Ariel Arrieta

One of the postulates of retail marketing argues that the three main factors to take into account when advertising a business are Location, Location and Location.

This postulate arrives to the bits world with some differences. In the USA the local media sites attract consumers that spend more money online than the portals and the average of the sites, according to the studies carried out by Online Publishers Association and Jupiter Research.

When we talk about local sites we refer to media with local reach and content, which generally have local advertisers, for example professional services, such as  plumber, where it is not functional to advertise nationally when actually you need somebody that is close to your home.

The study that interviewed 2069 qualified users as online users of local content, with a display representative of the USA population.

The report shows the difference among media, sites with local content and portals in general where it is determined that the locals are more inclined into taking action after looking into an ad.

Newspapers and magazines rank first with 46% of client response- includes clicks, purchase, visiting a store, filling out a questionnaire or a form – after looking into the ad compared to 37% of consumers that act watching an ad in a portal or 35% on a classified ad site.

Another important point to highlight is the conclusion saying that the local media attract clients with a higher purchase power than the generic portals, another justification to have higher CPMs.

Beyond the methodology (polls) and that it is set up and paid by the Publisher group, not so massive (local) to whom the results benefit, and who get an extra tool to support higher CPMs than its massive competitors, the results obtained are pretty solid to be taken into account.

Here is the URL of the study http://www.online-publishers.org