Kelsey: Interactive Local Media 09

Ben — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:51:35 +0000

The Kelsey Group held their annual Interactive Local Media conference last week in Los Angeles, focused on the role of digital marketing in driving offline and local commerce. I didn’t make it, but there was ample Twitter and blog coverage. I posted many of the presentations from the event in the presentations section and many are worth a closer look. Reading through all the coverage there seem to be a few overarching themes:
- From the macro point of view, everything points to a significant opportunity here, high mobile phone penetration, more powerful and sophisticated devices, better mobile internet connections and experience, and the consumers strong predisposition to act offline and locally, etc
- many companies are swarming to create solutions ranging from digital out of home, to online local SEO, local display ad networks and online reputation management.
- The highly fragmented nature of the SMB market is challenging to sell into, and sales feet on the street seem to be a pre-requisite. It seems that SMBs won’t just find their own way to your online services and begin participating, you need a sales guy in the store at some point to get the ball rolling.
- as with a lot of things in this world, making offerings targeted to this market simple and easy to understand will go a long way. Many small business don’t even have a website and have never heard of Facebook or Twitter, so keep it simple!

Here are some of the top stats culled from the Twitter Streams (#ILM09) and various Internet coverage of the event.

Stat: There is a huge discrepancy between time spent on local content and advertising spent for local online advertising. If the ratio comes in line with other mediums, it’s a $30 billion market
So what? It’s potentially a $30 billion market… maybe something to pay attention to.

Stat: Last year 1.4 million companies bought search advertising versus only 44,000 that purchased online display.
So what? Well the opportunity seems to be finding a way to make it easier for those 1.4 million local companies to buy display online.

Stat: 80% of consumer dollars are spent within a 50-mile radius near their home, and 96% of consumer purchases happen in retail store environments; e-commerce is still quite small in the grand scheme of things.
So what? The opportunity to use new technologoy to help connect consumers with stores and items in the stores around them is significant.

Stat: Quick service restaurants spend $3.04B per year and only 2% goes to Internet, and according to MerchantCircle research, 60% of SMBs never heard of Facebook…..
So what? There is still a long way to go with many retail oriented segments, they’re still not online, let alone on mobile, social networking or location aware advertising.

Stat: On Yelp, 3 million of 16 million local businesses have reviews.
So What? Well if you’re one running one of those 3 million businesses, you should keep an eye on what is being said. Online reputations management systems are popping up to help make this a more quick and painless process.

Stat: currently local digital advertising is getting placed via:
Self service: 49% (presumably Google AdWords primarily)
Yellow page sales team: 24%
TV and Radio sales: 9% (SMBs preferred method)
Newpaper sales team: 8%
Ad Agencies: 8%

So what? Well as you may have expected, folks that have always sold local advertising to the local SMB market, are now also selling someone else’s digital advertising to those same customers. But many local business are buying digtital media themselves, likely out of necessity, even though they’d prefer using their TV and radio sales contacts. Looks like there may be an opportunity to provide high quality sales service selling digital advertising to the local SMB maket.

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Kelsey: Interactive Local Media 09