The Canadian classified landscape is changing again as YP Corp. which operates the 16 million business listings of Internet Yellow Pages and related services has acquired LiveDeal, Inc. In Canada LiveDeal is a joint partnership with TorStar, which they invested $4.8 million in financing in 2005. As part of the deal LiveDeal shareholders received 15,968,514 shares of YP common stock which is currently valued at $.080 US at the time of this story which makes the total deal worth just under $13 million. LiveDeal and LiveDeal.ca will remain separate entities under their new parent company but will leverage content, sales teams and technology. Online advertising has been managed for LiveDeal.ca by Toronto based Olive Canada Network.
YP plans to use LiveDeal’s innovative technology platform to converge its four principal marketing channels – directories, mobile services, classifieds and advertising/distribution networks into a first-of-its–kind, hyper-local marketing solution for businesses and consumers.
Just to clarify – Torstar Digital and Gesca Digital purchased sole ownership of LiveDeal.ca prior to the YP acquisition of LiveDeal.com. LiveDeal.com no longer has any stake/ownership of LiveDeal.ca.
LiveDeal.ca is not part of the YP acquisition, and will not share any content or sales teams.