2011 with a turnover of €12 million ($15.6 million U.S.)  and reinvests every cent. The group spent over 50 percent of the turnover in marketing in 2011. Of this 50 percent, in turn 90 percent went into marketing the online business.

AdBoom.it, owned by Live Shape Classified Media, was the first European portal to offer a multi-posting classified ads service and the first to offer an automatic video ads service in Italy on YouTube (read the story here). Marco Gherardi and Serghej Petrov are the  co-founders. The platform is a web-based service designed to help buyers and sellers of any kind of goods multiply their opportunities and successfully conclude transactions. The innovative AdBoom-approach to selling is based on multi-posting of ads.

The Italian classified ads market hasn’t changed significantly in the last year.

Silvio Pagliani,  co-founder of Immobiliare.it  and a member of its Board, believes the debt crisis in Europe and particularly in Italy has accelerated the transition from paper to web for the classified ads business. This was also witnessed two years ago in Spain.

The turnovers of the offline companies relying on paper have dropped dramatically. Many have closed down, or are taking losses because, unlike the past years, real estate agencies have become more determined to test the opportunities offered by the web. And they saw that, for the same amount of money the web is more profitable than paper – regardless of the channel. In addition, Pagliani pointed out the fact that many new vertical sites are springing up.

“In countries where internet is already established, real estate websites are so big that launching new ones is almost impossible.  And since the market is saturated, with well-positioned leaders, niches are opening up in real estate. For instance, websites that deal only with peculiar renting situations or specific types of property.

Those willing to enter the classified ads business are creating their own small spaces, Pagliani said.

Adboom’s CEO Marco Gherardi points to some “interesting trends”, such as growth in the value of advertising, fired by growth in the number of companies that are finally starting to take advantage of the web as a communication channel and also supported by the boom of  “mobile devices” accessing the web, such as smartphones and tablets –  a factor that will certainly continue to impact the future evolution of the industry.

No doubt, social networks and (especially) mobile will be the focus in 2012.

On social networks: in the past Facebook (and other social websites) developed their own businesses. But, with the latest apps, they are opening up to ensure others enter into a symbiosis with them, for a true exchange. In future Facebook will generate links and connections with other websites to make the symbiotic bond even stronger.

“I hear a lot of people saying they are focusing on Facebook and Twitter and they have gained ‘x’ fans or followers. Fact is, they do not know what to do with these fans or followers. There is no easy answer.

“Since two years, users have been able to register and login on Immobiliare.it through Facebook connect. We’ve noted that these users are more active than the “standard” users. Integration with social network has just begun, we are just scraping the surface,” said Pagliani.

Bakeca.it  manages Facebook in two ways: with a Facebook page accessible from Bakeca, and within the reply to the ad, where you can choose to share the ad on Facebook.

Alessandro Rivetti agrees with Silvio Pagliani about the future interaction of Facebook with other sites, but adds that Bakeca.it is not so focused on social networks. Since other forms of communication (eg. Google Adwords, or partnerships with publishers) are more interesting to Bakeca’s business model.

On the other hand, Adboom activated channels on the main social networks and offers these links to advertisers as new, profitable advertising channels, which raise the visibility of their ads.

On the mobile side of the business,  Live Shape’s first direct approach is still being developed. Within a couple of months it will launch two applications (for Android and iOS) for the two vertical ads sites Trovocamper.it and Trovobarche.it.

Pagliani said in the first development phase Web 2.0 was emphasized by Google. In the second Facebook was accentuated. The next step is mobile – and it will change the way we perceive the digital age. According to Pagliani mobile will open what he called “the Web 3.0 era”.

“We strongly believe mobile will have a huge impact and can be a great communication means, but it implies more technological complexity, meaning when you create a site, you have to optimize it for all the browsers and their variants. In addition, you have to make the mobile version, and the apps for Android, iPhone, and all the other platforms, like Blackberry. Players will compete on two key elements: technology and features, and brand awareness,” said Pagliani.

Bakeca.it is developing its website, bringing together in the new Bakeca Italia the features and search engine, instead of keeping the different city pages separate. The company released an iPhone app and is working on its mobile site.

“We always try to offer better services and content from front-end to back-end, with features that are faster and save time and costs. Development is very important to us, we are aiming at the best product. With no multi-national in the background, we do our best with the resources we have,” said Rivetti.

In the Italian classified ads business there are no new business models emerging. According to Gherardi the greatest success in the past year – both locally and internationally –  was the establishment of group buying, daily discounts and coupon sites, such as Letsbonus and Groupon.

In Italy the winning business model is usually the freemium and all the managers interviewed agreed that money is earned by selling the extra visibility.

“It is easier for real estate websites to charge for the ads. We have added free ads for consumers recently (they used to require a fee) and the reason is not that we can’t make people pay for our ads. That is not a problem. But, we must follow the market trends and what the other companies do. The ads market is mostly free in Southern Europe while in Northern Europe it’s not. In Ireland, for instance, the industry leader, recently acquired by Schibsted, charges for every ad and the same situation can be observed in Sweden and Norway.

“Where people recognize the value of the online channel, you can operate on a subscription model. Where there is low online awareness, you must offer free ads to encourage consumers to use the internet. You can make users pay for the ads, but this comes at a price. It depends how important revenue is for your company. If you charge for the ads, you have less ads,” said Pagliani.

“Bakeca.it tried to replicate Craiglist’s experience and charge for the ads once a critical mass was reached, (read the story here) but the experiment didn’t succeed, because, unlike Craiglist, our competitor offering his services for free. So we moved to the freemium model,” said Alessandro Rivetti.

Advertising spending is more and more targeted to online business. Now even small companies can afford to take advantage of TV and radio advertising, thanks to falling prices.

In this context, prospects for those trying to build a classified ads business aren’t promising. Marco Gherardi says that it is impossible to enter this industry if you are not supported by significant budgets. The situation is different for those companies with enough cash to enter the classified ads market and can launch “sizable” projects.

Alessandro Rivetti says, “in Italy classified ads are a closed market. To enter successfully, you need to invest at least €20 million, if you start from scratch. “A smarter idea is to develop a new web project, something that Italy doesn’t already have. Inspired by something that has had success overseas, and replicated in Italy, or Europe”.

In general, people start up web companies, because the internet offers good opportunities at low developing costs. Then they lack the skills to move ahead, Pagliani added. “Many underestimate the importance of marketing. In 2011 launching a start-up was much different from before. In 1998 an engineer was pretty much all you needed, but then there was no competition. Nowadays, a web company requires the same structure and know-how of a brick-and-mortar business”.

Or as Ricky Wheeler, marketing director at Broadbean, puts it: “SocialReferral has the most powerful employee referral technology on the market and this partnership enables our corporate clients to benefit from the latest advances in referral technology without the need for a third party.”

Broadbean is part of the newly announced Evenbase group of U.K. recruitment brands.

Spir’s internet activities include property sites Logic-Immo.com and Lux-residence.com, as well as auto sites Lacentrale.fr and Caradisiac.com.  Of these, the property sites saw turnover up 20 percent for the quarter, while the car sites saw a less impressive, but nonetheless solid, 3.5 percent rise over the same period.  Overall the group’s internet activities reported a quarterly growth of 18.7 percent.

The company didn’t give details of its growth, except to say that the challenge this year will be to further improve its operations by focusing on its margins – probably a reference to the ongoing restructuring within the group.

Gannett reported earnings in 2011 of $1.89 per share or $459 million, down 22 percent from the $588 million reported in 2010. (The company reports on a 52-week basis.)

Quarterly income was 49 cents per share, or $117 million, down 32.8 percent from the 2010 Q4 totals.

Publishing operations in both the U.S. and the U.K., where Gannett operates the regional newspaper publisher Newsquest, showed substantial declines. Classifieds were off 8.4 percent year-over-year in the U.S. and 7.9 percent
at Newsquest. A chart in the earnings release shows specific category declines in each country.

The bright spot? CareerBuilder, and digital revenue in general.

Digital revenue in the quarter was up $181.5 million, or 9.4 percent, “due primarily to strong revenue growth at CareerBuilder.” Expenses soared by 10.6 percent, “reflecting significantly higher sales incentive and bonus costs associated with higher revenue levels for CareerBuilder.

“Due to substantially higher year-over-year revenue as the quarter progressed, a significant number of sales personnel exceeded their annual sales goals very late in the quarter, and were therefore entitled to incremental commissions and  bonuses,” the company said in its earnings news release.

CareerBuilder releases its revenue figures after the Gannett quarterly release, so we’re trying to get those today and will report on them here.

          Monster Worldwide stock dropped more than 20 percent Thursday after the company issued guidance about projected Q1 revenue and earnings that were far below analyst estimates. The stock finished the day in NYSE consolidated trading at 7.15, down 1.83 or 20.83 percent. Trading volume was almost four times the average of 3.2 million shares.

          It was the lowest point for the stock since Nov. 29, when it hit 6.93. One year ago, on Jan. 26, 2011, the stock was trading at 21.33 — so it’s off by almost two-thirds in the last year.

          Current market capitalization for Monster Worldwide, parent of Monster.com and other recruitment sites globally, is $921 million.

          * * * *

Monster Worldwide stock dropped more than 13 percent this morning after the company announced an increase in earnings but a number of cost-cutting measures, including the layoff of 400 employees — or about 7 percent of its international workforce.

The company projected earnings for the first quarter of 2012 that were less than half of analysts’ estimates. It said revenue would fall 3 to 7 percent during Q1 this year, and bookings (longer-term placements for the future) would fall 6 to 10 percent.

“The progress we saw in the fourth quarter was much slower than what we saw earlier in the year,” Monster CEO Sal Iannuzzi told Reuters in an interview. He said the job market was not likely to change “for the time being,” Reuters reported.

“Our focus in 2012 will be to further leverage our product leadership and global platform, and increase customer adoption.”

Monster Worldwide (NYSE: MWW) said its Q4 net income was $10.9 million, or 9 cents per share, up from just $500,000 or breakeven in during Q1 of 2011. Revenue in Q1 declined to $250 million from $255 million year-over-year. Analysts had projected revenue of $259 million.

“In 2011 our Global Careers bookings increased 18 percent year-over-year despite a more challenging economic environment in the latter half,” Iannuzzi said in the management statement. “We also significantly improved profitability, with an operating margin of 7% in 2011 compared to approximately break-even in 2010, and had $250 million in cash and cash equivalents at year-end.

In addition to the layoff of 400 people worldwide, the company said it would close some offices and carefully manage expenses. It projected annualized savings of $100 million from the layoffs and expense reductions.

The layoffs included “less than 100” people at the U.S. headquarters of Monster.com in Maynard, Mass. The company said it might hire some people back in sales and marketing roles.

The company statement about its layoffs:

           As we have indicated in previous public statements, we are taking some steps to rebalance our investments and reduce fixed operating costs. As such, we are eliminating roughly 400 positions globally, or 7 percent of the workforce. Since 2007, Monster has made tremendous progress in developing and launching new technologies. Moving forward, we will focus on rolling out these innovations globally and growing revenue through an increase in sales and marketing activity consistent with our historical norms. To that end, we plan to add revenue-generating positions opportunistically.”

According to SNAL (short for syndicat national des aménageurs-lotisseurs), the portal “is a unique location, where all sites on offer are brought together in a targeted way”.  To help navigation, users have geo-locating functionality, which displays all listed sites on Google maps in plan and satellite view.

The portal was needed, because building sites are not normally listed on traditional real estate portals, SNAL said.

Kovacich has been in the recruitment advertising field for 10 years, including a stint with Monster in London.

Her appointment was announced by Louis Naviasky, COO of Bayard.

Jobintree is the brainchild of Fabrice Robert and Carlos Goncalves, both ex of Keljob (Robert was the MD) and sprang from Robert’s conviction that traditional jobsites suffered from the fact that the structure of job offers incited too many candidates to apply for jobs they weren’t suited for.

“Ninety percent of CVs received by recruiters don’t correspond to the desired profile,” he commented at the time. Jobintree aimed to answer that with what was billed as a ‘funnel interface’ that guided candidates into a narrow but more relevant selection of jobs.

Jobintree now has 1,300 recruiters as clients on its platform and 50,000 unique visitors per month. There are no details as yet of the new project, but the company is hinting that it will see the light of day in Q1 of this year.

The app is free and ready for Samsung SMART TVs and Blu-Ray players with a number of other versions in the pipeline.

NEW YORK — We rarely do this, but we’re going to lead our coverage of the Inman Real Estate Connect 2012 conference with a quote:

“We hear about turning offline dollars to digital dimes — and what I’m afraid we’re going to see next is mobile pennies,” said Elizabeth DeMarse, CEO of the news aggregation and curation site Newser.

The conference, which kicked off this morning, was full of bons mots and conversations about the future of technology in real estate. Unlike the past few conferences, which were smothered in pessimism about the future of the property market in the United  States, this one was actually upbeat about the market turnaround.

“The timing is fantastic to be in this business,” Brad Inman, founder of the real estate news and information company, said in his opening statement. “The economy is improving, the market is improving. … There is a sense that things are getting better.”

*    *   *    *

Notes and quotes:

Classified sites ranked eighth and real estate search portals ranked sixth for return on investment among the top 10 methods of reaching consumers for real estate agents and brokers in a survey conducted by Inman.

The top five:

— Past clients / referrals

— The agents’ own websites

— Their social media presence

— Lawn signs

— Search engine efforts.

*    *   *    *

More results from the survey, based on responses from agents earning more than $100,000 each year:

— 83 percent want communication within their companies to be digital — email, text or social media. Only 17 percent wanted phone calls from their brokers.

—There is a correlation between use of social media and agent earnings. The survey showed 75 percent of all agents earning more than $100,000 have a Facebook page, and almost half of them (47 percent) had more than 500 “friends” on Facebook, while 30 percent had 500 or more Twitter followers.

— Another 69 percent of those agents said they are also using Google+, the new social media tool.

— And 81 percent of those agents have a YouTube channel, wnile 44 percent of them post to their social media networks at least once a day, the survey showed.

“What does this say? Agents who are making a six-figure income are early adopters,” said Katie Lance of Inman. “A lot of agents are saying ‘let’s wait and see;’ the agents of tomorrow are saying ‘No, we’re going to dive in.’ …

“The conclusion here is that agents making over $100,000 are clearly embracing social media and are doing it in a convincing way.”

(For more about both organizations, see our Free Classifieds Report, published last October. You can buy it here. But if you’re a client of Classified Intelligence Report, don’t buy it; you should have received it and we’ll gladly send you a duplicate.)

Craigslist Foundation was funded primarily by Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist CEO, and Craigslist founder Craig Newmark, both acting as individuals. In 2003, it reported revenue of $3,990; in 2007, at its peak, it received revenue of $709,000.) The donations made to Craigslist Charitable Foundation are made by the corporate entity Craigslist Inc., which is owned by Newmark, Buckmaster and EBay.

Mr. Lynn Luckow, president and CEO of the Craigslist Foundation, said the team of employees at the foundation “looks forward to making continued progress in other ways and at other organizations.” The last financial report we found for the Craigslist Foundation showed six employees.

“We owe a special thanks to Craigslist for ten years of generous financial support and partnership, and for lending its name to our efforts,” said Luckow’s note, which was posted on Craigslist Foundation.org, along with a FAQ.

“This decision in no way impacts Craigslist Inc.’s business or the plans of Craig Newmark’s relatively new initiative, craigconnects.org,” the FAQ noted. CraigConnects.org was an initiative that Newmark launched last year to promote connections among various charitable causes and to provide links for people who want to donate to the causes Newmark supports.

The foundation is expected to close by the end of March.

Nick Wells, marketing manager for Brand Republic Jobs, comments that: “We appreciate how competitive the recruitment market place is becoming, with job seekers demanding new services to be able to fit job-seeking into their busy daily lives. iPhone access allows job-seekers to keep up with their job searches whilst on the move, finding (and applying for) jobs quickly and easily.”

To put it into context, Brand Republic is the content site and job portal for Haymarket Media’s business arm, with marketing and advertising titles such as Campaign, Marketing and Media Week. So, this is a highly tech-friendly, media-savvy target group.

That said, as early adopters, the target audience is not new to smartphones. So, the scale of growth in the way they are using their mobiles, is a telling indicator of the possible shape of things to come for employment portals.

Se Loger has considerable ad inventory across its sites and in particular for tablet and smartphones which is probably what David Labrosse, Marketing Director at Groupe SeLoger.com has in mind when he promises that “In 2012, our main focus will be on developing special campaigns to provide an even better response to advertisers’ digital needs”.