The fight to control local advertising is shaping up as the next great battle in the technology sector. Some see it as Version 2.0 of the war to own online search, a rare opportunity to shorten Google Inc.’s lead in the highly lucrative Internet advertising space. Big companies like Microsoft Corp., Yahoo Inc. and Apple Inc. appear determined not to let the opportunity slip away, while a bevy of startups have emerged to claim it for themselves.
“All the major players and smaller players are gravitating toward local,” said Cyrus Krohn, director of local programming for Microsoft’s MSN portal. “I don’t think anyone can afford to sit this out.”
There is growing concern, however, that Google isn’t playing fair in this fight. A handful of competitors fret the company is trying to extend its dominance into this emerging market through anti-competitive means and have shared those worries with the Federal Trade Commission, which is investigating, according to sources familiar with the matter.
Why does local advertising matter?
While online search has transformed the way large businesses reach consumers looking to buy books, arrange vacations or consume media, it’s had far less impact on the way people interact with the mom-and-pop shops that represent a huge slice of commerce.
Big firms jump in
They do buy online advertising today, but at nowhere near the rate of big companies.
From 69 to 74 percent of large businesses pay to advertise through Google, Yahoo or Microsoft’s search engines, while only from 31 to 47 percent of small firms do so, according to a survey by Outsell Inc.
Many believe the nearing ubiquity of mobile devices, specifically location-aware smart phones and tablets, promises to close the gap. The tools can know where consumers are, where they’ve been and – once they enter a search query – what they’re looking for.
Boost to mobile searches
As such, mobile advertising can reach consumers at that critical period when they’re most likely to spend money in the real world. These trends will boost mobile local search advertising from $160 million in 2008 to $1.3 billion by 2013, research firm Kelsey Group forecasts.
In fact, within the mobile and portal sectors, there’s hardly a recent headline that doesn’t touch on the local opportunity.
April 11, 2010
source: articles.sfgate.com
One Response to “Battle over online local ads heats up”
The Classified Connection is free classified ads software that makes it easy to post classified ads into thousands of free classified sites. Visit us today.