Having been in the trenches for the past year talking about multiproduct selling and how a consultative or collaborative sales process is a key component for selling multiple media, I keep hearing over and over again “I’ve been training on consultative selling for years so why should we rely on it to take us into …

By Steve Passwaiter and Rick Ducey
For broadcasters, it is an article of faith that “localism” is a point of differentiation that adds value to their operations. Localism tends to mean local news, sports, weather, traffic, local events, coverage of local government and other promotional and volunteer involvement in the community. There’s a lot of chatter …

Media companies, publishers, advertisers, agencies and brand managers all are struggling with their approaches to most effectively leverage consumer mobile platforms.
On the media side, key issues include finding viable business models; understanding the mobile ecosystem well enough to make informed decisions regarding content, revenue models, technologies, services, partners and market opportunities.
On the advertising …

John Kelsey, having sold The Kelsey Group a year ago to BIA, has stepped down from the company after helping us all with the transition.
John has been a remarkable force of innovation in the Yellow Pages industry. He anticipated the rise of electronic media and its impact on the Yellow Pages and small business marketing …

New Year’s Greetings from BIA/Kelsey.

So, the good news.

2009 is over. Thank God.

We head into the New Year severely chastened by the historic revenue declines of the current one. The numbers for 2009 don’t bear repeating. They were several shades of awful.

There are signs of a modest ad economy recovery as we enter January 2010. The broadcast networks are reporting an active scatter market. This makes the network execs that decided to hold back inventory at the upfront look like good market callers. Some of the larger radio groups are reporting a decent December assuming that flat is the new up! Online ad activity is regaining its health as well after a down year on the display side.

BIA/Kelsey’s geotargeted display ad forecast was released today, projecting 16 percent annual growth from $897 million in 2008 to $1.9 billion in 2013.

The geotargeted segment of the overall display ad market (banner advertising) will meanwhile grow from 10.2 percent to 15 percent in the same period. The highest growth rate in the forecast belongs to geographically targeted display ads bought by small and medium-sized businesses (as opposed to national advertisers targeting locally).

Yes I still believe content is King, but knowing which content and tools are best for our listeners is even more important. In a time of not enough money or resources to do all this cool Web and social media stuff, how do we figure out where to start and focus most of our limited resources?

Step 1: Discover where your listeners spend their time on the Web AND off. In order to do that you need to: Conduct research; Listen in on social media site conversations relevant to your station; Ask your listeners to participate in surveys via Website, phone, email and at events; and Pay attention to all of your listener feedback channels. . .

At yesterday’s “Interactive Marketing Workshop” held in McLean, VA by Potomac Tech Wire several leading digital executives shared their views of the current state of online media.
Ernie Mosteller, VP, Creative Director/Emerging Media for Brunner Digital asserted that, “most advertising is bad” and that the “formula I see emerging is people looking for a …