Local advertising is a hot topic and there’s a heated controversy around whether or not it can be truly effective — especially on a mobile device. Many experts agree that it all rests in the hands of local search. The better the user experience when searching locally, the more people will use it. If advertisers can deliver highly targeted, contextual local, mobile advertising — all the better.
comScore, Inc. reports that local search on a mobile device grew 51% from March 2008 to March 2009. This counts the number of people accessing online directories restaurants, maps, and movies. The mobile browser is the leading access method, with 20.7 million users seeking local information in March 2009, up 34% versus year ago.
The strongest growth in the category is coming from downloaded applications. However, developers, carriers and device OEMs remain the least popular access mode for mobile access of local information. A marginally more often used channel for obtaining local information is SMS, with an impressive 72% growth rate.
Serge Matta, comScore senior vice president, says “…it would not be surprising within the next six months to see the number of people using downloadable applications surpass SMS for the accessing of local information via mobile devices… ” At ChaCha, we highly respect the analysts at comScore, but believe that SMS Local Mobile Search will be get better and better — and because of its reach and brevity (people get the ANSWER, not RESULTS), it will continue to be a popular way to access local information well into the near future. Our local advertising team can tell you all about it.
What do you think?
2 Comments to “Effective Local Advertising Tied to Effective Local Search”
1 | Marge
July 13th, 2009
Now what if, as a small advertiser, you could get into the hands of consumers with location as well as context specific advertising? For example: A Skowhegan, Maine gift shop/bed an breakfast/local pub can advertise to all weddings taking place in the area? It can be done. If Jane and John create a mobile application for their wedding, free and distribute via low-cost SMS to their guests, those guests will can access the kind of advertise they’ll be most receptive to. There are a few mobile app creators doing this today. One is Magmito.
2 | Sid
July 18th, 2009
SMS and all is nice, but as data use becomes more prevalent it may be important to build apps for the iphone or android OS that can utilize chacha. People like having a clean interface to ask a question or find info and not just rely on text. For example, the yelp app on iphones vs asking a question on chacha.
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