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Ten areas media companies need to be planning now

Alisa Cromer
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Borrell Associates 2010 conference was small.. and sold out.

After attending Borrell Associates' 2010 Local Advertising conference, we summarised ten strategic areas that local media companies need to address this year to be prepared for the next five years.

1. Mobile device advertising (this includes e-readers) will account for an astounding 50% of all online revenues by 2013, according to Borrell and Associates. All local media companies need a plan that incorporates multiple mobile devices, apps, sms and short codes.

2. Search strategies. Profiles and jump pages for specific campaigns are still a big market, especially since so many SMB's are unhappy with and redeveloping their sites. Creating a splash page is tied into a campaign improves SEO, serves the customer and has high retention. Channels that can offer these pages, especially integrating with unpaid content are sure to do well. One example is komonews.com's community pages built on datasphere. Another is sanjose.com, which has a number of paid channels that show up in the search engine rankings higher then the advertisers' own web sites.

4. Video. Todd Minnier, a top executive at Yellowbook.com says it upsold 5% of several thousand merchants on videos in the last year, and will sign up 70% by 2010. Advertisers with video see 50% to 500% increases in phone calls and twice the dwell time on the ad. Whither go the banner ad will be in part to video. Some premium content channels like health or pets are including video advertorials to obtain top dollar from channel sponsors. Other media simply blend video advertorials with content, according to Mike Glickenhause, CEO of VMIX, a company which supports video production including premium channel development. Let's hope the bandwidth holds out...

5. Promotions. Contests for data-collection have the highest response rates and advertiser satisfaction. Contests create an accumulative circular link that includes the offer, UG interaction and data-collection. Big response rates make advertisers happy, and accumulation of opt-in lists positions the media company for new mobile messaging sales and e-mail promotions at a later date (one legal caution here, the opt-ins have to be done correctly as people are far more concerned about privacy issues when it comes to things appearing unwanted on their phone). If you need help, Secondstreetmedia.com is a partner with deep experience in the promotions area. Also be sure to invest in a sufficient e-mail program to manage multiple opt-in programs; Constantcontacts.com is just one source.

6. Coupons. Coupons are booming and now desired even by the affluent. Zip2Save is wooing the the grocery store market from Advo and has a number of good-looking upgrades to its coupon packages in the oven. The standalone coupon site YourLI.com started a Long Island broadcast company shows how even television sites can easily get in the game. Local Thunder.com and BizzBuzz.com are stand alone shopping partners with a lot of experience who partner with media sites. Couponsinc.com also provides a couponing platform.

7. Local ad networks. Growthspur.com is taking a stab at aggregating hyper-local sites into ad networks but the field is still wide open. Media companies may be able to seize the opportunity in their own markets. One interesting network aggregator is Jivox, which both sells to businesses and partners with media to create three-step video ads with conversion tools. Jivox will also "launch" campaigns with one click, across its media partners and search engines.

8. Behaviorial targeting. After Advance Communications, one of the largest newspaper groups in the country, partnered with Microsoft's Bing, one take away is success in selling behaviorial targeting packages. An example is an events company targeting people who visited sports pages.

9. Politics. Though briefly touched on, the mother of all new ad dollars in the next few years due to changes in campaign law spending is politics, a strong franchise already at many newspaper sites. $8.2 million will go into political campaigns, like it or not, and about half of this - $4 million - will be spent on media buys, mostly television. Though these dollars are mostly national, there is a key opportunity to create political sites or channels that become the central resource for politics in the area, especially by using video to create micro-sites or pages for each politician. Borrell sells a $995 report that shows the dollar potential in each market.

10. Domain name strategies. The awful truth: Great domain names help search product appear in the organic listings. In lieu of owning your own city name, look for neighborhood names. In lieue of neighborhood names, look for opportunities to register or purchase keysearchword.com names that match, well, key search terms for core franchise areas.

Left out of this list is social media. Fully integrating products with social media tools is just a first step. Tell us what you think.

Alisa Cromer

The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and  MediaExecsTech,  developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine,  to showcases perspectives from around the  world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.

mobile, search, borrell, video, promotions