The idea that the Internet should be for local advertising as well as national audiences was reinforced recently when the Local Media Consortium, an organization that is made up of 55 local media advertising organizations, signed a three-year marketing deal with Yahoo. This is one of the tools that Yahoo intends to use to try and compete with the growing ability of Google to reach local markets all around the United States.
What Does the Deal Entail?
The deal states that local media advertisers will now be able to entice customers by offering the national reach of Yahoo along with their local and regional web advertising exposure. Yahoo and the local marketing sales groups split the revenue evenly and the local organizations are able to get their advertising inventory onto a much broader platform.
Is This New?
At the turn of the 21st century, a group called the Newspaper Consortium had signed a similar type of deal with Yahoo. But back when this first deal was signed, the ability for local advertisers to deliver any kind of meaningful product on a national platform was still undeveloped. Sales professionals really did not know how to sell the idea to advertisers and Yahoo was unable to turn the valuable local advertising product into sustainable revenue. When the original deal expired, it was not renewed.
Around the middle of 2013, the Newspaper Consortium started to bring in television advertisers as well and changed its name to the Local Media Consortium. Under this new name, the Consortium sought out Yahoo and signed a new, three-year agreement.
Can It Work?
According to the Local Media Consortium website, the combined reach of the Consortium’s member sites reaches 450 million visitors per month. That is the kind of exposure that Yahoo can use to attract more national organizations to the idea of local advertising. While Google has been focusing on local business identification models for years, this agreement gives Yahoo a new inroad into local advertising that carries a powerful range of exposure.
What Do the Local Advertisers Get?
In this new deal, Yahoo gets to bump up its monthly inventory of advertising exposure by 450 million hits per month. What do the local advertisers get out of this deal? For starters, the advertisers get exposed to the Yahoo platform, which brings with it a whole new world of advertisers and users.
The local media advertisers also get to tap into the experience of Yahoo and learn how to effectively sell local media advertising. Yahoo’s successful methods for structuring and administering sales teams will be the way that local advertisers take their game to an entirely new level.
The last time Yahoo tried this sort of local advertising arrangement, the results were mixed. But there was enough success there to entice Yahoo to try again if the local advertisers ever organized again. With the significant advancements in Internet technology, the Local Media Consortium comes along at a time when Yahoo needs a way to separate itself from Google and the other online media and advertising giants. This new, three-year deal can help put Yahoo and the Local Media Consortium in a position to succeed.