State of Interactive Local – ILM 08

Well ILM’08 has begun. Matt Booth began the conference by commenting on some numbers on local ad spending. Right now local is 32% of the total market in the US, representing $92 billion dollars!

From a survey of 1000 small businesses in the US, showed that their usage of online media was beginning to show some parity with traditional media. The percentages were 73%/74% respectively.

The survey also asked small business about their views on different medias, etc. Some conclusions show that smbs do not know how to track leads, understand ROI, etc. From my experiences, I would agree.

Matt concluded his talk about the future and said that it is a fertile ground for new marketing products/companies. For those new or revised ad products/services they will need to deal with the following for the small business:

• immediacy – need to show results quickly
• lead tracking – needs to be easy to understand
• pulsed ads – easy to turn on/off per season
• conversation & reputation management – tools for dialogue between consumers and smbs
• blend of content and advertising that work together