Not only do consumers use these devices for shopping locally, but they do so frequently. Thirty-three percent of tablet users and 40.3 percent of smartphone users use them once a day or more for shopping locally.

There is an apparent disconnect between consumer’s heavy use of smartphones and tablets to shop and SMBs adoption of advertising with these devices. SMBs are devoting just 5 percent of their total ad spend to mobile advertising, according to BIA/Kelsey‘s Local Commerce Monitor™. That 5 percent is spread among SMS, search, display, and other forms of advertising on smartphones and tablets.

Looking just at apps we see that 17.1 percent of consumer use apps regularly for local shopping and 3 percent make purchases based on apps. Only 9 percent of SMBs are tapping into this market and use apps for advertising.

While only a small portion of SMB budgets are going towards advertising through smartphones and tablets, its is providing big returns. Four of the top 10 media, based on ROI, are related to advertising through these devices. Mobile deals, mobile apps, mobile banners and location aware mobile ads all were felt to have provided SMBs with between 10 and over 20 times the return on spending by at least 40 percent of SMBs who utilize them.

Not only are SMBs who participate in advertising with smartphones and tablets seeing big results, the consumer base for use of these devices when shopping locally is expected to grow. Fourteen percent of those who do not currently use a tablet or smartphone for shopping locally say they plan to do so in the next six months. So for all of the SMBs out there who are not capitalizing on the mobile advertising opportunity, it is definitely a move that would be wise to make.

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37.1% of consumers used a smartphone for local online shopping and 19.4% used a tablet, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor (CCM) survey. SMBs are well positioned to take advantage, with 32% of SMBs reporting they use some form of mobile advertising to promote their business, up from 28% in 2012 according to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) survey.

In BIA/Kelsey’s annual Local Commerce Monitor (LCM) survey on advertising and marketing of small and medium businesses (SMBs), we asked several questions on the satisfaction of the various advertising and marketing choices made. In our new Consumer Commerce Monitor survey, we asked consumers how they find, engage and transact with local-serving businesses, including where they use their mobile devices. For the consumers who use tablets for local shopping, the majority, 90%, do some from home, 21% do so at work, and 17% do so in-store. One-third of tablet users reported using their devices at least once a day for local shopping, with nearly another third using them a few times a week.

Consumers using smartphones, on the other hand, report being far more likely to use their devices for local shopping while out in the world. Nearly 68% reported using their smartphones for local shopping while in store. Nearly 82% of consumers reported using their smartphones at home for local shopping, while 49% use their devices at work. More than 40% of smartphone users reported using their devices at least once a day for local shopping.

One of mobile’s path to success for the small business can be found in payments. SMBs are ready to close the loop with shoppers who use their mobile phones; 40% of SMBs reported accepting payments at the point of sale with a mobile credit card reader attached to a smartphone or tablet, with an additional 16% planning to add this capability in the next 12 months. This in line with consumers’ adoption of mobile payment with 42% of consumers reported having made a payment using a smartphone credit card swipe in the past six months, with over 7% reporting they do so often.

As their customers are using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets to shop online, SMBs reported going increasingly mobile. 16% of SMBs surveyed reported that mobile was an extremely high future marketing priority for them, and another 21% reported it was a very high priority.

SMBs are still working on success with mobile, but need guidance on effective marketing opportunities.

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Digital media is more cannibalistic than complementary and is seriously eating into the demand for traditional news sources such as newspapers, TV and news magazines, according to the third annual survey of news users done by Outsell Inc.

The survey findings are based on almost 3,000 consumers and are fully detailed in Outsell’s “News Users 2009” report, written by former Knight Ridder executive Ken Doctor. It essentially pours water on hopes that online traffic from Google and other news aggregators represents new growth opportunities for traditional publishers that ultimately outweigh any cannibalism. In fact, 44 percent said news headlines on aggregator products such as Google News suffice in themselves.

Indeed, such aggregator products are increasingly competing with traditional news products as primary “morning” news sources. They’re tied with newspapers and catching up with TV, which leads with a 30 percent share, a drop-off from 36 percent three years ago.

Long-term trends may be worse than the broad numbers suggest, as a segmentation analysis by Outsell found that “Power Users,” who represent slightly less than half of the market, are increasingly relying more on digital products. These users have “omnivorous” appetites for news, simultaneously serving as core newspaper subscribers while relying more heavily on news aggregator products.

Outsell, however, found they are spending less time with print publications. Moreover, they are increasingly inclined to drop their newspaper subscriptions.

“It’s worth watching the trends set by power news users — they tend to foreshadow where all news usage is moving,” notes Outsell. “The daily newspaper and news magazine habit is quickly ebbing.”

The survey also suggests that paid content may not be a panacea — something that The New York Times is betting on, as it implements plans to move to paid online models in early 2011.  Analysts (like me) would argue that The Times exists in a class of its own as a news source and may prove the exception. Another industry hope –shared by Apple, Amazon, HP and others — is that large computer tablets might entice people to pay for a la carte or subscription content.

Without thinking about the exceptionalism of The Times, or the future of tablets, 75 percent of news users told Outsell that they would get their local news from a different source if a pay wall was put up. Only a small minority said they would be willing to pay for some type of paid content (i.e., online access included with print subscription, online-only access or some other type of “press pass.”).

When the time comes, however, many users will surely reconsider. Just look at the evolution of pay per call, and more recently, paid iPhone apps. None of this, however, undermines the challenges that traditional media face with/and against Google and other digital sources.

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