Turning the World Wide Web Into A Neighborhood Advertising Tool - Steve Yanovsky - MediaBizBloggers

Advertising online has always been considered a national, or at least a regional, media buy. You used it for your national brand to support what you were doing off-line. You could complement your television buy with banner ads to reinforce your ad message. Or, you could take the same 30 second commercial you ran on TV and run it on-line to extend your reach. But no one ever considered using the Web as a local advertising medium, like the daily newspaper.

Now, businesses are realizing that the Web can be a very local medium when it comes to advertising. Microsoft and Google never would have chased after Yelp unless they realized the power, and long term revenue potential, of local advertising on the Web. The prediction that local online advertising spending will reach almost $15 billion this year is extraordinary. Still mired in a recession, with ad budgets not back to where they were two years ago, that is a very alluring number.

So, with that in mind, companies are focusing on local online ads. Local news sites have been around for years, but the difference is that networks of these sites are now being created to serve cities and neighborhoods across the country. But one question to be asked is, can you continuously, and profitably, collect and report very local news?

Yes, there are many, many former newspaper reporters available to work on an ad hoc basis, but can they be counted on indefinitely, and is this a model for sustaining a local news site? Can these sites be the "go to" sites for residents and small business owners to find out what's happening in White Plains, New York or Edina, Minnesota?

When you take a hard look at it, doesn't all this feel like the online equivalent of local cable television? These cable systems have Web sites too. They have local news channels and extended them to the Web a long time ago.

But these local systems can't help advertisers target their media buys the way a site like Facebook® can. Facebook also helps advertisers target their buys in ways the local newspaper never could, even with zoned editions.

The introduction of the smart phone was the tipping point for local online advertising. Now, through the introduction of a continuous parade of apps, there are huge local marketing opportunities waiting to be taken advantage of.

It's time to make the most personal of media vehicles, in which users have total control of what they view, and when, into a hyper-local ad medium. This will extend to national advertisers with a very local message, or those looking to execute a very local promotion, or will be available for local businesses to market themselves in ways never before possible.

Steve Yanovsky serves as Partner at Customer Focused Solutions and can be reached at syanovsky@optonline.net

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