Coupons are hot in a down economy, and printable online coupons — and even mobile coupons — are gaining share in the coupon business. But local SMBs aren’t always in on the game, as coupon sites frequently gravitate toward one-stop national accounts.

Now, Analog Analytics, a San Diego-based vendor, is pushing a clever mobile solution that allows online local publishers to feature display ads that have SMS promotion codes built in. Consumers show the coupon on their phones to retailers for conversion.

Use of the mobile coupon provides complete analytics (impressions, clickthrough rates, texts, e-mail and conversions). Among the 850 publishers currently working with the solution are MediaNews Group, Village Voice Media, Local.com, Wick Communications, Freedom Interactive and The San Diego Reader. More than 25,000 ads are being supported, and the company has just expanded beyond the U.S. with a new Australian operation. Chinese operations are currently being eyed.

Company founder Ken Kalb, a longtime search vet, says the mobile coupon solution is the natural successor to low click display campaigns. The engagement of a local promotion typically boosts clickthrough rates by 2 percent to 10 percent — 10 times higher than national online ads. Revenues might see a 20 percent to 30 percent boost within six weeks of launching.

Kalb notes that the coupons are sold via local sales forces, or alternatively, via a self-serve platform. Affiliate marketing programs from other online coupon companies just aren’t a good alternative, he says. They typically pay just three cents per click. They also don’t offer much support for local advertisers in terms of analytics or upsells.

In fact, Analog’s self-serve platform also offers an upsell gift certificate program, which brings in immediate revenues for advertiser and publisher alike, as well as the “Bigger, Better Deal,” a daily promotion special. It also encourages frequent updating of ad copy and promotions. The platform also enables the development of opt-in marketing lists.

Is it too soon for mobile coupons on a mass media basis? It might be. As a backup, Analog Analytics does support print-out options. But this solution is an interesting one that might bring a source of renewed interest for local media companies. They continue to bring in more eyeballs than other media on their Web sites, but often have a hard time proving their value.

Analog Analytics CEO Ken Kalb is a featured speaker at Marketplaces 2010. He’s on the “Back to Square One: Refocus on Revenues” panel with Adicio Chief Alliance Officer Tony Lee and Matchbin CEO Reed Brown.

Local radio and television stations are in various stages of extending the broadcasting business model from traditional over-the-air to an array of digital platforms. This allows both new inventory with different attributes to be sold and a critical revenue growth path. How these digital incentives by broadcasting firms get resourced, managed, executed and evaluated is going to become an increasingly important part of the economic profile of the industry. Broadcasters need to know what’s working or not and why. They need to understand the opportunities and the threats in the digital media ecosystem. And broadcasters need to make commitments to the digital space in a meaningful but responsible way that ties back to corporate missions and the need to generate revenue growth.

These are the ingredients behind our new advisory service, “Digital Strategies for Broadcasting.” Technology can drive new workflows, partnerships and revenue streams, and in doing so challenge existing management and operational structures and processes. Running a broadcast company with digital media assets is quite different from running a traditional broadcast property.

BIA itself has taken the “digital plunge” with its acquisition of The Kelsey Group, which extended our expertise, knowledge and relationship base into digital media. With the launch of DSB we are leveraging those resources along with the expertise, data and services BIA has provided the broadcast industry with since 1983.

The explicit goal of DSB is to help our advisory clients develop and execute their digital strategies as successfully as possible. This may mean broadcasters but it can also mean assisting those firms elsewhere in the local media ecosystem looking to understand and work more productively with broadcasters as partners, service providers or vendors.

For more information about Digital Strategies for Broadcasting, click here.

Click to register for our free webinar on Tuesday, March 16, Digital Strategies for Broadcasting: Capitalizing on the Shift to Local and Digital Media.

DataSphere, a hyperlocal enabler and sales agent for local media companies, says that Northwest TV and radio giant Fisher Communications has now sold more than 1,000 hyperlocal advertisers using Datasphere’s neighborhood-specific content and sales system. The system is now in more than 43 neighborhoods served by Fisher TV stations in Seattle, 40 neighborhoods in Portland and additional neighborhoods in Boise. Each advertiser pays between $30 and $400 per month depending on the tier of services chosen.

DataSphere CEO Satbir Khanuja, a former senior executive at Amazon, says “our timing is precisely right.” He notes that many advertisers had experience with Google text ads, but that the company’s focus on enhanced profile display ads makes more sense. It also brings in more money. “They’d been paying 50 cents to $1 for the text ad, but we can bring in 10 times more from the account,” he says (or $5).

In terms of getting to conversion, the company’s focus on specific neighborhoods rather than DMAs has been key to successfully selling the local accounts and leveraging content from the local media partner and from local bloggers, who benefit from aggregating their audience. “They want to see ‘my neighborhood.’ Things that are really in their community,” says Khanuja.

In New Castle (WA), for instance, the whole town was talking about Blockbuster and the imminent closing of its local store, he says. The company got that. “It is also important that they’re calling from [Fisher's] KOMO-TV News” rather than from a no-name provider, he says. “Our conversion is extremely high.”

Key categories for DataSphere in Seattle and other markets that it serves include groceries, drug chains, dentists and lawyers. “The categories are controlled by the [local] sales agents,” says Khanuja. “It is all green field.”

DataSphere has also launched in markets served by other media partners, such Providence, R.I. It supports more than 130 hyperlocal neighborhoods in all, including 40 in the Monterey,CA/Salinas areas in partnership with Cowles California and its area TV stations.

Fisher has invested $1.5 million in the company, an amount that was part of a $10.8 million B round. Ignition Partners was another investor. Khanuja says the hefty amount will be used to develop the software platform and launch “thousands” of additional neighborhoods. Fisher recently owned and then divested Pegasus News, another hyperlocal platform.

Having been in the trenches for the past year talking about multiproduct selling and how a consultative or collaborative sales process is a key component for selling multiple media, I keep hearing over and over again “I’ve been training on consultative selling for years so why should we rely on it to take us into the next era of selling?” Having been involved in local media sales for more than 10 years, I’m going to take the unpopular stand and say that the current local media sales process is transactional product selling in consultative selling clothes. In short, many sales organizations have embraced aspects of consultative selling but in large it is being used as a sales tacticto get in the door and keep the advertiser talking in order to sell specific media options.

BNET recently featured Harvard Business School professor Ranjay Gulati, who wrote a new book titled “Reorganize for Resilience: Putting Customers at the Center of Your Business.” In his book, Gulati points out:

“In a marketplace like today, customers have more choices and more information, and services start to look like each other, in what we call a sea of sameness. If you don’t have an ability to transcend beyond the features and functionality of my product versus yours, then you have a problem.”

Gulati points out the fallacy of the notion that media companies are currently consultative and customer focused. Many media sales teams feel if they are asking a few questions about the business and their expected ROI from their marketing efforts that somehow this constitutes consultative selling. Put simply, salespeople are saying “I’ll talk about your needs so long as it leads to you only buying my portfolio of solutions.” Gulati’s point of view is “Most organizations believe they are customer centric when they are asking questions, but they’re communicating with customers through a product lens (with a pre-determined end in mind).” Instead, Gulati says “companies must ask deeper questions such as what problems they are dealing with and what issues are happening in the life of my customers regardless of the solutions the sales person is offering.” The goal in asking probing questions is to help the advertiser better articulate his or her needs so sales can get them met.

Consultative or collaborative selling is about transparency and building solutions that fit the customer’s needs and not necessarily the media company’s balance sheet. If a salesperson is aiming to sell a specific product set, and is willing to un-sell other potential solutions, then this version of consultative selling is merely disguised as the same transactional selling of old — all paths lead to a limited solution. Media consultants recognize there are many media options available to advertisers and that at times their portfolio of media offerings has to co-exist or complement other media and at other times they must fight to win budget from media that may not be as effective or is receiving too large of a share of an advertiser’s budget. Being able to counsel local advertisers on media strengths and weaknesses means salespeople must learn about all types of local media to be effective in selling their own portfolio of media options.

Local advertisers are much smarter about where they spend their marketing dollars because they have access to more information than ever before and have tighter ties to peers through social networks who can offer additional guidance. Salespeople used to be the source of information about what was happening in the local marketplace but now they are one of many sources available. If a salesperson cannot deliver value beyond what an advertiser can access on his or her own, then he or she has very little to offer. True media consultancy is the path where more peer-to-peer relationships are developed. Based on BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor study, 48 percent of SMBs want their media rep to help them understand their media options and make the best choice for their budget among the confusing array of new media choices.

While many media sales organizations are looking at incremental changes to their sales processes, those that are savvy and understand that local advertisers have changed and that the sales role must change are the ones that will thrive. The reality is the market has already changed and it is up to each media company to understand how to recraft its sales strategy and put together a consultative media sales team that understands local media and can be the media guide local advertisers are seeking. It’s time to stop making consultative selling a sales tactic for getting the advertiser to talk and use it as a means for building a relationship, creating value and developing media plans that work for the benefit of the advertiser and leverage their existing marketing activities. If consultative selling fantasy can be turned into reality, media outlets stand to make significant revenue gains and gain a larger, more loyal base of advertisers.

Digital media is more cannibalistic than complementary and is seriously eating into the demand for traditional news sources such as newspapers, TV and news magazines, according to the third annual survey of news users done by Outsell Inc.

The survey findings are based on almost 3,000 consumers and are fully detailed in Outsell’s “News Users 2009” report, written by former Knight Ridder executive Ken Doctor. It essentially pours water on hopes that online traffic from Google and other news aggregators represents new growth opportunities for traditional publishers that ultimately outweigh any cannibalism. In fact, 44 percent said news headlines on aggregator products such as Google News suffice in themselves.

Indeed, such aggregator products are increasingly competing with traditional news products as primary “morning” news sources. They’re tied with newspapers and catching up with TV, which leads with a 30 percent share, a drop-off from 36 percent three years ago.

Long-term trends may be worse than the broad numbers suggest, as a segmentation analysis by Outsell found that “Power Users,” who represent slightly less than half of the market, are increasingly relying more on digital products. These users have “omnivorous” appetites for news, simultaneously serving as core newspaper subscribers while relying more heavily on news aggregator products.

Outsell, however, found they are spending less time with print publications. Moreover, they are increasingly inclined to drop their newspaper subscriptions.

“It’s worth watching the trends set by power news users — they tend to foreshadow where all news usage is moving,” notes Outsell. “The daily newspaper and news magazine habit is quickly ebbing.”

The survey also suggests that paid content may not be a panacea — something that The New York Times is betting on, as it implements plans to move to paid online models in early 2011.  Analysts (like me) would argue that The Times exists in a class of its own as a news source and may prove the exception. Another industry hope –shared by Apple, Amazon, HP and others — is that large computer tablets might entice people to pay for a la carte or subscription content.

Without thinking about the exceptionalism of The Times, or the future of tablets, 75 percent of news users told Outsell that they would get their local news from a different source if a pay wall was put up. Only a small minority said they would be willing to pay for some type of paid content (i.e., online access included with print subscription, online-only access or some other type of “press pass.”).

When the time comes, however, many users will surely reconsider. Just look at the evolution of pay per call, and more recently, paid iPhone apps. None of this, however, undermines the challenges that traditional media face with/and against Google and other digital sources.

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 percent — the worst showing since 2002.

Big trends in the report: Search revenues have gone from 42 percent to 46 percent, display has gone from 35 percent to 33 percent, and lead generation-based revenues have climbed from 6 percent to 7 percent. Meanwhile, classifieds (which include Yellow Pages and auctions) have declined from 14 percent to 13 percent. More startlingly, pay for performance has really boomed, growing from 51 percent to 57 percent of all ad revenues. CPM, meanwhile, has declined from 45 percent to 39 percent.

Kelsey Executive VP Matt Booth notes the report is slightly lower on search and display than Kelsey’s own forecast (although Kelsey forecasts a decline of 8.4 percent this year across all local ad market segments). Given that, Booth is concerned that people may draw the wrong conclusions about interactive’s growth.

“The assumption is that the driver for ad spending is ROI because ‘pay for performance’ is growing and CPM is shrinking if you look at share of both formats,” says Booth. “This is somewhat misleading. The fact is, most advertisers, especially in local, don’t measure ROI; they measure immediate gratification. Getting a quick result is different than getting a good ROI. CPMs are dropping because inventory is skyrocketing, combined with weak national and brand buys.”

It’s important to keep a declining growth rate and ominous signs of slowdown in perspective, Booth adds. “It’s a time of transition and increasing fragmentation. New ad formats are emerging. Let’s remember that after 2002, the ‘minor’ ad improvement called ‘paid search’ started to grow exponentially. If you’re curious, paid search was $1.0B in 2002, $2.1B in 2003 and $3.3B in 2003. We’ll see a similar acceleration of some interactive segments over the next few years.”

Kelsey’s own assessment of the online ad market — specifically, the interactive local ad market — has made Booth more bullish then in any previous year. “In 1997, everyone expected the market to crash and begin a large-scale transition from print to Internet media,” he notes. “What people expected to transpire then is basically happening now.”

“If you think about classifieds, for example, dealers used to buy a newspaper print ad. Now, companies like AutoTrader are selling subscription ads with search views, display ads, call-tracking, lead-gen, photos, inventory collection, etc. These products span traditional ad categories like ‘search,’ ‘display,’ ‘lead-gen’ and ‘classifieds.’  Mobile certainly spans several categories,” Booth says.

“AutoTrader is going to put up slightly less than $700 million this year in top-line revenue,” notes Booth. According to Kelsey’s research, AutoTrader is receiving the majority of the auto spend transition from traditional media.

In the next 24 months, Booth believes “we’ll start seeing an acceleration of product development around local.” He’s especially impressed by efforts such as Citysearch’s to bundle local content and local advertisements to create “a new type of AdSense for local — one that distributes Citysearch’s local content and along with monetization.” Free local content along with money — it worked for Urbanspoon and it will work for others.

Booth adds that “a new category — ‘E-Mail, Presence and Reputation Management’ (EPRM) — will emerge this year in local. This EPRM segment will grow to $3.1B by 2013. Helping businesses manage their communication and Internet presence will fast become the next interactive growth driver.”

The New York Times publishes separate sports and business sections on Saturday, Sunday and Monday. It may soon move away from separate sections altogether. This past Saturday, there was not a single display ad in either the sports or the news sections of the paper. There was less than a quarter page of classified advertising.

When I went to work in the new Information Services Division of Dow Jones in 1980, I was taken on a tour of the newsroom including the area where the news wires spit out a continuous flow of information called the broad tape. I remember being told that the first responsibility a reporter had was to get information out to broad tape subscribers, regardless of the topic, because every piece of news and information had value to someone. A reporter would call in a story, which would be typed by a clerk while an editor stood over him and tore the story out of the typewriter line by line. He would make the rewrites he deemed necessary on the fly, always with the objective of getting the story out quickly and accurately. The next day, if the story was judged newsworthy, a more detailed and better written article would appear in The Wall Street Journal.

Somewhere along the line, Dow Jones seems to have moved away from that notion probably thinking that its real value lay in the findings, analysis and conclusions that would differentiate its product from every other news source. Of course in 1980, Dow Jones’ only real competition was Reuters, and to a lesser extent, the AP and UPI.

In a story in today’s New York Times, The Wall Street Journal’s new top editor, Robert Thomson, was going back to basics. The article says Thomson sent a memo to news employees reminding them that “breaking news has a value that is sometimes better recognized by our readers than our journalists.” As important as analysis is, this reinforces that in the news business, meeting the information needs of customers (as opposed to journalists) really does come first.

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 views were the most positive I have heard or read in the past six months or so. However, he did say a couple of things that I agreed with. One was that television and radio have combined their news and entertainment divisions so that a prime objective of news is now to be entertaining … that is to attract viewers and listeners. Therefore, he said, the media has good reason to say the sky is falling: It brings people in.

Recently, Sharon Begley wrote a column in Newsweek titled “Why Pundits Get Things Wrong.” She quoted a study by a research psychologist at Stanford University who concluded that there was no way to predict the accuracy of anyone’s forecasts. There was no relation to whether the forecaster was a Ph.D., an economist, a political scientist or a journalist or had any other credentials, affiliations or fame. What works for the media, she wrote, are “bold, decisive assertions that make better sound bites; bombast, swagger and certainty make for better TV.”

For more than a dozen years, The Kelsey Group has been predicting the future of the industries we cover. We take the best information we have at the time, talk to industry participants, weigh their views with our own perspectives and make forecasts of the future. We do the best we can to help our clients and the businesses we serve.

The acquisition of The Kelsey Group by BIA resulted in the combination of TKG’s strength in directional media, including all things interactive, with BIA’s strong position in television, radio and newspapers. The benefit of the merger became clear yesterday when the newly formed BIA Advisory Services released a forecast that my colleague Neal Polachek described as “an expanded and more comprehensive view of the U.S. local media sector (by widening our unique understanding) of local media by adding six categories to our forecast.”

It is a little bit unnerving to be offering a new forecast in this difficult economy. Some of the headlines about our forecast said “local ad markets shrinking,” or used terms like “declining” or “downward spiral.” Unfortunately, BIA and TKG analysts do envision local advertising revenues declining from $155.3 billion in 2008 to $144.4 billion in 2013, a negative 1.4 percent CAGR. What is notable, at least to me, is that most of that decline comes from the primarily directional media of newspaper classified advertising and print Yellow Pages. The growth is all in the equally directional Internet Yellow Pages, local search and other interactive digital advertising. There’s just not much share change in traditional direct mail, television, radio, out of home, cable or magazine advertising.

As Harry A. Jessell put it so well in today’s TVNewsday, “the newfangled competition will come, but nobody is in a better position to rule the local online world than TV stations. They have the content, the business contacts and an unmatched ability to promote.” Broadcasters should know that that was the mantra of newspapers 15 years ago. Recognition is the easy part; the hard part is following through and actually making the changes that will help you to compete.

ESPN, which is 80 percent owned by Disney and 20 percent owned by Hearst, has been a leader in verticalizing its brand and content, with dozens of properties covering everything from the core network to ESPN Desportes to the retail stores. Web sites and online radio have played prominently in the vertical mix.

Now The Wall Street Journal reports that ESPN will leverage some of its properties — especially ESPN Radio – to launch its first ESPN local-oriented Web site in Chicago, the location of several other “local” launches (HuffingtonPost, RHD’s ChicagoB2B.com, others). The site, slated to launch in April with MillerCoors as a charter sponsor, will feature a daily Chicago version of “Sportscenter,” ESPN columnists and local radio personalities.

It is likely that the site will grab some of the audience from the Chicago Tribune and Chicago Sun-Times. Currently, type-in traffic for ESPNChicago.com goes to ESPN Radio 1000, “Chicagoland’s Leader in Sports.”