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Industry News - July 17, 2008
By Libby Waldo | July 17, 2008
What Role will IYPs Play in Next Generation Mobile Search?
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Connecting the Dots (Again)
I’ve have tried to argue for several years that “local” is the most important thing happening online — because it’s all about driving buyers to the point of sale offline. But one of the big, historical challenges in validating that argument and propsition has been tracking the influence of online to the point of sale. Lots of surveys and studies have been done (mostly by comScore) to try and document the connection. And they have documented it.
So if people have seen that the Internet is primarily a marketing platform that increasingly influences local sales, why isn’t the money flowing quickly online in recognition of that fact? Enter the panel I moderated at the ShopLocal Summit in Chicago yesterday. Among the panelists were my former colleague from The Kelsey Group, Peter Krasilovsky, as well as Centro’s Shawn Riegsecker, Starcom’s Sam Wehrs, speakers from Toys R Us, Target and NSA Media. (It’s a very interesting event overall that addresses the “product side” of local vs. the services side, which always get the attention.)
The reasons given by panelists for the failure to shift more budget from traditional media online were many and varied: inertia, organizational culture and politics, the fact that online is still novel for many traditional marketers and the inability to show direct ROI in many cases. Most of us have heard some or all of these explanations before. But it’s kind of amazing that things are still moving relatively slowly, despite some high profile exceptions such as GM.
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What Role will IYPs Play in Next Generation Mobile Search?
Now that the 3G iPhone and App Store have arrived, the iPhone is decidedly more appealing and user friendly for both mainstream users, and for companies of all sizes to create and deliver mobile apps. The previous post explored how local search on the device is shaping up to have clear social elements.
But what role will IYPs play? Given directory publishers’ role as longstanding “owners” of local, does the new mobile environment represent an opportunity to get in early and avoid losing ground to pure-plays, as happened in the online local search world over the past 5 years?
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