BrightEdge plans to introduce Friday a service dubbed Local Search Management that lets marketers optimize search rankings for location-specific searches. The tool identifies variations in search performance based on geographic location of the query. It also takes into consideration the growing importance of local results. Among them, the most common search terms "coffee," "ATM," or "hotel." Prior to releasing the product, BrightEdge tested the tool across hospitality and travel search terms in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston. The results showed "huge variation" in rankings for brands, ranging from 22% to 63% per search term.

The Mobile Marketing Association named 13 new or re-elected global board members Thursday including Carolyn Everson, head of global marketing at Facebook, CNN Mobile VP Louis Gump, and GroupM CEO Rob Norman. Board members serve two-year terms starting this month. Returning board members not up for re-election include executives at companies including The Weather Channel, The Coca-Cola Company, Millennial Media and Microsoft. See the full list of new and returning members here.

This is a good time to be a social media marketing firm. On the heels of the $689 million and reported $300 million acquisitions of Buddy Media and Vitrue, smaller competitors are seeing investment dollars stream in. Besides the $15 million raised by Shoutlet, social marketing shops Unified and Identified today announced receiving funding of $14 million and $21 million, respectively. Unified landed $1o million from Conde Nast-owner Advanced Publications, with Silicon Valley Bank chipping in $4 million in debt financing. The company helps brands and agencies run online and mobile campaigns on social properties like Facebook, …

Richard Alfonsi, former VP of global display sales and strategy at Google, will join Twitter Monday as its VP of global online sales. The news announced Thursday on Twitter. This is the fourth senior sales exec hired on in the past six months. Others who joined: Shailesh Rao, VP of global revenue; Bruce Daisley, head of U.K. sales; and Stephen McIntyre, heads the Dublin office. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo on Wednesday said the social network on many days generates more revenue from its mobile platform than it does from its Web site. Worldwide ad revenues at Twitter grew 213% to …

"People pay to see what Hollywood makes and they pay to not see what Madison Avenue makes; we clearly have a lot to learn from the entertainment industry," says Pelle Sjoenell, executive creative director of Google creative shop BBH New York in a release explaining why it has set up shop in Los Angeles.

Sell-side ad platform PubMatic on Wednesday announced raising $45 million in a venture round led by August Capital and including prior investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson, Nexus Venture Partners, Helion Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank. That brings PubMatic’s total raised to date to $63 million. The company, whose platform lets large publishers manage their online inventory and optimize ad revenue, said the new financing will be used to continue its targeted acquisition strategy and strengthen its balance sheet. In March, PubMatic acquired mobile technology development MobiPrimo to expand its mobile ad offerings for publishers. Previously, it bought small ad optimization …

The Interactive Advertising Bureau has secured 2 billion impressions for a pro bono campaign aimed at explaining online behavioral advertising to consumers, the group said on Tuesday

At its fMC event in February, Facebook announced among other things that its sponsored story ads would appear in users’ mobile news feeds as well as on the desktop. But it didn’t allow for mobile-only or desktop-only buys. Today, Facebook said marketers will now be able to buy different placements for sponsored stories—ads that highlight when someone “likes” a brand or Web site, for instance--through its Ads API and Ads Power Editor tool. This allows advertisers to run sponsored stories in the news feed on the desktop, on mobile, or both, as well as on the right …

Colleen Hill, an art director at MRM Detroit, won the digital shop's "I am MRM" contest," and gets to be the agency's ambassador to the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity as a Young Lion. The contest, which asked MRM employees to submit one paragraph and one visual representation why they should be selected as the best candidate to characterize "I am MRM" at the festival. Entries were scored for passion, creativity, idea, presentation and content.

Kindle Fire sales dropped off dramatically in the first quarter as tablet buyers flocked to the third-generation iPad and Samsung Galaxy Tab. New findings released today by ChangeWave underscore the diminished demand for the Amazon tablet that sold almost 5 million units during the 2011 holiday season. Among planned tablet buyers surveyed by the research firm in May, only 8% said they’ll purchase a Kindle Fire, down from 22% in November, and about the same as the 7% that indicated a preference for the Amazon tablet in March. Nearly three quarters (73%) plan to buy an iPad, and 6% …