Video is proving to be a strong a media channel for businesses to advertise their message. Before Super Bowl XLVIII even started, Budweiser’s #BestBuds had been viewed on YouTube an unheard of 33 million times.

BIA/Kelsey examines these differences this week in a new “Spotlight” report using data from the recently completed Wave 17 of the Local Commerce Monitor (LCM). The report is the latest in the ongoing “Spotlight” series that drills down into the LCM data to examine how SMB advertisers acquire and retain customers.

BIA/Kelsey projects U.S. local video advertising will grow from $29.7 billion in 2012 to $38.6 billion in 2017.

The LCM Wave 17 data shows that SMBs that identify as “video SMBs” differ from those that do not use video advertising in several important ways:

— Annual media spend for SMBs that use video advertising $53,815 compared to $24,049 of that non-video advertisers.

— Among video SMBs, 55% percent plan to increase their advertising spending for the next year, compared to only 39% of non-video SMBs which plan to increase their advertising spend.

— Video SMBs are more likely to offer a customer loyalty program, compared to those that don’t use video to advertise 60% vs. 31%.

— Video SMBs are adopting other digital-based channels quickly. 5 out of the top 8 future marketing priorities are non-traditional and digital media types which include some the following: social media advertising, advanced analytics and performance monitoring, SEO, and video advertising.

Interested in learning more about LCM Wave 17 or getting a custom cut for your business? Contact Celine Matthiessen at cmatthiessen@biakelsey.com.

The post LCM Data Shows Video Advertisers Spend More appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

While The Weather Company VP Denise Chudy and Wanderful Media CEO Ben Smith work in different verticals (weather and retail), they shared a common mobile message at BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference: that the experiences are inherently local, with users expecting that local experience to also serve up personalization and hyper-relevance. To deliver on this value proposition, data (and lots of it) is mandatory.

For TWC, that entails zip-code level data across 40,000 zip codes that creates greater location targeting accuracy. This also highlights primary retail areas for advertisers to isolate and enables TWC to “model hyperlocal behavior (sales/activity data) to weather patterns.”

The net effect is an understanding of the market-specific weather triggers that incent someone to engage in an activity or make a purchase. For instance, Chicagoans are more inclined to shop for tires when there is an increase in snow and wind. Sounds obvious, but TWC can model out the specific percentage lift in purchase intent.

The next step in TWC’s local migration is supplementing its mid-market sales team with local market-level sales partners (the Hartford Courant is an early example).

Smith’s vision for migrating retail print circulars to digital and creating a smarter shopping experience starts with a deeper understanding of “casual discovery shopping” (historically the print FSI model), then creating platform-specific experiences to match. iPad is a powerful play for Wanderful, with tablet users spending up to 15 times more time per session than PC users. “We want you to start in the stream of content and don’t stop streaming.” The more time on site, the more data Wanderful can collect, which leads to a more robust and personalized content experience.

In mobile, the experience is fundamentally different in order to leverage the platform’s distinct capabilities and use cases. It’s more about atomized content delivered when, where and how the user prefers as they’re making a buying decision. To help accomplish this, Wanderful is building out “point apps to solve a specific problem under a common brand.”

The post At Leading in Local: ILM 2013: Mobile’s “Inherently Local” Qualities appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

2012 Real Estate Ad Spending by Media

So nearly 28% of real estate ad spending goes to newspaper and 24% goes to online, according to Media Ad View Plus, but where are home buyers actually looking for homes? According to National Association of Realtors in their 2012 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, “nine in 10 home buyers today rely on the internet as one of their primary research sources, and 52 percent turn to the web as their first step.”  As you can see below, while 90% of home buyers might use Internet as a primary research source, the National Association of Realtors reports that only 27% use newspaper ads.

• Internet: 90%
• Real estate agent: 87%
• Yard sign: 53%
• Open house: 45%
• Newspaper ad: 27%
• Home book or magazine: 18%

In a joint study by National Association of Realtors and Google, entitled The Digital House Hunt: Consumer and Market Trends in Real Estate, they found that 89% of new home shoppers used a mobile search engine and that 68% used a mobile application throughout their research process.

Not surprisingly, given the National Association of Realtors and Google’s findings, online advertising spending is expected to grow rapidly.  By 2017, online is expected to be the medium of choice for real estate, with nearly 41% of the advertising pie, according to Media Ad View Plus. Meanwhile, newspaper’s share of the real estate advertising pie is expected to decline, reaching less than 7% by 2017. Mobile is also expected to benefit from the newspaper industry’s continuing decline, as its share increases from 1% to 12.6%.

2017 Real Estate Ad Spending by Media

BIA/Kelsey is projecting online’s revenue share to start surpassing newspaper’s in the Real Estate vertical in 2013.

More information on Media Ad View Plus is available here.

The post Newspaper is Still the Medium of Choice for Real Estate Advertising, but Online is Growing Rapidly appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Pixelfish, armed with $3.5 million round of new capital raised since October, is evolving its model from a white-label provider of affordable SMB video to a destination site for SMB offers. Today, it announced that it has acquired Steve Espinosa’s Backyard/CitySquares to act as its infrastructure.

Pixelfish was founded in 2006 and has recently settled on a model that reclassifies SMB video. Its partners include Yellowbook and Jivox.

“Combining Backyard’s revolutionary technology with Pixelfish’s software-as-a-service video creation, distribution and tracking application allows us to deliver immense value for local advertisers and consumers,” said Pixelfish CEO John McIntyre, in a release. “We know what video ads work best where for each local business.”

Backyard, a new start-up, has been ramping up quickly. It has 500,000 unique visitors in the suburban Southern California areas of Orange County and Riverside County after just a few months. It acquired Ben Saren’s CitySquares in December, and has launched an intense telemarketing-based effort.

The company is headquartered in Temecula, 50 miles north of San Diego. The new entity will be known under the CitySquares brand (it owns the www.citysquares.com, but not backyard.com. It has been using bckyrd.com, Svngr-style.)

It will have 50 employees, including 20 from Backyard, and will soon be moving into a new 12,000-square-foot facility, says Espinosa. Pixelfish, however, will retain its Torrance, California, office near Los Angeles, and its separate business.

With Pixelfish’s backing in hand, Backyard/CitySquares will be hitting affluent neighborhoods in major metro markets by April, including New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles. It will also be launching partnerships with major media companies, initially focusing on newspapers, says Espinosa, who will be the company’s CTO (and a significant shareholder in the merged enterprises).

While terms of the sale were not disclosed, it is said to be in the range of $3 million to $5 million, consisting of cash and stock. Backyard’s angel investors included Dave McClure from 500 Startups, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Jason Calacanis.

The post Pixelfish Buys Backyard; Evolves ‘Searchmercial’ Model Into Local Offers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The bigger change agent, according to Lanzano, will be mobile because it will allow users to access local broadcast content wherever and whenever they want. In fact TVB is reporting that 88 percent of consumers polled said watching local news media is driving their mobile viewing. The real potential, says Lanzano, “is the ability to have more transparency in who is watching, when they are watching and where they are watching mobile programming.”

Much like online radio, new technology is coming out that allows more customization of programming and scheduling that is personalized to the consumer. A new service called Sezmi provides not only local media offerings, but also allows users to customize the content they want to watch, including YouTube and online video as well as on-demand content, all for a low $20 monthly fee. Other services by NetFlix are also directly competing with local broadcast and altering how people view and watch TV.

The TVB recommends local stations take advantage and own the hyperlocal shift by implementing the following:

• Making mobile TV beyond news and adding additional utility to local consumers and advertisers
• Program to compete with cable using HD subchannels that meet local needs
• Develop the best local mobile site
• Seek ways to leverage e-mail marketing, which is a great untapped opportunity
• Create hyperlocal shopping sites with deep content and match it with offers and coupons to drive action
• Do not overlay broadcast model on the mobile offering

Lanzano concluded that “viewership is shifting to the anytime, anywhere medium focused on local and who better to own hyperlocal than local stations who have embraced the new technology to make HD programming and mobile TV a reality for their stations?”

The post DSB 2010: New Technology Is Driving Local TV appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Allmenus.com, the online ordering portal with 255,000 restaurant menus around the country and 3,500 online ordering relationships, will focus on specific local markets via a new partnership program that gives a portion of revenues to newspapers or other local promotional partners.

The Pittsburgh Post Gazette is live, and other newspapers and local media companies are anticipated as partners in coming months. Allmenus.com is the second brand from parent company Dotmenu.com. The original brand was Campusfood.com, which brings online ordering to college students.

Allmenus’ media partnerships involve co-branding and promotional advertising, potentially including display, direct, e-mail and social media. They also involve contextual integrated content. While they notably don’t involve the papers in sales, the papers receive a minority share of local market revenues. Revenues are derived from online food ordering, advertising and monthly maintenance fees.

Allmenus Chief Revenue Officer Tony Wills, a former exec with Quigo, Newsday and R.H. Donnelley, says the company determined that local markets had to be launched one at a time to be truly successful — even though it has good distribution via Google and Yahoo Local. Newspapers still have the online brand and promotional power to best drive local awareness and sales, he says, despite their drop-offs in penetration and usage. Newspapers also appreciate Allmenus as a “content” service since it strives to have the most comprehensive set of menus in each market — something it handles with local feet on the street, and fly-in teams.

Under terms of the partnerships, Allmenus widgets for online ordering will be featured in specific contextual parts of newspaper sites, including sports, local, weather and business. While it would seem to make sense to have newspapers also handle local sales, Wills says that it wouldn’t really work because newspaper sales staffs are paid on commissions.

A primary reason it wouldn’t work is that Allmenus takes no money upfront. Instead, it charges a transaction fee that is a little over 10 percent.  It takes 11.5 percent, or $5.75, out of a $50 order, for instance. “If there is no revenue, there is no sale,” says Wills.

In any case, newspapers may have trouble committing the resources in today’s environment. “Newspapers are under siege,” says Wills. “They can’t commit the resources. They need it to be turn-key.”

There is a role for newspaper sales reps, however — to build awareness for the Allmenus service. “It makes the print sale” for restaurants more valuable because of added awareness and usage, says Wills. Indeed, online ordering is a big piece of the restaurant landscape. Pizza Hut is getting 30 percent of its sales online. Moreover, online boosts the amount of sales — online orders are 10 percent higher than in-person orders because it is so easy to check off additional or more expensive items. Ultimately, however, it is a different ballgame than brand and awareness advertising.

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