Neil Salvage serves as EVP of advertising at IAC's Citysearch. For years, Citysearch was the go-to place for nightlife, restaurant and other local business info, complete with user reviews and curated editorial content. The company built its business upon being a resource for local business owners -- many with no previous online presence -- offering sponsored listings, discounts and couponing services, and even helping them create online video spots.

But Citysearch is facing headwinds on both sides of the business. On the consumer end its biggest competitor is Yelp, though Google is creeping in on that territory with the launch of its Place Pages (per paidContent). On the business side, local online ad firms like ReachLocal, Yodle and MerchantCircle are targeting small business owners in need of both search traffic and an overall online presence. We talked to Salvage about how Citysearch's new "CityGrid Complete" offering is aimed at helping the company take back market share on both fronts.

digiday:DAILY: How is "CityGrid Complete" different than the ad products Citysearch previously offered to local business owners? 

Neil Salvage: Merchants have always had the choice of paying for a sponsored listing or just maintaining a free account. In January, we launched CityGrid as a way to extend our network, get more visibility for the merchants, and also help other online publishers. CityGrid lets developers pull our business owners' content into their mobile apps, as well as onto other Websites, and then business owners could pay for conversions -- clicks or calls -- regardless of whether the leads came from their Citysearch.com listing or on a partner site. Partner sites get paid on a CPC basis.

CityGrid Complete adds SEO and SEM to the mix. So now, a merchant can get sponsored listings, get their content syndicated across our network of over 100 web and mobile sites -- and if they have their own Website -- make sure it's optimized to deliver the most value for that traffic. They also get access to a dashboard that lets them optimize their ad campaigns. The goal is to really be a "one-stop shop" for merchants, as cliched as that sounds.

It doesn't sound cliched as much as it sounds like a shot across the bow at companies like ReachLocal and Yodle. Are they your competitors now?

We actually have reseller agreements with both of them. They're publisher partners; so if Yodle has merchants that we aren't working with for example, their traffic comes across our network and vice versa. It does set us up on the SEM and SEO side to compete -- but we think the opportunity in the small business market is so large there's room for all three of us. Google generates a huge amount of paid and organic search traffic for local businesses, but the other traffic comes from thousands of local sites. That long tail is the pocket that no one is looking at, and that's where we want to hit. 

So is it a preemptive strike at Yelp?

We have a ton of respect for what Yelp has done on the consumer end in terms of traffic and aggregating reviews. One could hypothesize that [Yelp] might need to head in this direction to generate revenue in the long-term, but launching CityGrid Complete was more about us recognizing a business opportunity than trying to compete with them.

How does Citysearch's investment in Utah-based search firm OrangeSoda fit in? Can you shed light on whether it was a majority stake?

I can't disclose financial details. But I can say that we knew we were missing the SEO component especially. A merchant's Citysearch profile can rank really well -- and the CityGrid network can drive traffic and conversions back to it -- but that doesn't translate into traffic on their own Website, which some merchants really wanted.

The OrangeSoda investment gives us access to organic search optimization technology and paid search campaign management tools, and it also lets us offer merchants SEM and SEO services in a way that's easy to understand: You pay for this many ads, you choose these kinds of conversions, you get a detailed report. Instead of needing to monitor paid listings, mobile ads, yellow pages ads and click-to-call reports separately, they get a single dashboard, and access to packages in some cases for less than $1,000 per month.

By some accounts, the last time you really expanded your premium offerings was when you added online video services. Does CityGrid include video optimization, and can you shed light on how well merchants have taken to adding video to their listings?

The video listings and CityGrid Complete are two separate things. Merchants pay a production fee if they want us to create a video and add it to their profile, but long-term, we're definitely thinking about optimization and syndicating the video content across the network. As for adoption, what I can say, is that in a given month, thousands of merchants sign up to add video to their listings, so we think the video offering has been well-received.