On Demand Local Services — a.k.a the uberfication of everything — continue to expand into new local service verticals. We’re seeing everything from lawyers to weed delivery (you might need those two together). This is the topic of a report I’m writing, and a discussion point in this week’s analyst roundtable.

In addition to ODLS, there’s a report in the works on closed loop marketing by Abid Chaudhry. He discusses in the roundtable how mobile engagement creates a more cross-screen world, making offline attribution increasingly important. We hit on this theme in our last roundtable.

And Charles Laughlin discusses his report in progress on the state of the art of local ad sales. This is a fast moving topic, and a contentious one. Charles examines all schools of thought in the report, co-written by Stacey Sedbrook, including the division of traditional and digital sales forces. Another key topic.

All of these will be published in the coming weeks among other white papers, such as Peter Krasilovsky’s report on card-linked loyalty offers. Though he wasn’t able to join the roundtable, his paper joins the mix with a unique angle that aggregates data and input from the biggest players in the card-linked offers field.

The roundtable video is below and stay tuned for more video (and white papers).

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Apple has taken the crown for most profitable company in history. BIA/Kelsey Sr. Dir. of Industry Strategy & Insight Abid Chaudhry reminds us that of the 20 most profitable quarters of all time, fifteen were oil companies… the remaining five were all Apple.

Its monster Q1 was the lead off topic in an analyst roundtable today (video below). Apple’s current product picture was characterized by Chaudhry as strong growth potential in Asia where different buying patterns exist. He’s meanwhile bullish on the impending Apple Watch.

SVP and Sr. Analyst Charles Laughlin discussed YP’s latest announcement: the launch of cross-device ad targeting. This is increasingly critical in a multi-device world, and importantly brings the capability –previously celebrated by brand advertisers — down market to YP’s SMB base.

Lastly, I discussed Facebook’s mobile positioning as a preview to its Q4 earnings. The big story was its share of ad revenues that are mobile (it ended up announcing 69 percent). As its usage migrates to mobile, this revenue share is key for it to maintain confidence in public markets.

The full roundtable is below and stay tuned for another roundtable next week that will preview the research reports we are each working on in respective analyst coverage areas.

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Data, social media and simplicity: These are the things driving SMB digital marketing, according to the mid-conference takeaways of this week’s Analyst roundtable.

While in New Orleans last week for the SMB Digital Marketing conference, Charles Laughlin and I grabbed a few minutes to do our standard analyst roundtable. In this case, it was in person instead of Skype. And the subject matter is all about conference takeaways.

In the video below, we discuss how most discussions in SMB marketing haven’t changed, though they are taking new form, in step with today’s media and tech trends. For example, simplicity in SMB ad tools continues to be a universal theme, shown in Reach Local CEO Sharon Rowlands’ keynote.

We also discuss how that relates to formulating product bundles for SMBs. And how are those products priced and sold? This invoked a panel consisting of local media sales reps and managers; and conversely a session of real life SMBs who reinforced the simplicity point.

Big data was also a big topic, culminating in Axciom CEO Scott Howe’s keynote. In some ways, big data is antithetical to simplicity, given the perception that it adds complexity. So the idea is to use data to support SMBs (and the sales reps serving them) in more automated or covert ways.

Much more to come in conference video footage, including these backstage interviews, as well as session footage.

The post Analyst Roundtable: Showroom Floor Edition appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Cutting through all the Apple excitement, does Apple Pay have what it takes to finally gain the scale that other mobile payment technologies have failed to achieve? Despite Apple’s halo effect my answer is no, at least in Apple Pay’s current form.

That has a lot to do with the chicken & egg implementation challenges for NFC. More importantly, it’s the classic “solution in search of a problem,” factor that has burdened most mobile payments products to date. It needs to solve actual pain points.

This is important for local media because mobile payments have the capability of attributing the efficacy of advertising by connecting the dots from ad exposures or engagements to finished local purchases. Mobile payments are a way to close that loop.

After covering Apple Pay in a blog post last week, we sat down in our analyst roundtable format (more of an interview this time). Since we covered larger screen iPhones and their ad implications on our last roundtable, we zeroed in on Apple Pay this time.

The short interview is embedded below and we’ll carry forward the conversation next week at our SMB Digital Marketing Conference in New Orleans. Hope to see you there.

The post Video Interview: Will Apple Push Mobile Payments Mainstream? appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

What will apple announce next week? All eyes are on the tech giant as we get closer to its 9/09 press event. As we wrote last week, we’ll probably see an iPhone 6 in larger sizes. Other Rumors point to NFC and a possible smart watch..

Charles Laughin and I sat down on Friday to discuss the product rumors and more importantly, what they mean for the local media ecosystem (video below). One takeaway is that a larger screen iPhone will mean more ad inventory/real estate.

But it also goes deeper as we discuss. In the age of social sharing, tools like Instagram and Vine — increasingly being adopted by brands for content marketing and native ads — are fueled by better hardware like optics and screen size.

So advertisers of all sizes should be adaptable for ad formats that continue to develop as they follow behind the technology and the user behavior. In this case, larger screens will create a supportive environment for more multimedia based content marketing.

Of course larger screens are nothing new and this is one case where Apple is following rather than leading, considering the larger screens prevalent in the SamDroid realm. But given the iPhone’s share of mobile traffic and ad inventory, anything it does will be impactful.

Our discussion is below and stay tuned for more.

The post Analyst Roundtable: Apple Rumors Galore appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

To bundle or not to bundle; that is the question we ask to kick off this week’s analyst roundtable. Charles Laughlin, Abid Chaudhry and I discussed that and a few other topics from our respective coverage areas. The video is embedded below.

The app bundling issue is told through Facebook’s forced migration to Messenger. The question is whether users want many standalone apps or fewer multifunction apps.  The takeaway: unbundling should be done sparingly and not just because the cool kids are doing it (Facebook).

Charles Laughlin led a discussion around exclusive interviews he’s doing with local ad sales leaders. He sees a shift towards utilizing data and a “Moneyball” approach to telesales. This involves moving from traditional metrics like quantity of outbound dials made (and baseball bats).

Abid Chaudhry continued this data theme with a look at  a common question he’s answering for many BIA/Kelsey clients around better utilizing available data. This is told through the story of Pro.com, which determines home services job pricing in a very data-centric way.

Big data is actually threaded throughout all three segments, considering there’s a call for better usage metrics to determine the right app bundling strategy. This moves from the admittedly cliche “big data” trend discussion to some real tactical application in local media.

Much more of that to come, including our upcoming SMB Digital Marketing conference.

The post Analyst Roundtable: App Unbundling, Local ad Sales and Big Data appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The latest edition of BIA/Kelsey’s podcast series is brought to you by the letter Y. Yelp and YP both made notable moves this week, including earnings, product announcements and even some personnel news we uncovered. The streaming audio is embedded below.

Charles Laughlin and I discuss these items which we wrote about this week (here and here), and what they mean. Stay tuned for more roundtables and more analysts including video footage… in case you miss seeing our faces (cue joke about faces fit for radio).

We’ll gear up these key topics on the “road to New Orleans” for our SMB Digital Marketing conference next month. Yelp, YP and lots of other key players in local media will be there. We hope you will too. Email me (mbolandATbiakelsey.com) for a discount code.

The post BIA/Kelsey Podcast: Yelp and YP Make Big Moves appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

After Thinknear’s Q2 Location Score Index, it recently followed up with the Location Score Tags it promised. We discussed the principles and drivers behind Location Scoring in a podcast last month (embedded below).

The quick background on Location Scoring is to rate the accuracy of different mobile ad networks that offer location targeted ad placement. The delta between what they offer and what they give is the metric: I like to think of it as a PSA for the ad buying public.

“Location accuracy directly impacts campaign performance and enables really engaging mobile ads,” Portnoy told us this week in a follow up dialogue. “However, we know from our Location Score Index that the vast majority of impressions do not contain accurate location information and that many advertisers are spending money but not getting what they paid for.”

The follow up move with Location Score Tags takes it to the next step with a standardized measurement that can be applied to any mobile ad networks or campaign (think of it like an API). That standardization creates a sort of Klout score for mobile ad networks.

From the company’s description:

Marketers using Location Score Tags will place a small piece of tracking code (similar to a pixel tag) on the campaign creative and the campaign landing page. The location targeting data will be scored by Thinknear and the marketer will receive a report detailing the quality and accuracy of the targeting data. The analysis will allow marketers to understand the targeting accuracy of their location-based mobile campaigns.

This is important simply because of the bad practices of some ad networks which have taken a sloppy approach towards location. The result is wasted impressions (and wasted money) for advertisers who are paying a premium for location targeting… and not getting it.

“Our aim with Location Score Tags is to help bring transparency around location accuracy to the industry,” said Portnoy.

The post Scoring Location: A Conversation with Thinknear, Part II appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

What are the top trends in location based mobile content and ads? I tackled this question last week during a presentation at Mobile Marketer’s Mobile Research Summit in New York. You can see a recorded version of the presentation below (slides and voiceover).

The event featured a progression of mobile industry analysts and the top trends & innovation they’re tracking. I’ve gotten lots of requests for the slides which are available if you email me (mbolandATbiakelsey.com). Meanwhile see the video below.

It’s an admittedly long presentation (45 minutes) but you can skip to the chapters of interest using the links below. We’re watching these trends closely and this is really just a conversation starter. Email me if you’d like to go deeper.

Presentation Chapter Links

1. Mobile by the Numbers
2. Will “Local” Save the Day?
3. It’s an Offline World
4. Search, Discovery & Big Data
5. Payments: The Ultimate Attribution

The post From the BIA/Kelsey Workshop: 5 Trends Driving Location Based Mobile Content appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In all the excitement around mobile local advertising, most location based ad impressions are way off their intended target. This is according Thinknear, whose new Location Score Index, is the topic of our latest podcast interview with founder and GM Eli Portnoy (embedded below).

This is a message we’ve been hearing for a while (see “10% problem”), but is quantified further in Thinknear’s report through testing user-reported locations versus ad-network reported locations. The difference between the two — scaled to a sample of 53 million impressions — was revealed.

— The overall mobile industry scored 49 out of 100 total points for location accuracy

— 67 percent of industry ad requests included latitude and longitude data

— 34 percent of ad requests with location data were accurate to within 100 meters of the user’s true location

— 45 percent lift in mobile time-on-site metrics for campaigns leveraging top tier location data

— 30 percent to 51 percent lift in store visitation rates fore campaigns leveraging top tier location data

Excluding some of the leaders in location based ad targeting (see our post yesterday about xAd), these faulty location impressions are mostly coming from larger ad networks that are latching on to the excitement around location targeted ad relevance.

This is a double edged sword as we discuss in the podcast: The interest in location targeting is growing among advertisers… a good thing. But many publishers and ad networks are opportunistically filling that demand by “inferring” lat longs from less reliable means like reverse IP lookups.

This is a big deal, as it hampers the true performance of location based ad targeting. As we’ve been saying for years, genuine location targeted ad strategies can boost performance and return on ad spend. It’s also great for mobile publishers who can see higher premiums on their ad inventory.

But the disingenuous practices being uncovered by Thinknear’s study degrade the value of this ad inventory over time, and give location targeting a bad name. We covered this closely in our mobile ad attribution white paper and the conversation continues this week with Eli.

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