Local B2B news sites always make sense to us. But they have largely been an exercise in frustration, with a lot of money being thrown at them to build local journalism and sales teams. Back in the late 1990s, sites such as Localbusiness.com ran through millions of dollars in an effort to quickly launch and dominate the space.

New players have come out in recent years with business models incorporating native advertising — content-oriented advertising that contextually fits with other content. One of them is Advance Publications’ Streetwise Media.

Initially launched as an entrepreneurial local Boston site named Boston Innovation (now BostInno), the founders have honed the model — including specialized news index technology that can automatically track news releases — and are now in several markets, including Boston, Washington DC and soon, Chicago. More markets are likely to come on board in the near future. Advance bought the company in 2012 and kept the team intact, seeing clear business synergies with its more traditional Business Journals, which are in 40 markets.

CEO and co founder Chase Garbarino tells us his rollout model is to enter a market and focus on the startup community and entrepreneurship. “Once we get an audience foothold, our publications develop,” he says.

Each city varies in terms of its editorial focus. “In DC, we have four full-time writers focused on advocacy, innovation and things like that,” he says. “In Boston, we’ve had a ton of success with the college vertical.” Advertisers have come to realize they need to do more with content marketing, he adds.

Streewise has an internal team that focuses on the native advertising sales, while BizJournals sells most of the company’s traditional display ads. The key, says Garbarino, is that the native advertising format enables the company to guarantee and sell engagement.

“It is not just impressions,” he says. “We can sell a half million impressions and guarantee one percent engagement; share content on LinkedIn and Twitter; and comment on it. It is not just used on the home page.”

The site’s technology also enables targeting around specific audiences. A campaign for Bentley Business School, for instance, focused on the value of having an MBA and was targeted to 20-somethings. The company does especially well with corporate workers and young working pros. While many B2B sites are focused on automation as a way to make them economical, Garbarino says that just won’t work. “The key to the model is having a local presence. You can’t do community and local news without being part of the community.”

The post Streetwise Media: Native Ads Go Hand in Hand with Local B2B Content appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The layoffs at Patch have been met around the industry as the latest sign that hyperlocal can’t work because of the difficulties in scaling content and ad sales locally while attracting a reasonable quorum of local readers. Hale Global, the new owners at Patch, don’t believe it. And neither do the hundreds of people who make up an extended hyperlocal community, including a number of ex-Patchers who remain at least personally committed to making hyperlocal work.

Chris Jennewein has been pushing the envelope in hyperlocal since the early days of Videotex at The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Since then, we’ve followed him as he lead a series of major initiatives at Knight Ridder Digital, The San Diego Union Tribune, The San Diego News Network, The Las Vegas Sun and most recently, as Southern California’s editorial leader for Patch.

Today, Jennewein launched The Times of San Diego. Is he The Man of LaMancha, chasing the Impossible Dream? I asked him a few questions via email.

Q: People think hyperlocal will never work. What did you learn about what does work?

The challenge with hyperlocal is to match the market size with the economic opportunity. Bigger markets simply have more opportunity. We think the San Diego metropolitan area, with a population of 3.2 million, is a sufficiently large opportunity and yet still local. In fact, in today’s world regional is probably local because people commute long distances and their personal and professional networks stretch far beyond individual communities.

Q: What have you learned about San Diego as a media market in terms of hyperlocal? Pros and cons?

San Diego may be farther along in regionalization that some older markets in America. San Diegans think they live in the entire metro area, not just La Jolla or Chula Vista or Carlsbad. So a regional news source is more likely to succeed here.

Q: Is this a model you can take to other markets?

I think this is a model that would definitely work in other markets, especially in the West, but our focus is solely San Diego right now.

Q: Do you think you are directly competing with other media properties at this point? Which ones?

We’re not competing with other media but instead going after what we call “unaffiliated local news consumers.” These are people who get news from a wide variety of sources on an almost serendipitous basis. Our goal is to provide this audience with essential local news and information in an easy-to-consume manner.

The post Hyperlocal Lives! Chris Jennewein and The New 'Times of San Diego' appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The layoffs at Patch have been met around the industry as the latest sign that hyperlocal can’t work because of the difficulties in scaling content and ad sales locally while attracting a reasonable quorum of local readers. Hale Global, the new owners at Patch, don’t believe it. And neither do the hundreds of people who make up an extended hyperlocal community, including a number of ex-Patchers who remain at least personally committed to making hyperlocal work.

Chris Jennewein has been pushing the envelope in hyperlocal since the early days of Videotex at The Atlanta Journal Constitution. Since then, we’ve followed him as he lead a series of major initiatives at Knight Ridder Digital, The San Diego Union Tribune, The San Diego News Network, The Las Vegas Sun and most recently, as Southern California’s editorial leader for Patch.

Today, Jennewein launched The Times of San Diego. Is he The Man of LaMancha, chasing the Impossible Dream? I asked him a few questions via email.

Q: People think hyperlocal will never work. What did you learn about what does work?

The challenge with hyperlocal is to match the market size with the economic opportunity. Bigger markets simply have more opportunity. We think the San Diego metropolitan area, with a population of 3.2 million, is a sufficiently large opportunity and yet still local. In fact, in today’s world regional is probably local because people commute long distances and their personal and professional networks stretch far beyond individual communities.

Q: What have you learned about San Diego as a media market in terms of hyperlocal? Pros and cons?

San Diego may be farther along in regionalization that some older markets in America. San Diegans think they live in the entire metro area, not just La Jolla or Chula Vista or Carlsbad. So a regional news source is more likely to succeed here.

Q: Is this a model you can take to other markets?

I think this is a model that would definitely work in other markets, especially in the West, but our focus is solely San Diego right now.

Q: Do you think you are directly competing with other media properties at this point? Which ones?

We’re not competing with other media but instead going after what we call “unaffiliated local news consumers.” These are people who get news from a wide variety of sources on an almost serendipitous basis. Our goal is to provide this audience with essential local news and information in an easy-to-consume manner.

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vSplash‘s Board Advisor and former BIA/Kelsey executive Neal Polachek briefed BIA/Kelsey on some recent milestones achieved by vSplash with their sales engagement tool – BuzzBoard. Launched by vSplash the BuzzBoard sales tool has gained significant market adoption since Charles Laughlin wrote about it here.

BuzzBoard’s technology currently crawls and analyzes over a hundred parameters against over 44 million businesses with websites in over 50 countries. BuzzBoard is designed around two guiding principals – enabling sales representatives to be more efficient as they prepare for calls – either in person or on the phone – and more effective when they are engaging with the customer or prospect. The tool’s intuitive capabilities range from building audits or – health checks – on the merchant’s digital presence, to scoping out the competition and then to generating proposals based on the competitive analysis.

The BuzzBoard Audit Report evaluates the merchant’s digital Presence (Search Engine Indexing, Social Media, Mobile Website, Local Business, Pay Per Click) and Performance (Local Analysis, SEO, Infrastructure Robustness, Keyword, SMO and Reputation). The Audit Score is a summary estimate of digital readiness. For example, we did a live analysis of Paisano’s local pizza shop near BIA/Kelsey headquarters office in Chantilly, Va. Paisano’s, who received a 79% score, was actually quite good according to Polachek.

We have come to learn that there are many interesting mobile sales tools and apps emerging in the marketplace. Many of these sound good on paper and look good in a slide deck, but how is Buzzboard actually performing? BuzzBoard’s user base has grown dramatically since Charles’s earlier post and now hovers near 1,500 across over 35 media companies and in 53 top U.S. markets. Included among the 35 companies are some key local media brands such as Hearst, Advance, Digital First Media and Tribune. According to vSplash, “BuzzBoard’s largest partners are seeing ROI multiples well in excess of 25x and some data suggests the ROI is even north of 50x” for some. Accompanied with strong sales leadership, this tool has the capability to enable local media companies to sell incrementally more digital products to merchants in the U.S and around the world.

To see an earlier blog on Buzzboard, jump over to Charles Laughlin’s post on vSplash Making Inroads with Newspapers.

The post Latest Buzz in Digital Sales: vSplash’s BuzzBoard Tool appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Jason E. Klein, Founder and CEO of On Grid Ventures, led a StreetFight Summit panel of investors exploring where the next billion dollar opportunities in hyperlocal might be. Joining Klein were Matt Turck, Managing Partner, First Mark Capital and Ben Siscovick, with IA Ventures.

Klein framed the discussion by calling Google’s June 2013 acquisition of Waze for $966 million and Foursquare’s valuation of $700+ million two of these billion dollar opportunities. Klein questioned whether any funds tracked the local space. Answering his own question, he said “none.” The reason Klein believes no funds cover the space is because it is not a defined investment universe. His firm targets “geo-disruptive” businesses, which On Grid defines as, “businesses that use GeoLocation as a disruptive force to influence consumer or business activity.” Klein shared several examples. (1) GeoSocial – consumer to consumer businesses like Foursquare; (2) GeoMarketing – business to consumer companies like Yelp; (3) GeoInfrastructure business to business firms like ReachLocal, Yext, PlaceIQ or xAd. We’d also point you to BIA/Kelsey’s own coverage of local also has put some definition into the “local” investment universe.

Turck observed that one thing driving so much change in local is that since software is so easy and cheap to build and offer SMBs at low cost, even very small  businesses are developing powerful new capabilities. Siscovick pointed to a company like Locu (now owned by GoDaddy) that offers SMBs the ability to personalize, contextualize and localize based on aggregating geo-signals that establish the context of the area; inferring your reason to be there. He argued that “local” is really becoming tied to “geo-personalizing” the experience at a user level.

Looking ahead to where the next billion dollar opportunities lie, the panel pointed to the business to business (B2B) companies are currently in the hot part of the market (versus C2C and B2C). Investors offering Series A, B or C rounds typically look for exits in the $20 million to $200 million range, Klein offered. But Silicon Valley needs the billion dollar exit he said. Within the B2B part of the local space, it will be those companies that are “mobile first” that will be the ones more likely to win.

Finally, the panel reframed the whole question of the billion dollar opportunities in local by essentially concurring that “local is dead.” Even as big data allow us to personalize based on transaction and other consumer profiling to enhance targeting, personalization and improve the user experience via social signals like check-ins, the whole notion of “local” is being co-opted by “mobile.” It will be the “mobile first” company who can be the geo-disruptive offer in the market by contextualizing, personalizing and targeting users with an enhanced experience driven by geo-signalling and user data ported through the mobile device and SaaS big data solutions that defines the winning landscape of the billion dollar opportunities in local. Nothing is more local than where I am now and why I am there. You get there by mobile. Local is dead, long live mobile.

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With the exception of efforts like AOL’s Patch and New England’s GoLocal24, “Hyperlocal” has really moved away from its initial focus on neighborhood journalism to more of a focus on geo-targeted advertising and commerce.

Redefined this way, there’s a lot going on in hyperlocal. Today, Stamford,CT-based Local Yokel Media, a hyperlocal ad service started by Yahoo/AOL/Doubleclick vet Dick O’Hare, announced that it had raised $2.15 Million in its first institutional round. Backers include Connecticut Innovations, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development and Gold Ridge Asset Management.

Local Yokel says it is distinguished by its network of local blogs and websites, including newspapers; ability to map ads to a very specific location; and the ability to develop unique and scaleable creative copy. The site is now working with publishers such as Hersam Acorn Newspapers serving Fairfield County, Connecticut and DNA Info, a local news site covering the neighborhoods of New York City and Chicago. Advertisers include Meineke Muffler, LL Bean, and 7-Eleven.

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BIA/Kelsey’s advertising revenue estimates illustrate that national advertisers play a significant role in the purchasing of advertising opportunities across many different local media outlets. In 2012, our estimates are that national brands spent $45.2 billion dollars in local media advertising such as direct mail, television, print yellow pages, radio, out-of-home and more. This amount accounts for more than a third (33.6 percent) of all spending in local media.

Ultimately, to be successful, national advertisers need to reach audiences in specific areas with possibly different messages depending upon geography and/or the age/demographics of the audience consuming these media.

Where does this all go? Will national advertisers continue to utilize local media outlets to entice new and retain old customers? With the new opportunities sprouting up in the digital arena, will national advertisers take the lead in taking advantage of these opportunities?

Balihoo’s new study just released from the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Council reveals that 59 percent of national marketers report that local demand generation is essential to their business growth, yet only 7 percent feel they have effective campaigns in place. The report, titled, “Brand Automation for Local Activation,” (download exec summary) and conducted in partnership with Balihoo, concludes that that the typical marketing mix lacks in strategy, automation and accountability leading to a localization scale gap that results in delayed and less effective local roll-outs of national brand campaigns.

We’ll be continuing the discussion at our LEADING IN LOCAL: The National Impact event, March 18-20 in Boston. Starting day one will be our SuperForum Highlight: National Brands, Local Channels. More info on the agenda is here. Registration is here.

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Verve Mobile’s CEO Tom MacIsaac is bullish on local publishers’ ability to drive this revenue growth by selling local audiences not just to local advertisers but also to national brands seeking access to local audiences in a trusted context, through partners like Verve.

The secret sauce is Verve’s ability to deliver quality location-based audiences into a system in a way that creates premium mobile CPM values for both local and national mobile inventory by linking to high quality, local branded content. MacIsaac recently shared his views with BIA/Kelsey on where he sees the future of mobile and where he sees drivers and challenges.

MacIsaac concurs with BIA/Kelsey’s forecast of a flip from 60 percent/40 percent national/local mobile spending over the next few years. BIA/Kelsey’s mobile forecast predicts that from 2012-2016 the national/local split in mobile spending will reach 58 percent local for a total local spend of $5.8 billion as national brands continue to find more sales lift in their local initiatives.

Verve Mobile works with over 3,500 publishers and has achieved a level of dominance in the local mobile industry. MacIsaac revealed that the company is targeting $45 million in revenue in 2013, up 80 percent from $25 million this year. Generally, mobile display inventory pricing has lagged both PC display inventory in terms of CPM and CPC even as audience usage has increased dramatically. But, according to MacIsaac, premium pricing for mobile is available today through creating a quality context for advertisers through a combination of trusted, local content and accurate location data for audiences consuming that content.

Verve’s CMO, Greg Hallinan, also spoke to this at BIA/Kelsey’s ILM West 2012 conference held last week in Los Angeles. Verve’s Location Service combines location data with location context to customize the ad execution and creative to maximize relevance to audiences and advertisers.

MacIsaac offered a success formula for local publishers that is simple in concept but difficult in execution. Premium pricing in local mobile inventory will come through local sales forces that are focused on digital products; are driven by incentive compensation to close mobile sales; and by high quality content consumed by audiences that can be geo-located and served in a way that delivers local audiences not only to local advertisers but also sold to national brands seeking access to those local audiences.

“This is a win-win proposition that allows us to write bigger checks to our partners than the ones they write to us. For local publishers who use the Verve mobile publishing platform, we aren’t just a vendor on the cost side of the equation, we’re a partner building incremental revenue,” MacIsaac said. “We have some intellectual property in the works that will further improve our ability to offer even more accurate location targeting of our mobile audiences and maintain the high CPM’s we’ve generated from national advertisers seeking local audiences.”

BIA/Kelsey’s viewpoint is that local mobile ad inventory has such high potential value to national and local advertisers because it is the only medium that increasing is “always on and always there.” Mobile delivers audiences to advertisers that have a “time and place” context that offers a premium utility value to advertisers that will continue to be unlocked in inventory pricing as mobile location sensing and ad network technology continues to improve.

The post Verve Mobile Capitalizes on Mobile’s National into Local Spending Trend appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Newspapers have local brand credibility and content; agencies have media expertise; and neither of them do especially well selling SMBs on today’s social-infused media options.

That’s the challenge being addressed by Speakeasy, a new local social service being owned in partnership by Belo’s Dallas Morning News and Slingshot, a Dallas-based interactive agency that will provide a lot of the key infrastructure and media expertise. The effort, majority owned by The News, is being run by Pegasus News Founder Mike Orren.

Orren tells us Speakeasy, in development for several months, includes a lot of elements from prior hyperlocal efforts, and will be aiming at higher end SMBs willing to spend $2k a month for six month contracts – a newspaper sweet spot. It will be positioned above the newspaper’s existing 508 Digital initiative, affiliated with Local Edge, which sells a search/social and display package to smaller SMBs.

Matching content to SMBs is a core initiative for Speakeasy. Content will be available from The News’ archive for placement by clients on their social media and websites. In this regard, it’s not much different than Demand Media’s effort a few years ago to provide content to Merchant Circle clients for $9.95 a month.

But archival content is just part of it. Orren says that he also expects to utilize his extensive network of Dallas-based writers and producers for custom jobs – an effort to similar efforts that CBS Local has running with Examiner.com (where Orren has been a consultant). Digital Sherpa, Yodle and others are also providing custom content aimed at driving higher search ranking and success.

“There’s obvious stuff – stories about the company; gardening columns. But there is also non-traditional content,” says Orren. “A real estate agent can create a site around where neighbors go; and local news content,” he says. A lot of SMB database content — maps of local coffeehouses or entertainment listings — is very poorly done today, he says.

Ultimately, whether unique content is involved or archives, it seems what really matters is bringing local SMBs back into the newspaper fold; efforts previously focused on SEO sales by WebVisible, Maroon Ventures and others.

The post Dallas Morning News, Slingshot (and Mike Orren) Team for Local/Social Service appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

When eBay purchased Jack Abraham’s Milo.com in December 2010, it caused some head scratching. While retail Inventory is helpful to track goods availability and has some value in developing location-based promotions, it seemed an unlikely anchor for eBay’s SMB and local ecommerce services.

Abraham’s upgrade of his title to head of EBay Local last year, however, indicated that changes were afoot. And this week, eBay has finally unveiled the fruit of his labors: eBay Now, a same day delivery service that builds on inventory to take it to the next logical step.

The service, following in the footsteps of first generation local services such as Kozmo.com and UrbanFetch, has launched in San Francisco with BestBuy, Bloomingdales, Nordstrom, Target, ToysRUs and Walgreen. It is mostly aimed at luring major merchant accounts to eBay’s broad range of merchant services.

Deliveries are $5 and available for orders over $25 from 9-9 during the week, and from 9-6 on Sunday. Three free deliveries per customer are available during the test. Other Milo customers that might jumpo in include Home Depot, Ikea, Lowe’s, Sears and J.C. Penney.

Strategically, eBayNow positions eBay against other ecommerce heavyweights seeking to provide a suite of etail services, from promotions to search to transactions to hosting…specifically Amazon (although Amazon indicated this week that it will not be providing a similar service.) Long-term, Google and others that are developing transaction marketing services could also compete. Uber, the Web-based limo reservations service, is also experimenting with delivery, although it isn’t clear whether the limited delivery services that have been introduced are merely meant to promote the limo service while cars sit empty.

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