Local Media Buying

Balanced ad spending

Monday, March 15, 2010 by Andrew Piron

Recently I saw an article on Forbes.com about 2010 advertising trends. The prediction was for digital advertising to surpass printed advertising this year. While we all have seen this trend developing for years, it is sure to have an impact on local advertising.

All too often, I am seeing local advertisers take advantage of only a few local marketing tactics - mainly print. I guess I am a bit opinionated from my years in digital advertising and seeing the measurable results that it provides, but I always scratch my head and wonder why it has taken so long for local marketers to balance their media buys between digital and print.

When local marketers engage in local media buying services with Balihoo, they are often given a very diverse mixture of media representative of their budget. Whenever we hear success stories from the local level, it is usually from a business that has taken a balanced approach to buying media.

While we've all seen this shift coming, I think this is a big moment when the digital advertising spending surpasses print. Don't get me wrong - print is still very effective and useful; in fact, we recommend it highly. To me, it is nice to see more balance in the advertising world.

Starting Up: Tough times are the right time for an Integrated Marketing Plan

Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

Note: This post originally appeared on the old Balihoo blog on 01/26/09

Balihoo’s Director of Media Buying Katie Bergerud wrote the below article for the Idaho Statesman’s ‘Starting Up’ series early last year. Katie shares her abundant knowledge and provides useful information for any local business trying to determine how to market during this formidable economic time.

Read her full article here:

Starting Up: Tough Times are the Right Time for an Integrated Marketing Plan

Originally Published: February 26, 2009

One of my favorite mantras is, “The greatest fortunes are made in down markets.” A reason for this is that as an economy decelerates, the cost of goods and services required to build a company correspondingly decreases. Among these costs are the media space and advertising services required to market your company.

Savvy marketers know that during a recession, their competitors will reduce marketing expenses, thereby creating an opportunity to grab market share at a relatively low cost. While advertising costs are down today, over the past few years media options have grown exponentially and become more sophisticated. So you should take this downturn as an opportunity to refurbish your marketing strategy.

My company, Balihoo, offers software and services that allow franchisees to market locally. We have a bird’s-eye view of marketing trends and a wealth of experience helping companies leverage the down market to boost sales.

There is no universal marketing strategy that I can advocate. Every company has to reach different audiences and offer varying messages, thus you will need to develop your own plan. However, I can offer one general approach in light of this economy and the modern advertising tools you have at your disposal: Build an integrated marketing plan, negotiate the heck out of it, measure performance, and adjust your media mix accordingly.

Now is the time to build a marketing plan that uses multiple, coordinated advertising media - otherwise known as an integrated plan. You know your demographic best, so select media that give you best access to your target audience. Further, your plan should have clear goals and measurable objectives aligned with your strategy. Ensure you differentiate between brand-building tactics, which should have longer-term objectives and measurements, and direct response tactics, which will yield shorter-term results and different metrics to measure them.

Ad sellers are caught in the same economic pinch as you - they have goals to meet and abundant competition, and they will negotiate. Shop around for the best advertising rates, which may mean exploring new media. For example, even if you’ve never advertised on radio, it doesn’t hurt to see what radio stations are offering. So long as that medium offers adequate access to your demographic, such exploration may lead to a more cost-effective medium.

Build a strategy that puts return on investment first and construct metrics that measure performance. An important first step is to choose media that allow you to measure performance whether it’s through an online tool, report or service offered by the media vendor, or through tactics you implement, like varying phone numbers or referral codes in different ads.

While tracking results by medium is important, with an integrated campaign you’ll need to measure results holistically across all activities to know when one activity might be affecting another. For example, if you are concurrently running Internet and newspaper ads, a significant portion of your leads could come from Web searches people conduct after seeing your newspaper ad. Failing to account for this could make you over-value online advertising and misappropriate ad dollars in the future. Tracking these interactions will be challenging, but to see the whole picture you should combine your per-medium metrics with old-fashioned customer feedback. Ask customers what first drove them to your business.

The advertisement itself is as important as the medium you choose. Whenever possible, test different ads within the same medium to measure which is more effective. As you see different approaches or media winning over others, be ready to reallocate ad dollars to the winning combination. Perhaps the best advice I can give is to stick to your plan despite the recession. By advertising when others aren’t, you will be able to relatively increase your brand awareness, then leverage it to gain even more market share once consumers start to spend again.

Katie Bergerud recently relocated from Seattle to join Balihoo in Boise, where she is director of media buying.

She can be reached at kbergerud@balihoo.com.

Starting Up is a series published on Thursdays. The columns grew from discussions between the Statesman and local tech and entrepreneurial leaders and are coordinated by Julie Howard, a marketing specialist for the Idaho Department of Commerce. Reach her at julie.howard@commerce.idaho.gov.

Local Internet Marketing - Status Update

Friday, March 5, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Good article from ClickZ here reporting on a BIA/Kelsey report that scopes the local internet marketing landscape.

The net result is that the report expects to see local internet marketing and advertising grow about 19% through 2014 and will be 25% of total local advertising.

Whether you're a national brand trying to help your local affiliates be successful or you're a local business looking at your marketing plan, you should take a long look at your local store marketing strategy in light of these numbers.

Are you prepared to respond to this shift? Do you have the creative and strategy/implementation pieces in place to keep pace with this industry trend?

Local media buying and local media planning are changing dramatically and it's critical that you're aware of these changes and are responding correctly.

Balihoo can help. Check out our Local Marketing Automation whitepaper or contact us and let's discuss how we can help keep your business on the forefront of marketing effectiveness.

Attention Media Vendors/Warren Buffet: Don't Forget The Little Guys Interested in Local Advertising/Investing

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Alex Fascilla

Warren Splits Berkshire Stock With One Swift Move of His Hand

As of the writing of this blog on February 26th, 2010, one share of Berkshire Hathaway stock will set you back approximately $119,010. That's for one share. Some think (Jim Cramer, relax, I can already see you getting all 'Mad Money' on me concerning Berkshire: "Buffet's a pretentious hack!" you yell) you'd need some major time to see meaningful gains on a single share of stock that's as expensive as that. Typically, that'd be correct. But that share would have cost you about $101,751 on January 26th 2010... a price just barely out of reach of what I could have afforded on my media buyer's salary. Sarcasm aside, really a pretty nice return on a single share that costs as much as most people's entire portfolios.

"But what about us little guys, Mr. Buffet? Can't you, nay, won't you just split the stock so we can own a little piece of Berkshire? ...Please?" Traditionally, Mr. Buffet has responded with, "No." See, he prefers "owners" rather than "traders". Someone in it for the long haul. Like him. Someone who wants to enjoy making that first life-changing gain when they're too old to enjoy it. That was, of course, the case until Jan 20th, when shareholders (all 12 of their super-rich asses) approved a 50-1 split of the stock. The price of one of these Class-B shares? As of today, about $79. Dammit, still out of reach!

Let's focus on the "little guy" in this example. Let's pretend Berkshire's Class A stock (the really expensive one) is a major metropolitan newspaper like Portland's The Oregonian. Let's also pretend that the "little guy" is a store owner with a single store in the Portland DMA--Designated Market Area--engaged in local advertising that wants to place an ad in The Oregonian. (Also, before our director of media buying jumps all over me, we're going to need to pretend there isn't such thing as wasted reach).

Previously, it would have been cost-prohibitive for this local advertiser to engage with The Oregonian--much like it was for me to buy that share of BRK.A back in January. However, The Oregonian, realizing they were losing potential business with these single-shop store-owners, effectively 'split' their paper, creating zoned editions that only go to certain zip codes and feature ads that are more geared toward those in those particular zip codes. The Oregonian essentially issued some Class B stock! The result is cheaper placements, better-targeted local advertising for clients, increased ad sales (and hopefully subsequent increased sales for their advertisers), and excellent fodder for a blog such as this.

Local store marketing and the ensuing media planning strategy for one that owns a single store in a metro area as large as Portland will never be easy. But when media vendors adapt and generate creative ways to "give the little guys a shot", all benefit. Oh, also, Mr. Buffet, how about some Class C? I know our tax brackets are so disparate you'd think I lived in Cambodia, but something in the $10-$15 dollar range would be perfect. See you at the shareholders meeting!

The Un-Homepage Homepage

Friday, February 26, 2010 by Kelly Mason

This last week, while in a meeting about how we can design our homepage so that it is more usable, our CEO Pete Gombert said something totally blew my mind: "Do we really need a homepage?"

Let me take you back a few weeks. I've been gathering feedback from various different sources, and then reviewing and compiling that feedback with one goal: To come up with a more usable, relevant homepage for our users. So to hear that statement as I was wrapping up my quest made me feel...dizzy. You know the feeling when you think you've thought of everything and then you're hit upside the head with something - simple.

But it got me thinking - what is the function of the homepage? I set out to look at some other homepages for inspiration.

Is it a place to promote yourself and others? All I can say is, I hope not. Although for some sites, that seems to be the case. I think of www.evite.com. 'Evite' became a common noun overnight, like, "Did you get my evite?" and I just received an evite for a moving party, like bring your trucks and your tie-downs, which isn't a party at all, so the uses for this site are broadening.
The first time I came to the site I was expecting a site that your grandmother could use, based on some of the not-so-technically-savvy people who had sent me evites. But unfortunately, it was hard to tell the difference between the basic evite function, and the many ads on their site. It was hard to tell what would walk me through the process, and what would open a new tab and shoot me off to some other site I didn't want in the first place.
Even on our own ad builder software homepage, it seems that we took up a lot of space promoting the client - but why? One user told me in their feedback that they didn't understand why the brand was trying to advertise to their own franchisees. They were already sold on the brand - now they just need local marketing ideas in order to promote it to the consumer!

Well maybe, then, the homepage is a way to direct and guide users in the path they should take. This is the premise I have been going on. As the experts in local media buying, and the creators of this ad builder software, it is our job to guide and direct users in their local advertising. But the question is, if we already know where they should go, why not just take them there?
Take a look at the music site Grooveshark. The homepage is one big search box. You can see there are other functions along the left-hand side, but rather than selecting an option that says Search for Songs, or Start my Playlist, it just gives me a search box. I know what to do with that.
It goes without saying that building a campaign using ad builder software is quite a bit more complicated than building a playlist of songs, however, there is something to be said for that kind of simplicity, and for removing unnecessary steps for our users so that they can reach their goal more quickly.

The answer to my previous question may be in the name itself - homepage. Whether you go with a traditional homepage or the un-homepage homepage, users like the idea of getting back where they started. Whether they get there via a Go Home link or the repetitive back button - it's a comfort zone and users don't have to commit to any decision, because they can always go back.

My lesson was this: we have been thinking too traditionally when it comes to a homepage. We thought of the homepage as the place where all 'important' functions should live. So anytime we built something new and it was deemed important, we wanted to shove it onto the homepage, thinking that that's they way we would ensure users wouldn't miss it. Well, they do.
What we should really be thinking about is how can we guide our users so that they have the best chance of meeting their local store marketing goals. No two sites are exactly alike, and no one knows how to get the most out of our ad builder software like we do, so why not pass a little of that along to our users?

Stay tuned to see a new and improved homepage!

Are Advertising Demographics Dead?

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by Tiffany Schrenk

I recently ran across the attached article entitled, "Are Demographics Dead?", and before reading I immediately thought to myself, "I sure hope not!" In the media world demographics are one of the most commonly used tools to guide our research and decision making during local media planning. Demographic profiles such as age, gender, household income, etc. define a certain media type and it's audience.

Luckily, as discussed in the article demographics are not dead they are just being redefined. Researchers are diving even deeper in to certain groups and subsequently identifying their life-stages. Eight have been established thus far: teens, college students, recent graduates, single no kids, new nesters, established families, married couples with no children and empty nesters. It's interesting to see the differences between these groups in terms of habits, finances, opinions, attitudes, and how all of these attributes change as individuals progress through life stages. The study's sponsors are continuing the research to more clearly define these differences in hopes of employing them in the media word. If successful it will be an incredibly valuable tool in local marketing strategy and execution of local media buying.

What Dental Advertisers Can Learn from the Kardashians

Tuesday, February 23, 2010 by Betsie Richardson

Love them or hate them, the Paris Hiltons of reality TV - famous for having a famous name - can teach us something about branding. Sure, they are clogging our news racks and cable networks with their ridiculous drama, but we must give them credit for staying top-of-mind and creating a recognizable brand. And when I say "brand," I mean face. For these celebrities in the business of being famous, their faces are their brand identity.

Advertising Age commented on how the E! network created stars from scratch with "Keeping Up With The Kardashians" in a February story: "E!'s highest-rated show in network history attracted 4 million viewers a week in its fourth season. It also banked $18.4 million in measured-ad spending during the first 11 months of 2009."

For many of the dental surgeons for whom we plan local advertising and perform local media buying, their name is their brand. Some dental clinicians feel uncomfortable with putting their own face on an advertisement, which is understandable. But they need to build brand awareness with some sort of consistency, like their logo and tag line.

Few dental clinicians who use our local advertising services understand the importance of branding in their media campaigns. They want to run advertisements that make the phone ring. Again, understandable. However, if we can learn anything from the Kardashians, it's that branding efforts provide the long-term benefits of name-awareness where lead gen can be short-sighted.

(Nobel Biocare taps into our local marketing automation software to provide a co-op advertising solution for their partner clinicians. Using our print ad builder, these clinicians tag their advertisements with their photos, logo and customize the messaging.)

Local Franchise Marketing Playbook - Download

Wednesday, February 17, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Balihoo recently released a 24-page e-book that all you franchise marketing folks will find interesting, you can download it here.

If you're involved in local advertising, local store marketing, local media buying or franchise marketing, check it out and let us know what you think!

Download the Local Franchise Marketing Playbook

Local Marketing and Media Trends for 2010

Thursday, February 11, 2010 by Marcie Blagden-Ellison

To say 2009 was a difficult year for businesses is a huge understatement — the down economy not only took its toll nationally, but posed some incredibly arduous challenges for small business owners in charge of their local store marketing efforts. Now that we are a month into the new decade and hopefully heading toward brighter times for local advertising, we've put together a presentation of including some of our local marketing and media predictions for 2010. Check it out and let us know what you think - or better yet, add your own local media buying or local advertising predictions!

Top Local Marketing And Media Trends 2010

View more presentations from Balihoo.

A Shifting Paradigm

Tuesday, February 2, 2010 by Brian King

Bing Dictionary defines the word Paradigm as:

1. A typical example of something

2. An example that serves as a pattern or model for something, especially one that forms the basis of a methodology or theory

If there is one thing that gets me all jacked up, it’s when I witness a shifting paradigm. It really gets me excited. I’m currently flying from JFK to SFO on Virgin America airlines flight #027. To those of you readers who have flown on one of Sir Richard Branson’s airlines, I think you know where I’m going with this.

To the rest of the world that places Southwest Airlines on a pedestal, it’s simply because you haven’t flown Virgin America yet. I defy you to fly Red(their clever marketing reference) and then tell me you would rather fly the same route on a flight with attendants dressed in purple polos and khakis. To you Virgin America virgins, picture relaxing in a comfortable Las Vegas ultra lounge while flying 400 miles per hour at 35,000 feet without the use of recreational hallucinogenic drugs. Comfortable black leather seats, ambient mood lighting, and smooth electronic jazz music are a few of the things they have done to bring back the comfort in flying.

I write of this amazing spectacle all while enjoying my third Ginger Ale that I ordered from a screen in the seat back in front of me, listening to a playlist that I built from the 1000+ song music library available to all passengers and occasionally gazing at the dumbfounding spectacle of ambient lights above. This compilation of words, commonly referred to as a blog, is being posted while at 35,000 feet courtesy of the onboard wireless internet available to all passengers. And because, my laptop battery would never last the 2,586 mile journey from JFK to SFO, my computer is plugged into the power outlet underneath my seat.

I’m pretty sure this wouldn’t be the case on a US Airways flight. This is a beautiful shift in the old-school airline paradigm and it reminds me exactly of what Balihoo is doing for local marketing automation. Balihoo is revolutionizing the way that businesses market at a local level by offering a state of the art co-op marketing solution, robust ad builder capabilities and local media buying. This is a complete departure from the way that companies facilitated local marketing in the past

Oh how I love shifting paradigms. Time for another Ginger Ale.

Non-Traditional Media

Friday, January 22, 2010 by Sam Martin

I had the wonderful opportunity today of presenting a media plan for a local cleaning service franchisee. The client was in a pretty unique market and really needed some creative local marketing ideas, which I was more than happy to provide. The great thing about planning locally is that the sky is the limit in terms of what

mediums we can use. I did some research and found this really cool idea that I thought meshed really well with a cleaning service, power washing your logo on city side walks! For one, it is an environmentally friendly form of advertising and two, its just a great idea.

I can't reiterate enough how great it is to bring in a new client and offer some non traditional media tactics, its what makes local media buying really fun. They are truly a great supplement to more traditional tactics like television and local internet marketing.

Back at Last

Friday, January 22, 2010 by Katie Bergerud

I had no idea how reliant we were on HGTV and The Food Network for our local media buying

and local advertising plans. The fact that they deliver awesome audiences that rival network television and the fact that they can be zoned down to a neighborhood makes them a staple in our world. That was until recently when working on a plan in New York. In case you haven’t heard Cablevision and Scripps Network have been disputing agreements over carriage fees in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. Finally, resolution has been made and we can move forward with timely media planning efforts in the New York area. Thank goodness the Barefoot Contessa and Devine Design are back.

Driving Success at the Local Level

Thursday, January 21, 2010 by Pete Gombert

Marketing is part science and part art. Neither can succeed without the other and it is incumbent upon anyone who relies on marketing to remember that.

We recently launched a campaign for a healthcare client that had just the right amount of art and science. This was a terribly exciting campaign for us because we were responsible for all aspects of the initiative – from creative concepting, through production, media planning, media buying, trafficking of creative, results tracking and post buy analysis. Typically we are handed creative, or have specific media guidelines that we must work under and it can be restricting to the team. In this case we owned it all and the execution was damn near perfect if I don’t say so myself.

Was the creative perfect from an Art perspective? No, but it was damn good and was done at the right price. And through leveraging our technology is now fully customizable and available for execution in all 210 DMA’s around the country.

Was the media buy scientifically analyzed eight ways from Sunday to ensure the exact right reach and frequency for the given target and market? No, but it was carefully analyzed using syndicated and proprietary research and planned with reach and frequency targets that made good sense for the creative and overall campaign strategy.

Now here is the kicker – the campaigns costs were roughly 1/3^rd of what they would have been with a traditional agency and the results have far exceeded this customers expectations. Here is the other kicker, this is a small business – not some behemoth that cut their budget from $3 million to $1 million. We took the costs from $75k to $25k and far outperformed expectations. Leveraging our Local Marketing Automation technology and media buying expertise of Balihoo (science) with the creative concepting and production capabilities (art) of our creative department we nailed what is the future of local marketing – technology enabled integrated campaigns. Damn that is nice!

KFC Franchise Marketing Blunder

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Interesting article in Blue Mau Mau about KFC Franchisees filing a lawsuit to maintain marketing control.

In a nutshell, the story goes: KFC introduced a new menu item, Kentucky Grilled Chicken, and part of that introduction was to offer a free in-store sample. They were crafty enough to get that offer mentioned on the Oprah Winfrey show, which caused an overload of requests at the store level. The franchisees were unhappy and the customers who were turned away were also unhappy. Lawsuits abounded.

I'll avoid for now the legal side of this issue and instead talk a bit about something that we discuss frequently here at Balihoo: franchisee empathy. From our perspective, a franchisor that feel franchise empathy takes the time and the challenge to truly understand the business from the local operators perspective. They understand the challenges to the business at the local level and strive to improve the day-to-day performance of their franchise locations.

In our experience, when this franchisee empathy exists in a franchise system, the net result is a consolidated, clear effort from national to local. In terms of franchise marketing, this means that messaging and tactics are supported from national to local media and marketing efforts. When local store marketing activities support the national brand message, everyone wins (including, by the way, the customer).

A franchisor that discounts franchisee engagement or buy-in is missing a huge opportunity - the ability to align local marketing strategy with their national efforts. When this alignment exists, the franchise brand realizes significantly additional value as the franchisees align their local media buying and planning efforts with that of the nation brand - dramatically amplifying any message. Isn't this what we should all strive for?

The Big Picture

Tuesday, January 12, 2010 by Andrew Piron

I am lucky. I have one of the most interesting and exciting roles an internet start-up guy could ask for. As part of Balihoo's program management team, I get to work with all of our clients within their local advertising and marketing efforts. I spend a good amount of time traveling to our client's offices and learning how they are trying to overcome the challenges of local marketing, and of course, integrating Balihoo services and our software platform to make their marketing efforts easy, effective and measurable.

I am always impressed with our clients and the way that they think about strategic marketing initiatives. While most of our clients have great national brand exposure, we are fortunate to work with them to develop a good sense for local marketing ideas and how to complement them with national brand advertising within local markets.

Today, I was at a training session for one of our clients (not sure if I am allowed to say their name on the blog, so will remain nameless for now). I presented to a room of 80 or so regional operations and sales staff. Usually presentations to a group this size go very well but generally don't have high interaction level of Q&A - not this time. I have never had more questions from a group that size. I was shocked at how attentive and inquisitive they were around Balihoo, its local media buying services and the related local marketing services that we offer.

While on the plane flying back home, I thought about why this was - and wondered why there was such a positive energy level in the room. As much as I would like to say it was my presentation skills, that was definitely not the reason. It became clear to me that this particular company gets it....they see the big picture (and the small picture), and it is clear that they drive the messaging and importance around local marketing deep into their regional operations staff.

I was impressed today, and am always reminded that without the big picture and constant reinforcement and messaging from corporate leadership there is liability that the execution down into the local level will be compromised. Here's to the big picture and good leadership!

The Secret to Local Media Buying

Monday, January 11, 2010 by Shane Vaughan

Local media buying is fundamental component of the local marketing automation solution we provide our customers. On a daily basis we literally work with hundreds of marketers buying and placing local advertising across the country. For those businesses that choose to do their own local media buying, we have a single piece of advice that should drive all of your local marketing and media decisions:

Buy your local advertising, don't be sold.

Time and again we see local businesses locked into long-term advertising contracts that don't make sense for their business. They get wrapped up in low per-spot prices, "freebies" and very talented salespeople who always have tickets to the game for them.

Local business owners are often so busy with running their business, that they end up spending their advertising dollars with the first reasonable sounding alternative that walks in the door. Before you spend a dollar with any media outlet, ask them to provide their top 3 competitors in the market, then reach out to each of those competitors and find out what they offer and at what price. This simple step can save you tremendous amounts of wasted advertising dollars.

Convention Successes

Saturday, January 9, 2010 by Meghann Splittgerber

Last week, I had the privilage of attending the Carpet One and Flooring America convention in

Washington DC. It was such a valuable time to meet the different members and many clients that I work with on a daily basis. I believe it makes a dramatic difference to have face-to-face interaction and helps build repore with clients.

Balihoo offers flooring fanchisers marketing software tools to make their local store advertising affordable, easy and effective. It was exciting to help the members learn to use the software. And beyond that, it was great to be able to offer our local media buying solutions at a cost for any budget large or small.

2009 - The Year For Online Advertising

Tuesday, January 5, 2010 by Sam Martin

Local internet marketing was a pretty big deal, being the "only advertising category not to see major declines in 2009" and as I reflect on my first full year of local media buying i couldn't agree more. I saw our clients start filtering dollars from traditional media to search and display along with my recommendations undoubtedly incorporated a consistent search campaign through the year. Online advertising "did sustain its first year-to year advertising revenue loss in seven years, it began to bounce back in the second half, becoming one of just two media categories (the other being cable) to see growth during the third quarter. That resurgence will continue in 2010, when spending will rise 5.5 percent, to $23.6 billion." This quote was taken from a really interesting article in Media Life Magazine that I encourage you to check out, as it gives a really strong recap of both internet and social website marketing successes in 2009.

As we look forward to 2010 internet marketing will continue to morph and maximize itself in the form of online video advertising. Giants like Apple, have already started getting into it and "if Steve Jobs does to TV a fraction of what he did to music with iTunes, life will be changed." Online video advertising is a pretty exciting concept and it will be interesting as a media buyer to start looking at its opportunities. Should be an exciting and challenging year, but I'm ready for it!

Hyperlocal Local Advertising Competition Heats Up

Tuesday, December 8, 2009 by Shane Vaughan

Note: This post originally appeared on the old Balihoo blog on 11/24/09 by Marcie Blagden

It’s no big secret that 2009 has been dismal for those in the advertising industry. With that said, local advertising is expected to end 2009 with a 12% increase over 2008 (according to a five-year forecast from Borrell Associates). Despite this growth, Borrell predicts that things will get tougher in 2010, when local online sales see just a 5% growth over 2009 figures.

This slowdown is predicted to occur because the market is approaching saturation and the “wave many locally focused media companies have been riding for the past several years has peaked.”

This report also indicates that the next waves of growth in the local advertising online industry will be seen in online promotions and mobile advertising.

The Borrell Associates report reveals that while mobile is not likely to play a huge role (the firm estimates that local buys will comprise only 20% of all mobile advertising) it is a category worth keeping an eye on because of the numerous viable applications it could potentially provide local marketers (couponing, mobile directory advertising, sponsored text messages, etc.).

With companies such as PBS, ESPN, AOL, Huffington Post, The Knot, Microsoft, Yahoo and numerous others reportedly planning to immerse themselves in local ad sales the local game in 2010 could really heat up. In regard to online promotions, smaller locally focused companies will likely follow a few years behind the spending patterns of national advertisers by expanding their use of online promotions. This change will likely give smaller companies (with presumably smaller budgets) greater direct access to their customers -which could potentially reduce their reliance on media companies and help them spread their marketing budgets to more successfully and frequently reach their local advertising customers. Local media buying clearly is changing.