This Hyper Local Publishers 2015 Predictions It’s clear that a lot has happened in the hyperlocal space in the past 12 months. On-demand local apps like Uber expanded rapidly and inspired copycats; local publishers retrenched as Aol wound down its mega-investment in Patch; delivery services got smarter and the competition got thicker; and the listings management space heated up. Meanwhile, Google rejiggered its algorithm with “pigeon” and mobile firms rushed to develop attribution tools that could demonstrate their efficacy. Location-based marketing has enjoyed a banner year in both awareness and growth. In 2015, I expect this growth to explode in North America and Europe, but I also expect secondary markets like Africa, Asia and South America to embrace location and even leapfrog with advances in technology. Also, in 2015, the industry will shift from search to user profile targeting. Location will play a key role in identifying the right people to target, and provide the best insights to do so most effectively with the right messages in the right context. The old-fashioned email newsletter will continue its resurgence and begin to dominate as the source of local news and commerce. Retailers will exploit messaging networks (Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) by pro-actively responding to consumers typing about goods and services they need. Let the bidding for the local consumer’s dollar begin. 2014 was the year that location became an active and regular part of the marketing vocabulary. In 2015 this will expand to include all of the sensors on a phone (GPS, Accelerometer, Gyroscope, Ambient Light, Proximity, Barometer…) to help paint a richer contextual story about mobile users that goes far beyond where someone is, and includes what they are doing and what is happening around them. This new ambient data will help marketers and product builders create more relevant and personalized experiences. Media companies have transitioned to selling digital, differentiation will come through turnaround time. The integrated companies that have streamlined will gain market share over non-responsive competitors. Programmatic advertising will continue to evolve in many of the ways that search advertising as evolved: A lot of the trends that grab the headlines in 2015 will be an acceleration of what happened in 2014. Publishers — whether “legacies” or “pure plays” — will step up their use of increasingly better tools, including sophisticated analytics, to engage users and serve businesses in full-service ways. More “one-off’s” will cluster sites, especially in the top 100 regional markets both to lower operational costs and meet the needs of regional advertisers, like health-care companies. What’s “news” will be defined ever-more broadly to include just about anybody that is especially useful or interesting to the users. This news will tend to have higher value to command higher ad prices for click-throughs. “Commodity” news will be de-emphasized by this trend toward value. ublishers will seek to redefine their communities in ways that make them more exciting, especially as tourist attractions which can fill empty tables at restaurants and otherwise increase retail sales, and support creation of special events that community sites create as an alternative revenue stream. This strategy will also produce more engagement-worthy editorial content. The most innovative sites will maximize the trend toward mobile, including with “game”-like interactive editorial features and streaming of ads within articles. Mobile today is shifting from a secondary local media source to consumer’s primary, and in many cases exclusive, local media source. Overall, it will be a good year for community news because its publishers and editors — using their head and heart each at the right time — are finally learning how to produce more valuable news, cost effectively, and connect more closely both with their users and businesses. This is the business model that, up to now, has eluded community news. If this is indeed happening, then we may see investors starting to pay attention. Hyper Local Networks like the evovling Roundup Newswires Network will rapidly gain traffic and market share. stories.dlvr.it/story/347792
Posted on: Wed, 14 Jan 2015 23:30:17 +0000
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