Came across this article today written by Greg Sterling that contains a good overview on Local Advertising in 2008.

Many people I speak to still ask the familiar question, “Is this going to be the breakout year for local?” while expressing frustration or disappointment that “local hasn’t yet lived up to expectations.” But local is a marathon, not a sprint. It’s also more complex than the general search market, which features an ecosystem built around a small number of large and highly visible companies. Even though many of those same companies are focused on local, one could almost flip that equation when discussing the local internet: it’s about a very large number of mostly small companies.

In the spirit of that “Is this the year?” question, I thought that for the first Locals Only column of 2008, it’s worth taking stock of where we are and what the coming year likely holds for local.

Internet now a primary medium for local consumers
Study after study has confirmed that consumers research products before buying (mostly offline). However, perhaps more strikingly, the internet has now surpassed the venerable print yellow pages and newspapers as the primary local resource for consumers looking for services. This is not to say that print newspapers and yellow pages don’t have meaningful usage anymore, but we’ve reached an important “tipping point” of sorts.

The two studies that independently reflected this shift in 2007 this were from TMP Directional Marketing-comScore and WebVisibile-Nielsen. Both studies showed search and/or the Internet generally as the medium with the greatest reach among U.S. consumers for local information:

Accordingly, the internet is now a critical consumer resource that drives increasing volumes of offline (local) transactions, whether for products or services.

More product inventory information coming online
Though it’s uneven and not always accurate, the depth and volume of product inventory information online is gaining. There have been tremendous strides over the past couple of years and this year should see local inventory information become even more common and widely proliferated online (and in mobile). More retailers are adding popular “buy online, pick up in store” capabilities. This requires a real-time inventory database, which can then support syndication and distribution of that information. Furthermore, a growing list of companies is making headway on the problem of helping consumers find where they can buy desired products locally. As I’ve written before, this expanding group includes: ShopLocal, TheFind, StepUp/Intuit, NearbyNow, Krillion, Where2GetIt, Channel Intelligence, Yokel, GPShopper, AskTheLocal and a few others.

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