Google has made lots of waves in tech and media worlds with last week’s revelation that mobile search volume now outweighs desktop. That goes for several developed markets including the U.S. This follows recent LSA data that show mobile has surpassed desktop for local-intent search.

These are two different measures but directionally similar. With mobile local queries, the point at which they surpass desktop was bound to be earlier than overall mobile search, given that local’s share of mobile search (about 50 percent) is higher than the desktop equivalent (about 20 percent).

We’ve been saying for quite some time that 2015 would be the year that mobile local query volume surpasses desktop local query volume, which turned out to be on target. Here’s our projection from April 2012.

We now believe based on lots of evidence and inputs that the intersecting point actually happened late last year. Adjusting to that reality and looking forward from the current period. Our forecast released last month projects mobile local search query volume as follows.

Google’s announcement last week shows that the growth of mobile search is even more pronounced. That intersecting point of mobile and desktop search isn’t just happening with local queries as shown above, but in overall search too. This is huge.

This is of course a milestone in the continued growth of mobile content. But it’s really only one indicator. As I often say when presenting mobile data, search is only one format through which mobile content and ads are distributed. It’s currently the biggest… but it’s only one.

Discovery Channel

In the relatively short history of the smartphone, search has been in a battle with discovery-based content such as apps, push alerts and social sharing. The latter, as it grows in organic usage, is likewise increasingly becoming an ad vehicle — starting national but very much moving local.

Meanwhile Google, with a commanding search market share, has the most to lose from this. Impressively, it’s not showing signs of succumbing to the classic innovators dilemma in terms of embracing “discovery” based media. This can be seen in Google Now and lots of other things.

Google knows that the future of search is both active and passive. For the latter, apps like Google Now will perpetually search on users’ behalf to proactively push “results” when pre-defined relevance thresholds (such as geofence) are triggered.

Watch Carefully

The passive discovery format will only grow with the (still questionable) advent of wearables, where the user experience is even less conducive to typing search queries (voice search will find a home). So it will be all about discovery a la Google Now, and push notifications.

It will be interesting to watch (pardon the pun) this unfold with respect to user tolerance levels. Push notifications will require a careful balance given that the nuisance risk is greater on the sacred territory of one’s wrist, as opposed to the ignorable phone in their pocket.

This is all being built as we speak, and requires lots of experimentation for pinpointing the right delivery formula that resonates with users. No one has found that yet. But we do know, as always, that wide-scale changes in form factor invite volatility and entry points for disruption.

The post The New Era of Search Has Tipped appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

As the Local On-Demand Economy (LODE) evolves, more interaction between merchants, brands and customers will take place in rich media environments where the click is only one step, albeit still important, to improved customer engagement, satisfaction and conversion rates. We’ll be covering this emerging economy at BIA/Kelsey NOW in June (sign up today for the early-registration discount), but the topic is a hot one at our NATIONAL Conference this week.

“You’ve got so much information from just the click [on Google], but we have hundreds of keywords [in each call],” Jeremiah Wilson, founder and president of LogMyCalls, said in an on-stage conversation. That is an important insight that extends beyond marketers to political operatives and all breeds of persuasive messaging will need to embrace in the Local On-Demand Economy. It requires immense listening skills, algorithmic creativity and judicious use of insights to engage the person at the other end of a transaction.

The explosion of data in the enterprise during the last decade will be arriving in local markets through hosted services and resellers, such as media and marketing services companies. Search, which has dominated the past decade will continue to grow, but as we’ve heard repeatedly throughout the BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL Conference, there are many more steps to personalize the engagement with consumers.

The conversation, the basic unit of human communication (tweets, to provide contrast, are fragments of conversations), will be the new locus of analysis as the digital engagement model diversifies and lengthens the customer relationship to include pre-sales to post- and repeat-sales delivered to individual users. People think primarily in terms of their local context when making buying decisions. Can I get it in Tacoma? Will I be able to get support in Cleveland? Is this doctor trusted by people I know? All these questions rise out of the give-and-take of a conversation.

“Markets are conversations,” the authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto famously wrote, and the implications for brands, media and small business are straight-forward: Far more information needs to be wrapped into efforts to understand and engage with the customer. This must happen in an environment respectful of the individual’s sense of privacy and propriety.

That data flood is already relevant in the enterprise, in the form of “big data,” an over-used but telling name for the inevitable increase in analyzable data. In the LODE world, these capabilities will be pushed to the edge of the economy, where SMBs and customers meet in their local market.

Add sensor data from beacons, dumb and autonomous vehicles being tracked by network services, the growth of customer feedback as a key influence of purchases, and the question for every business will become “What do I need to know about this customer, an individual, now?” Simple segmentation will not suffice when products and services can be customized within the supply chain based on the information shared publicly and privately (between buyer and seller) in the digital engagement process.

In the call analysis space, LogMyCalls, CallSource, Century Interactive and others already provide vertical-specific “language sets” to analyze, for example, calls to automotive dealers, medical offices and other specialty conversations. Within a decade, it will be possible to optimize any digital engagement, including phone calls, customer support chats, webinars and, in regulated businesses, enforce the disclosure of information required by law when talking with a customer.

Take for example CrystalKnows, a personality analysis tool for marketers and professionals that promises to “end email miscommunication.” BIA/Kelsey friend-of-the-company Mike Orren of Speakeasy pointed this out over lunch today. A “proprietary personality detection technology” developed in the Harvard Innovation Lab, CrystalKnows crawls and analyzes public sources, such as blogs and social postings, to provide a profile of a person and recommend how to communicate with them effectively. It’s recommendations, when I run a report about myself, are useful tips, but it also rings of the kind of generalities that astrologers and psychics use to convince people they are predicting the future or identifying a dead relative who wants to talk. Nevertheless, it’s an impressive beginning.

In all fairness, one thing CrystalKnows tells me about my own work style is that I give blunt feedback. So, I don’t regret the astrology and psychic comment above. CrystalKnows should not be surprised, but will their algorithm grok the humor here? Given resources and time, it will be possible to automate email targeting individuals, shaping offers based on known consumer traits, and many other proto-creepy engagements that still require human artfulness and, if business hopes to have paying customers in the future, will continue to require human engagement at key moments.

The Local On-Demand world, in which data proliferation raises customer expectations that a brand or company will know, understand and treat them personally, the proliferation of conversational intelligence tools will be a vital area of investment and development.

Conversational Intelligence will play a role in brand awareness, employee retention in the 1099 economy, word-of-mouth and personalized communication in work and the local market. Scoring and measurement of successful communication, from analyzing voice calls to, potentially, conversations at the point of sale, to provide a full view of attribution in the ever more complex world in which we will live. We’ll be talking about the consequences at NOW this June. Join us for the conversation.

The post Local On-Demand Economics: Conversational Intelligence will Supplant SEO appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

UBL will provide stock and cash in consideration of the merger. While both companies initially keep their own identities, they intend to work towards an integration of operations and a single brand. Both companies earned approximately $8 million apiece in 2014. Charlotte-based UBL has 38 employees while Advice Interactive has 85 employees in Dallas and Newport Beach.

Billed as a “combination of equals,” UBL CEO Doyal Bryant will be the new entity’s CEO, while Advice CEO Bernadette Coleman will run marketing, tech and operations. Bryant notes that the deal allows UBL to focus on a growing global market in syndicated business profiles; an area that has gone beyond search engines to also include mobile apps, GPS search and online maps, video platforms, marketing platforms and social networks. UBL currently has operations in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand and says it will soon add four more countries.

Advice, meanwhile, is set to leverage UBL’s listings/video and mobile-rich database, and provide a one stop for a wide range of activities for its business and enterprise customers. These include local search, PPC & SEM, reputation management, SEO, Web design, content marketing and social media. The majority of Advice’s customers come from local channel partners; its strength and technology platform are expected to enhance UBL’s current efforts in the space, which are not a main emphasis.

The merger gives Advice “a major edge over everyone in the (SEO) space,” says Coleman. As marketing moves to hyperlocal capabilities, it isn’t just about search anymore, she emphasizes. “Clients need to have data syndication; optimized profiles; and customized linking and meta data — all in one place.”

Advice Interactive Group CEO Bernadette Coleman is speaking at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL, which takes place March 25-27 in Dallas.

The post UBL, Advice Interactive Group Will Merge; SEO + Syndicated Listings appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

UBL will provide stock and cash in consideration of the merger. While both companies initially keep their own identities, they intend to work towards an integration of operations and a single brand. Both companies earned approximately $8 million apiece in 2014. Charlotte-based UBL has 38 employees while Advice Interactive has 85 employees in Dallas and Newport Beach.

Billed as a “combination of equals,” UBL CEO Doyal Bryant will be the new entity’s CEO, while Advice CEO Bernadette Coleman will run marketing, tech and operations. Bryant notes that the deal allows UBL to focus on a growing global market in syndicated business profiles; an area that has gone beyond search engines to also include mobile apps, GPS search and online maps, video platforms, marketing platforms and social networks. UBL currently has operations in Canada, the UK, Australia and New Zealand and says it will soon add four more countries.

Advice, meanwhile, is set to leverage UBL’s listings/video and mobile-rich database, and provide a one stop for a wide range of activities for its business and enterprise customers. These include local search, PPC & SEM, reputation management, SEO, Web design, content marketing and social media. The majority of Advice’s customers come from local channel partners; its strength and technology platform are expected to enhance UBL’s current efforts in the space, which are not a main emphasis.

The merger gives Advice “a major edge over everyone in the (SEO) space,” says Coleman. As marketing moves to hyperlocal capabilities, it isn’t just about search anymore, she emphasizes. “Clients need to have data syndication; optimized profiles; and customized linking and meta data — all in one place.”

Advice Interactive Group CEO Bernadette Coleman is speaking at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL, which takes place March 25-27 in Dallas.

The post UBL, Advice Interactive Group Will Merge; SEO + Syndicated Listings appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Yodle — part of the class of 2005-2007 SEM-focused Independent Sales Organizations that took on traditional local sales organizations — filed this week for an IPO that could raise $75 Million.

The filing provides insights into Yodle�s evolution, and the evolution of the local online sales space overall, which has moved towards cloud-based automation. As Yodle notes, it not only provides its customers with an online presence, but mobile and social presences as well.

�Businesses need a comprehensive digital presence that includes a professional quality website that is easily discoverable and optimized for mobile devices, exposure on leading online directories and ratings and reviews sites, and tools to communicate with customers via email, text messages and social media notes Yodle in the filing.

The company’s customer base currently consists of 44,800 local businesses, making it one of the largest sales groups. These customers helped it achieve revenues of $161.9 million in 2013, with the average customer of its flagship product paying under $300 a month � or less than half what they’d have to spend if they purchased similar functionality a la carte, says the company.

Many of Yodle’s customers belong to one of several vertical categories. For instance, the company reports that it has account relationships with 6,400 dentists (out of 166,500); 4,500 plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors(out of 226,500); 3,400 lawyers (out of 165,000 ) and 1,200 landscapers (out of 459,600).

Yodle has also focused increasingly on servings “brand networks” — national franchisors, manufacturers and multi-location businesses that are targeting locally. As the space evolves, the competitive picture has evolved as well. Yodle’s filing notes that rivals for local business marketing budgets now include a wide range of players, including traditional Yellow Pages, direct mail campaign providers and advertising and listings services on local newspapers, magazines, television and radio.

Other competitors include online search engines, online business directories, providers of digital presence offerings (i.e. GoDaddy, Main Street Hub, Web.com); providers of digital marketing solutions, such as SEM companies; and productivity and office management tools, such as Constant Contact, Demandforce, MailChimp and Solutionreach.

The post A Look at Yodle's $75 Million IPO Filing appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Yodle — part of the class of 2005-2007 SEM-focused Independent Sales Organizations that took on traditional local sales organizations — filed this week for an IPO that could raise $75 Million.

The filing provides insights into Yodle�s evolution, and the evolution of the local online sales space overall, which has moved towards cloud-based automation. As Yodle notes, it not only provides its customers with an online presence, but mobile and social presences as well.

�Businesses need a comprehensive digital presence that includes a professional quality website that is easily discoverable and optimized for mobile devices, exposure on leading online directories and ratings and reviews sites, and tools to communicate with customers via email, text messages and social media notes Yodle in the filing.

The company’s customer base currently consists of 44,800 local businesses, making it one of the largest sales groups. These customers helped it achieve revenues of $161.9 million in 2013, with the average customer of its flagship product paying under $300 a month � or less than half what they’d have to spend if they purchased similar functionality a la carte, says the company.

Many of Yodle’s customers belong to one of several vertical categories. For instance, the company reports that it has account relationships with 6,400 dentists (out of 166,500); 4,500 plumbing, heating and air conditioning contractors(out of 226,500); 3,400 lawyers (out of 165,000 ) and 1,200 landscapers (out of 459,600).

Yodle has also focused increasingly on servings “brand networks” — national franchisors, manufacturers and multi-location businesses that are targeting locally. As the space evolves, the competitive picture has evolved as well. Yodle’s filing notes that rivals for local business marketing budgets now include a wide range of players, including traditional Yellow Pages, direct mail campaign providers and advertising and listings services on local newspapers, magazines, television and radio.

Other competitors include online search engines, online business directories, providers of digital presence offerings (i.e. GoDaddy, Main Street Hub, Web.com); providers of digital marketing solutions, such as SEM companies; and productivity and office management tools, such as Constant Contact, Demandforce, MailChimp and Solutionreach.

The post A Look at Yodle’s $75 Million IPO Filing appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor survey reveals that online search is now the most popular channel choice for local shopping (nearly 57 percent on consumers utilize it in their buying process). The trend is further accelerating as mobile penetration and session activity surge. For instance, 40 percent of consumers who leverage smartphones for local shopping do so once or more per day.

All of this points to the critical need for small-medium businesses (SMBs) to maintain accurate, fresh, engaging and non-duplicated content. Duplicate listings can confuse consumers and harm SEO rank, both of which impair the discoverability and selectability of a merchant.

On Thursday, June 5 at 2 p.m. eastern, Yext’s Christian Ward and Local SEO Guide’s Andrew Shotland join me for a free webinar examining the duplicates problem and proposing solutions and best practices for overcoming it. BIA/Kelsey will also share findings from its Local Commerce Monitor and Consumer Commerce Monitor studies that identify key disconnects between consumer shopping trends and SMB advertising/promotions habits, which are exacerbated by duplicates.

Also, attendees can access the new whitepaper from Yext – “The Definitive Guide to Duplicate Listings.” Register for the free webinar here.

The post Upcoming BIA/Kelsey & Yext Webinar: Solving the Duplicate Listings Problem appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor survey reveals that online search is now the most popular channel choice for local shopping (nearly 57 percent on consumers utilize it in their buying process). The trend is further accelerating as mobile penetration and session activity surge. For instance, 40 percent of consumers who leverage smartphones for local shopping do so once or more per day.

All of this points to the critical need for small-medium businesses (SMBs) to maintain accurate, fresh, engaging and non-duplicated content. Duplicate listings can confuse consumers and harm SEO rank, both of which impair the discoverability and selectability of a merchant.

On Thursday, June 5 at 2 p.m. eastern, Yext’s Christian Ward and Local SEO Guide’s Andrew Shotland join me for a free webinar examining the duplicates problem and proposing solutions and best practices for overcoming it. BIA/Kelsey will also share findings from its Local Commerce Monitor and Consumer Commerce Monitor studies that identify key disconnects between consumer shopping trends and SMB advertising/promotions habits, which are exacerbated by duplicates.

Also, attendees can access the new whitepaper from Yext – “The Definitive Guide to Duplicate Listings.” Register for the free webinar here.

The post Upcoming BIA/Kelsey & Yext Webinar: Solving the Duplicate Listings Problem appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The wall between national and local marketing is falling with tech-empowered consumers able to find their information wherever they want it, noted YP‘s EVP & GM of Digital Markets David Lebow during a keynote at Leading in Local: The National Impact in Atlanta. “Traditional media companies are the only ones keeping up that wall.”

YP is very much a company in transition, like Gannett, Hearst and others, noted Lebow, a longtime media and online leader with recent stints at AOL and Internet Broadcasting. Like the others, YP’s real and clichéd task is “to grow the growing side of the business in excess of the declining side of the business. It never changes.”

“The question is: how can we be the Google of local search?” asks Lebow. “In order to do that, we need to innovate at the pace of the market.”

There is no question that YP should be pursuing local search. “We don’t want to be in directory. One is a $2.7 billion segment growing at 3 percent, while the other is a $29.8 billion segment growing at 7 percent,” said Lebow. But it is critical to attack the market in a broad way. YP shouldn’t be a content play within a vertical, like a Zillow or a WebMD, he said.

A core focus of the local search effort needs to be in SMB presence management. “Businesses really need to be found,” Lebow said. And that’s where the convergence of national local comes in. “The SMB says it needs leads and loyalty. National says it needs measurement, analytics and reporting. The needs of national and local businesses” are coming into one.”

The post At Leading in Local: The National Impact: YP's David Lebow: No More 'National Local Wall' appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The wall between national and local marketing is falling with tech-empowered consumers able to find their information wherever they want it, noted YP‘s EVP & GM of Digital Markets David Lebow during a keynote at Leading in Local: The National Impact in Atlanta. “Traditional media companies are the only ones keeping up that wall.”

YP is very much a company in transition, like Gannett, Hearst and others, noted Lebow, a longtime media and online leader with recent stints at AOL and Internet Broadcasting. Like the others, YP’s real and clichéd task is “to grow the growing side of the business in excess of the declining side of the business. It never changes.”

“The question is: how can we be the Google of local search?” asks Lebow. “In order to do that, we need to innovate at the pace of the market.”

There is no question that YP should be pursuing local search. “We don’t want to be in directory. One is a $2.7 billion segment growing at 3 percent, while the other is a $29.8 billion segment growing at 7 percent,” said Lebow. But it is critical to attack the market in a broad way. YP shouldn’t be a content play within a vertical, like a Zillow or a WebMD, he said.

A core focus of the local search effort needs to be in SMB presence management. “Businesses really need to be found,” Lebow said. And that’s where the convergence of national local comes in. “The SMB says it needs leads and loyalty. National says it needs measurement, analytics and reporting. The needs of national and local businesses” are coming into one.”

The post At Leading in Local: The National Impact: YP’s David Lebow: No More ‘National Local Wall’ appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.