Recommended Reading: The LMA’s ‘Innovation Mission 2013′

Sometimes there is no substitute for dropping in on industry leaders to exchange ideas and specifically, to find out how their efforts relate to yours.

That’s what our friends at The Local Media Association have been doing the last few years with their “Innovation Mission,” a tour of top companies and industry leaders that really impact their member base of small local publishers. This year’s tour was especially top-notch, with headquarters visits to Facebook, Twitter, Google, Plug and Play Tech Center, The Denver Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The McClatchy Company, AdTaxi and Emmis Radio.

BIA/Kelsey was pleased to be part of the tour, going up to San Francisco to present our vision of verrticalization, ecommerce and transaction marketing opportunities for publishers, along with FiveStars CEO Victor Ho.

The LMA’s Nancy Lane and Pete Conti have put together an excellent report of The Tour. We all tend to live and breath this stuff, but I personally learned a lot about native advertising, digital ad agencies and Twitter ad products. In fact, the report is a field guide to the key things that small publishers (and in fact, everyone) should be thinking about in terms of their digital and mobile transition. Non-LMA members can purchase it from this link for $479.