Kevin Doyle, SVP, GM Apartments.com presents check to Ed Shurna, exec director, Chicago Coalition for the Homeless.

An Apartments.com spokesperson just told us that in its hometown of Chicago, Ill. more than 100,000 people were homeless in 2011, and in the US 3.5 million are homeless. So, Apartments.com solicited nationwide participation and greater attention through its  “Raising Awareness. Taking Action: A Campaign to Help End Homelessness” Facebook initiative.

As part of the campaign, Apartments.com promised to donate $1 to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless for every new “LIKE” it received on Facebook  from November 1, 2011 – December 31, 2011.  February 2 Apartments.com SVP and GM Kevin Doyle  presented a check for $15,000 to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. 

“The relationship touched everyone involved especially the Coalition as they rely on donations and grants to serve the Chicago area,” the spokesperson told us by email.

Here’s the announcement: 

APARTMENTS.COM DONATES $15,000

TO CHICAGO COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS

Facebook Campaign Generates Awareness and Funds for Local Charity

CHICAGO—(February 2, 2012) — Apartments.com presented a check for $15,000 to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless yesterday at the culmination of their “Raising Awareness. Taking Action: A Campaign to Help End Homelessness” Facebook initiative.  As part of the campaign, Apartments.com promised to donate $1 to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless for every new “LIKE” it received on Facebook from November 1, 2011 – December 31, 2011.

“In every aspect, this campaign was a huge success. We received overwhelming positive feedback from our Apartments.com staff and customers, as well as the general public,” said Kevin Doyle, senior vice president and general manager of Apartments.com.  “We know $15,000, by itself, won’t bring an end to homelessness, but we hope it helps the Coalition to be able to continue the monumental good they do each and every day.  It was an honor for our organization to be able to do our small part on behalf of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless this past holiday season.”

The Chicago-based advocacy group was selected as the beneficiary of this inaugural campaign as the leading voice for the homeless in the city of Chicago, where Apartments.com is headquartered. It was estimated that last year more than 100,000 people suffered from homelessness in Chicago¹ and an estimated 3.5 million people each year experience homelessness². Apartments.com designed the initiative to generate nationwide participation and help bring greater attention to this widespread issue across America.

“Chicago Coalition for the Homeless was founded over 30 years ago on one simple premise: that in a just society, housing is a human right.  To that end, we work with families, youths and adults, advocating to better lives through access to shelter, housing, jobs and schools,” said Ed Shurna, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless. “The staff of Apartments.com clearly knows the importance of housing and we are grateful to have their generous support.”

The Apartments.com campaign, “Raising Awareness. Taking Action: A Campaign to Help End Homelessness” aims to heighten visibility and bring in funds to benefit organizations that advocate for and serve the homeless. ”Like” the Apartments.com Facebook page for updates on next year’s “Raising Awareness. Taking Action: A Campaign to Help End Homelessness” initiative.

About Chicago Coalition for the Homeless

Chicago Coalition for the Homeless is a non-profit organization that works with people hurt by homelessness. Guided by its belief that housing is a human right in a just society, the coalition seeks to prevent and end homelessness by addressing its root causes. Its community organizers offer monthly outreach at more than 20 emergency shelters and transitional housing facilities across Chicago—reaching out to mothers with children, unaccompanied youths, children and teens struggling to access public schools, ex-offenders and low-wage workers. For more information or to donate to the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, visit their website. 

About Apartments.com
Apartments.com  is a leading national apartment Internet listing subscription service with more than 50,000 unique addresses representing millions of rental units from managed properties, newspaper classifieds and for-rent-by-owner properties. By incorporating the most relevant products to reach renters including personalized searches and highly visual ads featuring live chat, real-time rent, online video walk-through demonstrations, professional photography, a mobile website and iPhone and Android app, Apartments.com creates easy access to its listings. Providing unmatched exposure to its advertisers through an intuitive name, strategic search engine placements, featured partnerships including Yahoo! Real Estate, Univision and more than 120 newspaper websites and innovative emerging media, Apartments.com reaches millions of renters nationwide, driving both qualified traffic and highly-engaged renters to leasing offices nationwide. Apartments.com is a division of Chicago-based Classified Ventures, LLC. The Apartments.com network of apartment rental websites includes Apartment Home Living , a leading social media apartment website distinguished by a “live for fun” community experience, proprietary lifestyle matching and local living guides to help renters find their perfect place to live.

RentGeek asked for our age, gender, marital status, number of kids, income (we skipped that one), type of property we’re interested in, how we get around (this being Vancouver, “car sharing” was an option), pets, where we eat (at home or in restaurants), whether we work out or do yoga (we made ourselves sound a little buffer than maybe we actually are), what kind of coffee we drink, what we do on Friday nights (clubbing it or movie at home?) and, of course, how much we are willing to spend.

We were then presented with three communities, each with a Google Map and recommended properties. You can see how your survey affected the rankings; review a demographic breakdown according to the 2006 Canadian census; and check out a number of “hip” reviews of the neighborhoods by locals (we tried to chat with them, but RentGeek is not a real estate/dating site, at least not yet).

All in all, the experience was easy and we left with the feeling that RentGeek kind of did read our minds, even if it was all just algorithms. It’s certainly a model worth considering stateside.

Wetzel explains that the new name minimizes confusion between the B2C job board offer and the group’s wider strategy. There is a hint here as to what that is since Wetzel notes that the new name “avoids being limited by geography, sector or topicality” suggesting that Evenbase’s sights are set on markets beyond the U.K.

The Evenbase stable includes Jobsite but also niche and vertical job boards such as Oilcareers, NHS Jobs and multi-posting software provider Broadbean all of which will be organized as four business units each with a Managing Director.  Those units are Job Boards (MD Mike Wall), Business Solutions (under Heather Wozniak), Software (based on Broadbean and run by Dan Martin and Kelly Robinson), and New Ventures (MD Ray Duggins).

All of these units will report to Keith Potts who moves from Group MD to CEO of Evenbase, a role change that will see his priorities shift from operations to strategy.

• There are about 13.6 million occupied homes in Canada. Of these, 9.6 million are owner-occupied, including 5.8 million with mortgages and 3.8 million without mortgages.
• The total value of owner-occupied housing in Canada is estimated at $3 trillion.
• Mortgages and lines of credit for these homes amount to $982 billion. That means Canadians have about $2 trillion in home equity, equal to 68 per cent of the total value of housing.
• Two per cent of homeowners (about 150,000 to 170,000) may have negative equity in their homes.
• Twelve percent of mortgage borrowers said they would have some problems if interest rates rose by even less than one percent.
• The average dwelling value (as estimated by the occupants) is $316,000.

The full report can be downloaded here.

The new paper, called Stuttgarter Wochenende, will appear on Saturdays. Zeitungsgruppe Stuttgart also publishes the daily papers Stuttgarter Nachrichten and Stuttgarter Zeitung and the weekly classifieds paper Stuttgarter Wochenblatt, which appears on Wednesdays.

Read the full announcement (in German) here.

CV Online operates in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Alma Media said in a media statement. (Read complete statement in English.) In 2011 CV Online generated revenue of about €2 million (30 percent up on 2010), with an operating margin of about €600,000. From today, CV Online will fall under the segment Marketplaces at Alma Media.

Interesting point: the Hungarian version of CV Online belongs to Austrian media group Vorarlberger Medienhaus. Look at their huge portfolio of sites here.

“CV Online employs 34 people and no jobs will be lost. The company is market leader in Latvia and Lithuania, and shares market leadership in Estonia. A total of 430,000 registered job seekers have submitted their CVs in the CV Online databases,” Alma Media said.

“The acquisition of CV Online is part of Alma Media’s strategy to seek growth from digital services and internationalisation,” the company said.

As restructurings go, this one is also not bloodless (read here).

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.

In part this is a reflection of general trends in the market, but it is also the return on the company’s efforts in the digital sector, including digital direct marketing services for real estate agents.

According to the company, January 2012 is already looking good with 146 new contracts signed for clients online. Acheter-Louer is looking to expand its services this year notably with mobile products, but the full (and verifiable) figures won’t be published until the end of April.

A few weeks ago Berlin-based 9Flats.com came up with the good idea of pulling an investor in who can reduce its advertising costs (here). German Media Pool Venture Capital (www.germanmediapool.com), a company which provides media advertising space in exchange for shares, agreed to provide media space in exchange of an undisclosed number of shares in 9Flats.

Today Airbnb.de, the German portal of U.S-based Airbnb.com, announced it had also found an investor who can be helpful with advertising. And not just anyone: Germany’s Axel Springer Verlag.

Axel Springer acquired a small (undisclosed) stake in Airbnb for an undisclosed cash amount plus media space. For the latter, the two parties entered into “a strategic marketing partnership”, Airbnb said in a media statement. (Full statement in German.)

Airbnb was launched in the U.S. in 2008 and operates internationally, but Axel Springer will only help it with advertising space in Germany. The advertising space will be giving in “its many online and print publications”, Airbnb said.

Another tit-for-tat: Axel Springer agreed to give Airbnb.de an “exclusive partnership” in the accommodation rental section of Axel Springer’s real estate portal Immonet.de. (A few weeks ago 9Flats and ImmobilienScout24.de concluded a “strategic cooperation agreement”. Then 9Flats managing director Stephan Uhrenbacher told Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) ImmobilienScout24 would, among others, help 9Flats win new inventory, ie. listings.)

9Flats was launched in Germany last year and is slowly internationalizing. At this stage, Airbnb is the more international player, with a presence in 19,000 cities and 192 countries (Airbnb statistics).

Apart from Axel Springer, the following venture capital firms are invested in Airbnb: Andreessen Horowitz, DST Global, General Catalyst, Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital and SV Angels.

Gunnar Froh, Airbnb country manager for Germany, said his firm was happy to have gained Axel Springer as an investor and „close partner in future “ in Germany.

Venture capital firm T-Venture invested a multi-million euro amount in 9Flats.com recently. ImmobilienScout24.de is Germany’s biggest real estate platform and Immonet.de the second biggest. Both T-Venture and ImmobilienScout24 belong to German telecommunication giant Deutsche Telekom.

  IAC, which operates more than 50 Internet businesses across 30 countries, just reported impressive quarterly growth in areas that include search, Match.com and ServiceMagic. 

NEW YORK— February 1, 2012—IAC (Nasdaq: IACI) released fourth quarter 2011 results today.

• Q4 revenue and Operating Income Before Amortization reached record levels, with strong double-digit growth for the 8th consecutive quarter. Operating Income Before Amortization grew 88% to $90.9 million, which included the write-off of $23.0 million in deferred revenue related to the Meetic acquisition.

• Free Cash Flow for the twelve months ended December 31, 2011 was $332.4 million, up 32% over the prior year, while cash flow from operating activities attributable to continuing operations was $372.4 million, up 9% over the prior year.

• IAC repurchased 4.6 million shares of common stock between October 29, 2011 and January 27, 2012 at an average price of $41.70 per share, or $191.2 million in aggregate.

• IAC declared a quarterly cash dividend of $0.12 per share to be paid on March 1, 2012 to stockholders of record as of the close of business on February 15, 2012.

• Q4 Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS more than doubled from the year ago period.

• Q4 net income and GAAP EPS comparisons were impacted by certain discrete items as further described herein. Collectively, the net impact of these items benefited Q4 2010 net income and GAAP EPS by $77.4 million and $0.80 per share, respectively, but had no impact on Adjusted Net Income and Adjusted EPS.

Here is the complete release.

The latest cuts are effective as of this Friday.

The company is emphasising digital growth and investing in new self-service technology to provide more efficient service for customers.

Read more at AdNews.

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.