We’re all ready for the next big turning point in local: and to us, it all begins and ends with the SMB market. Just this week, Facebook announced its one millionth SMB advertiser.

We’ll be diving deep into digital marketing solutions, channels and strategies for SMBs at our upcoming Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing event, which takes place Sept. 11-13 in tech-savvy and fun-loving Austin. The speaker lineup is extremely strong, and we’re expecting a great turnout for the networking (and dealmaking) that BIA/Kelsey is especially well known for.

Thirty-three speakers are already slated. They represent SMB digital marketing leaders from many of the biggest companies in the space, including Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yelp, Microsoft, First Data, YP, YPG, DexMedia, AOL/Patch, Home Advisor and CBS.

We’re just as excited to feature many of the new companies that our analysts have been closely following and writing about. In addition, there’ll be brand new and important SMB research from BIA/Kelsey, along with Hawthorne Search.

Please join us. You can register at attractive early rates here.

BIA/Kelsey has just released Media Ad View Plus. For those unfamiliar, it builds on our forecast data (example) among other sources, to calculate local media ad spending by category across U.S. ad markets.

The starting point is the $132.5 billion U.S. local ad market, growing to $148.8 billion by 2017. The digital portion of that end point will be $41.1 billion, and the data fan out into myriad other breakdowns.

To start to dive into all of the possible segmentations of 12 media categories, 12 advertiser categories, 94 business categories and 362 geographic areas (CBSAs), here are a few examples and high level takeaways.

Digital Media
– Online local advertising exceeds $1 billion in 2012 for six different advertising categories. Top two: technology ($2.1B), retail ($1.8B).
– Online and mobile are top growing ad channels. By 2017: real estate will increase its online ad spend to an astonishing 40.8%.
– Automotive dealers will focus on video, spending 11.4% of their $2.4 billion online ad budget on video display.
– Quick service restaurants will increase online spending from $434.4 million to $618.6 million.
– Financial/insurance will to grow mobile spend from 1.6% in 2012 to 9.8% in 2017.

Traditional Media
– Direct mail dominates ad spend by local retail advertising, garnering over 43% of total retail advertising in 2012.
– Print Yellow Pages dominate the local general services advertising category, generating almost $3.8 billion from the vertical in 2012.
– Local radio advertising is diverse, generating over 10% of its advertising from five different verticals: retail (18%), financial/insurance (17%), restaurants (14.5%), automotive (14%) and technology (10%).
– Despite declines in newspaper circulation, local advertising on newspaper was $22.5 billion in 2012, representing 17.1% of total advertising and second only to direct mail.
– Television still dominates the local automotive advertising vertical, as well as the local government/political/religion (“GPR”) vertical.

To illustrate a few of these points, here’s a nationwide look at spending within the Real Estate vertical. A few notable trends emerge such as the aforementioned online spend growing to 40.8%.

Mobile also shows some impressive growth, growing from a 1% share of local ad spending to 12.8%. That outpaces the national average which will grow from .9% to 6.1% during the same period.

Segmenting by geo also offers an interesting glimpse.  Sticking with the mobile theme above, mobile local ad spending growth in Austin TX stays consistent with the national average (though slightly higher).

Combining all of these  geo, vertical and media type variables is where things start to get interesting and a lot more voluminous. Or, to quote Chip Douglas, the Cable Guy, “The permutations are incalculable.”

Notable trends buried within all the possible breakdowns will be subject matter we’ll continue to unpack here on a semi-weekly basis. Meanwhile, lots more  information on MAV+ is available on its landing page.

Digital media services provider vSplash has made inroads with both newspaper and directory/local search organizations with its BuzzBoard sales productivity tool. vSplash is widely known for its website production capabilities, as well as its voluminous data on small-business digital presence, which is marketed (in partnership with BIA/Kelsey) as SMB DigitalScape.

Today vSplash announced deals with the Dallas Morning News and Dubai’s Local Media, which publishes print and digital search products in the Middle East. Both companies have signed on to use BuzzBoard as way to boost sales productivity.

The basic idea behind BuzzBoard is to reduce the amount of prep time sales reps engage in, thus freeing more time for actual selling, hence generating more revenue. Last year, BIA/Kelsey conducted an online survey of local media sales reps, which showed that on average, reps spend less than 30 percent of their time actually selling. The rest of their time  is spent on paperwork, sales prep, training, travel between sales calls and other tasks. BIA/Kelsey is currently running a second wave of its online sales survey, and results should be ready in time for our Leading in Local: SMB Digital Marketing event, Sept. 11-13 in Austin, Texas.

The data that supports SMB DigitalScape also help make BuzzBoard a powerful sales prospecting and prepping tool. The tool provides automated prospecting, customer and competitive intelligence, which saves the rep timing chasing down this information. The tool also automatically generates sales proposals, and voice records interactions with merchants, which saves time taking and recording notes from sales meetings.

“The data behind the BuzzBoard app is what makes it such an effective tool for opening doors and closing sales,” said D. Brian Ritenour, General Manager, Digital Sales at 508 Digital, The Dallas Morning News. “BuzzBoard not only saves our sales reps hours of time in pre-sales prospect research, it provides the credibility that gives our reps and our customers confidence in the solutions we propose.”

With the exception of efforts like AOL’s Patch and New England’s GoLocal24, “Hyperlocal” has really moved away from its initial focus on neighborhood journalism to more of a focus on geo-targeted advertising and commerce.

Redefined this way, there’s a lot going on in hyperlocal. Today, Stamford,CT-based Local Yokel Media, a hyperlocal ad service started by Yahoo/AOL/Doubleclick vet Dick O’Hare, announced that it had raised $2.15 Million in its first institutional round. Backers include Connecticut Innovations, the Connecticut Department of Economic and Community Development and Gold Ridge Asset Management.

Local Yokel says it is distinguished by its network of local blogs and websites, including newspapers; ability to map ads to a very specific location; and the ability to develop unique and scaleable creative copy. The site is now working with publishers such as Hersam Acorn Newspapers serving Fairfield County, Connecticut and DNA Info, a local news site covering the neighborhoods of New York City and Chicago. Advertisers include Meineke Muffler, LL Bean, and 7-Eleven.

Last month I presented to the International Franchise Association “Fran Camp” conference in Atlanta. To capture and prepare for the presentation, I recorded some of the slides and audio which you can see in the video embedded below.

The point of the presentation was a crash course in mobile and local advertising . Not only is that a central theme for us, but is appropriate for Franchises which have combine national marketing resources with local orientation.

Because the presentation was made to Franchises, it’s not necessarily about franchises. However the last 15 minutes focus on our LCM survey and the Franchisee portion of its respondents.  The rest deals with mobile trends and case studies.

Assuming you don’t have the time (or desire) to watch the full 54 minute clip, the main chapters are written below in case you want to skip around to any parts that may be of interest.  Stay tuned for more video on these and other topics.

Presentation Agenda

– Mobile by the Numbers
– Local Ad Targeting
– Mobile Presence: Half the Battle
– Mobile & Social: Going Native
– Franchise Development
– Franchise SoLoMo Report card

The SMB payment space has been getting mighty crowded since Square’s 2010 launch. Major merchant acquirers such as PayPal, Groupon, Intuit, VeriFone, Heartland Payment, Swipely, Merchant Warehouse and Total Merchant Services have joined Square in the battle for small spending but high volume merchants.

Some may even be subsidizing payment fees in order to get around Square’s appealing, flat rate 2.75 percent fee (plus transaction). Groupon, for instance, has a 1.8 percent for its clients (plus 15 cents per transaction.) LevelUp waives the fee altogether for merchants who also run an ad program with it.

Now comes Punchey, a Boston-based, 20 person startup launched by Yodle Founder Nate Stevens. Punchey’s pursuing small merchants who typically use their Visa or MasterCard accounts to process payments over $50 (i.e. beyond food truck merchants and quick service restaurants.)

Like others, it hopes to use attractive payment processing fees to win accounts that will use other services, especially CRM, reputation management and marketing in general. It charges .75 percent on top of Interchange costs – which range from .50 percent to approximately two percent, depending on the card type and merchant risk.It includes a ten cent fee that banks charge to connect to Visa, MasterCard and Discover.

Stevens says Punchey will save substantial money for merchants that don’t need to simplify their business to flat but inflated fees – or bind themselves into high commission sales relationships in order to get a low processing fee.

Merchants start saving money on transactions over $18, with merchants saving 59 cents on a $50 transaction, he says. That translates to $4.55 on a $250 transaction, and $9.43 on a $500 transaction.

From Stevens’ point of view, Punchey’s found a niche that has much lower processor attrition rate than Square’s target audience of very small businesses. Moreover, successful merchants tend to graduate from operating with the single, personal cell phone that was Square’s original forte. Punchey’s typical client will have between two and 10 employees, he notes.

The company has been testing with 500 merchants around the U.S. for several months. Today, it formally rolls out a self-serve product geared to mobile service providers and businesses that take cards on the phone, such as carpet cleaners and contractors. It will soon launch a telemarketing effort for Brick & Mortar merchants as well, such as frame shops, bike stores and salons.

Today’s announcement that Gannett is acquiring the Belo television stations was certainly not expected. Even with the increased activity of groups acquiring many medium and small market stations, and last week’s announcement that Media General and New Young Broadcasting was being combined, nobody was expecting today’s news.

According to the BIA/Kelsey revenue estimates, together Gannett and Belo will vault to number 3 among local television station groups in terms of 2012 advertising revenues, only exceeded by Fox and CBS. These two companies have been strong broadcasters for many years and both have been very aggressive in developing new products and services to offer both to their local viewing public and their local advertiser clients. Successes from both companies into these new areas will certainly be applied to all of their new markets.

All of this station sales activity comes at a time when there continues to be new and strong competition both for viewers and for advertisers. While that new competition is very challenging for local television stations, many have embraced these new opportunities to expand their own offerings. This activity appears to be a strong signal that local television stations will remain an important part of the local media marketplace.

And this mega deal will more than triple the Year to Date (through May) total of television station sales value as monitored by BIA/Kelsey and is made available at on our Media Trends webpage.

Groupon founder Andrew Mason’s concept of Groupon as “the operating system for local commerce,” had a certain catch to is, but what does it actually mean in practice?

That’s the challenge being addressed by Groupon’s “Breadcrumb” team in Silicon Valley, which has rolled out a suite of services for restaurants and now, other verticals. Groupon is hoping that the Breadcrumb services represent a new source of revenue that can leverage the client relationship that Groupon has already formed vwith 500,000 merchants worldwide – perhaps 100,000 of those in the U.S.

Built on top of the Breadcrumb processing service acquired by Groupon in June 2012, two types of “Breadcrumb by Groupon”-branded services have been introduced.

The first is a full-featured “Pro” product that launched in October 2012 and includes such features as table management, discounted payment processing, full customer support, etc. Monthly fees for Pro range from $99 to $399, depending on volume and what is included. The second Breadcrumb product, introduced this month, is a free Point of Sales tablet product that will compete with Square and others at the low end.

A major inducement for SMBs to switch to Breadcrumb are highly discounted, perhaps subsidized payment processing rates, which for Groupon merchants, are just 1.8 percent plus 15 cents per transaction on Visa, MasterCard and Discover swiped transactions, or 2.3 percent for keyed-in transactions (plus 15 cents).

These rates compare favorably to other fees. Square, for instance, charges 2.75 percent plus per transaction fees. An added sweetener to switch is free processing for the first $5,000 of transactions – a move that might cost Groupon $150-$300 per merchant.

Groupon is also now selling pre-configured hardware boxes to help SMBs get started, including iPads, printers, routers – although items can also be purchased a la carte.

VP for Merchant OS Mihir Shah tells us that Groupon’s aim is to provide “mission critical” services for a wide range of local Brick & Mortar businesses, although restaurants currently dominate the mix. The Breadcrumb services leverage Groupon’s existing merchant list, and also seek to convert Groupon’s Mobile App users, which now account for 40 percent of all Groupon revenue. For merchants, “it is a way to perfectly manage yield,” says Shah.

Are Groupon relationships with its merchants as bad as the press has made them out to be? Shah maintains that Groupon’s merchant relationships are actually very good, and much more of a client relationship than the casual deal-to-deal relationship that it had when it was based entirely on email promotions.

With the arrival of ongoing mobile services (and social media), Groupon has moved to a “DealBank” relationship enabling merchants to pinpoint how many units they want to push through Groupon’s ongoing deals supermarket, or specific promotions. That keeps them in the Groupon fold, and carefully studying their analytics and marketing, he says.

“The retention rate is very high for deals,” says Shah. “Now we are helping you to run your business, and build your business. Our goal has always been to be a partner of these local businesses.”