137 billion. That’s how big the local media market is. Steve Marshall and Matt Booth highlighted findings from “Wave XV” of BIA Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor during this morning’s session, “New Directions for Interactive Local Commerce.” Not surprisingly, there is a steady shift toward digital media, around 13 percent between now and 2015.
Speaking first, Matt …

Today we released our latest forecast that projects spending on U.S. mobile advertising. The highlight of this particular release is the subset of advertising that will be location targeted. We also break down formats (display, search, SMS), but here I’ll focus on the local stuff.
First off, the methodologies and definition of location targeted are …

People tend to want to hear the good news first, but let’s start with the opposite.
As we near the halfway point of the year, reports from the local radio industry reveal that growth has slowed more than expected. BIA/Kelsey now expects over-the-air local radio revenues to grow only 3.4 percent, down from 5.4 percent growth …

BIA/Kelsey projects that total U.S. social advertising revenues will surge from $2.1 billion in 2010 to $8.3 billion in 2015, growing at a 31.6 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Driven by Facebook, social networks will command a majority share (51 percent) of all display ad impressions by 2015.
The inaugural social advertising forecast is part …

Questions and comments poured into our Social Local Media webinar last week, and true to our word, we’re addressing every last one of them. This time around, let’s crunch some numbers. What key data points are we using to frame our view of the social space? How does these mesh with our perceptions of online/interactive? And …

Thanks to the 600+ who registered for yesterday’s webinar on the launch of BIA/Kelsey’s Social Local Media advisory service. And even bigger props for the nearly 50 questions and comments that poured in. Our pledge to you: We will address them ALL in the coming months through our blog and other touch points.
To peak the interest …

My monthly Search Engine Watch column is up. It takes a closer look at our recent forecast and why search is the fastest growing revenue source among mobile ad formats. It has a lot to do with the increasingly vaunted position of the browser as a front door to mobile content (bear with me).
Last month, …

Today, Mary Meeker gave her annual data dump of key Internet trends at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. As always it was fairly rich, including lots of mobile usage data as leading indicators for opportunities in content and ad delivery.
One of the more notable slides included global smartphone shipments plotted against PC (both desktop and notebook) …

Millennial Media is out with its monthly SMART report for September. Along with the standard data points of its ad network activity (i.e., platform breakdowns), a few other angles are included. Specifically it reveals interesting nuggets about the types of ad targeting it’s seeing.
Among the ads placed across its network, 44 percent are targeted in …

In the local media forecast we just released, U.S. mobile local ad revenues are projected to grow from $213 million in 2009 to $2.02 billion in 2014, a compound annual growth rate of 57 percent.
This is the location targeted portion of overall U.S. mobile ad revenue. This subset will grow with greater smartphone penetration, and advertiser …

Here are some recent items of note that we’ve come across in the Global Yellow Pages space:
BIA/Kelsey has released its Global Yellow Pages forecast, which calls for continued declines in print, offset largely by digital growth boosted by an expanding array of new products — ranging from websites to reputation management. We expect digital to account …

Today, BIA/Kelsey released its 2009-2014 U.S. local advertising forecast. Over the past two months, lead analysts Charles Laughlin, Matt Booth, Mike Boland, Peter Krasilovsky, Rick Ducey and Mark Fratrik have grinded through the process of forecasting local ad revenues.
This applies across 12 local media sectors and includes multiple layers of traditional and interactive revenues. The …

The IAB and PricewaterhouseCoopers are out with their semi-annual report on the online ad market. IAB/PWC say that interactive revenues were $23.4 billion for 2008, which is up 10.6 percent from the prior year. But everyone seems to be pointing to ominous signs, since the share of second-half revenues was just 51 …

One day after R.H. Donnelley released its 2008 results showing a sharp drop in ad sales, Idearc followed suit today with annual results that also reflect a very tough Yellow Pages environment in the United States. The big news in the release is the acknowledgment of the possibility that Idearc may seek bankruptcy protection. From …

Earlier this week I went to hear an economist offer his take on the current economy and how soon it would recover. Long story short, I believe the speaker, who had outstanding credentials, was overly optimistic. (I really believe he may have been on vacation on some secluded island for the past year.) In fact, his …

Last fall, a report from Sequoia Capital was widely circulated, strongly suggesting that companies sit on their capital and wait out what was sure to be a very slow and painful period. Now it’s gotten worse.
For the past several weeks, other analyst reports have been circulating. They suggest that we’ve entered a period of “deleveraging,” …

We’ve just announced the lineup for our Marketplaces 2009 conference, which is March 16-18 at the historic (and excellent) Century Plaza in L.A. We hope you find it as compelling as we do. It is probably a “must attend” event by any standards.
Last year in Seattle, we had 500 attendees, and it was pretty great. This time, …

New CEO Scott Klein presented Idearc Media’s first-half results and previewed his plans for reorganizing and reenergizing the company. The main theme of the presentation was a “Journey of Transformation,” which is truly what Idearc needs based on the results of Klein’s eight-week evaluation of the organization and its second-quarter results released today.
Financially, the …

TKG’s recently completed Global Yellow Pages and Local Search Forecast underpinned most of the discussion at last week’s Local Online Media: London 08. Today it launches officially.
Each year the forecast measures the size of the local search industry and applies the most current analysis of trends to project growth of key segments. These have included …

Nearly 100 executives in The Kelsey Group community participated in a half-day session that we hosted in London titled Local Online Media. The panel I moderated was “The Financial Future of Directories and Local Search in Europe.” The panelists were Paul Gooden, equity analyst, ABN AMRO, and Paul Kuipers, director, media and telecom corporate finance, …