Along with Mobile and Millennials, what are the top drivers of local's NEXT phase? What's 3D touch all about? And what about Apple Music? These are a few topics we tackled this week, aggregated into the Local Media Watch newsletter.…
After all the excitement over e-commerce, 95 percent of U.S. consumer spending still happens offline in local markets. And in the smartphone era, the consideration cycle for all that spending increasingly happens though voice calls. Marchex pegs call-influenced consumer spending at…
An old saying goes, the best place to hide a body is page 2 of Google results. There's a big drop off in clicks "below the fold" of page 1, and an even greater drop-off on page 2. And the…
When it comes to adopting new technologies, local businesses tend to lag behind consumers. Whether it's accepting new forms of payment, launching a mobile-friendly website or engaging on social media, business behavior follows consumer behavior. An upcoming webinar, "Attracting the…
The march towards a new generation of marketplaces was clearly in evidence this week in Las Vegas, as the 4th edition of Money2020 attracted a huge, 10,000+ person ecosystem of financial players that all want a piece of the new…
Social media, video, apps, on-demand and millennials. These are just a few of the emerging trends and themes that will define the coming months and years of the local commerce universe. We're in the thick of planning BIA/Kelsey NEXT and…
Small businesses prefer DIY services for advertising and marketing, in part because it helps them to streamline their work. Not surprisingly, according to findings in BIA/Kelsey's Local Commerce Monitor, survey of small businesses, email marketing automated system is at the top…
This is the latest in BIA/Kelsey's new Media Bytes series. On a periodic basis, BIA/Kelsey associate Mitch Oscar drills down and draws meaning from new products, events and corporate moves in the digital media world. An excerpt is below and the full…
One of the most transformative things to happen in mobile hardware in the past five years happened last month... but without due recognition. I'm referring to Apple's 3D Touch, which will be featured in the new line of iPhones (6s…
Beacons, beacons, beacons. We’ve been hearing a lot about them lately. They’re purportedly going to change the game for connecting online marketing to offline conversions... local's "holy grail." But what exactly are beacons? How do they work, and what are they…
This post is the latest in a weekly series of excerpts from BIA/Kelsey's recent report Mobile Local Discovery, The Next Era of Search. The series will lead up to BIA/Kelsey NEXT, a conference on the future of local, taking place December…
In our current Local Commerce Monitor survey of small and medium businesses, we asked SMBs what were the cloud-based services they used the most and which ones they were interested (or not) in adding. As you can see in our…
This is the latest in BIA/Kelsey's Vantage Points series. On a semi-weekly basis, it will tap the perspectives of various lookout points from around the local media and tech sectors. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect that of BIA/Kelsey. Please contact mbolandATbiakelsey…
We've been talking a lot lately about the "Local Commerce Universe." But what is that exactly? To kick off last month's BIA/Kelsey SMB, Abid Chaudhry and I introduced the topic for the first time. (full session video below). In short,…
As we're seeing with players like Yashi, within just the past couple years, various forms of linear and digital programmatic video are coming into the local marketing mix. Now with local broadcasters entering this digital video arms race, the stakes…
What are best practices in fighting perennial local challenges like fragmentation and SMB churn? Will search lose share to social media spending? And who are the winners and losers of local disruption? These are a few topics we tackled this week,…
Ten years after Apple introduced email receipts at the Apple Store, a plumber can deliver an electronic receipt via email to build a solid customer relationship. Rapid adoption of new consumer expectations, such as paperless receipts, the ability to order…
Social sharing, messaging apps, and buy buttons: these are a few emerging trends replacing longstanding forms of local marketing such as search and websites. These have been core topics in BIA/Kelsey coverage lately, and were synthesized in a recent presentation I…
What are the best ways to tackle the perennial local challenges of fragmentation and churn? YP is a company with lots to say on this topic, and it holds important lessons for innovating and restructuring in disruptive times, as we covered…
In our current survey we asked SMBs how they like to purchase digital advertising. SMBs prefer "Do-it-Yourself" (DIY) over assistance. Only 19.4% reported preferring some type of assistance aka "Do-It-With-Me" (DIWM) or "Do-It-For-Me" (DIFM). SMBs prefer DIY because they believe it's…
