Marchex reported Q1 revenues and gained on advertiser growth:
Revenue was $37.0 million for the first quarter of 2008, compared to $34.2 million for the same period of 2007.
The company has also recently announced a series of deals with partners seeking to gain additional, qualified local traffic from its network.
The “market” still doesn’t really understand local and Marchex is struggling to educate the market and tell a coherent story about what it’s doing.
Once again, let’s be clear on what local is about: It’s NOT about yellow pages advertisers and SMBs, though that’s an important part of the story. It’s also NOT about “the long tail,” though that’s there too.
Local is first and foremost about transactions and the point of sale; it’s about where the money changes hands. E-commerce is a bit player in retail and the Shopatrons, Where2GetIts, Krillions, NearbyNows, ShopLocals, Channel Intelligences of the world threaten to marginalize it and further flatten its growth.
The Internet, fundamentally, is a “consideration” medium that helps consumers make buying decisions that are consummated offline (read: Local). Part of that is finding SMBs but it’s also about products and brands — in a big way. (See alternative segmentation of SMB market discussion.)
The future of advertising is about the smart integration of media — online and off — and better visibility and tracking of performance. Mobile integration with traditional media, inventory feeds and more complete end-to-end tracking will help make all this more transparent for folks eventually.
Ever since I left the Kelsey Group I’ve tried to re-frame the definition of local to more clearly expose what’s really going on with the Internet and consumers. Neither the advertisers, nor most of the ad networks, nor the publishers are yet advanced enough to fully respond to this reality — and opportunity.
But it’s coming.
May 7, 2008 at 3:58 pm |
[...] kind of buries a great exposition on this topic in Marchex Gains, Beats Estimate. He differentiates Local as NOT YP and also not about Long Tail (which has always [...]
May 7, 2008 at 4:25 pm |
[...] kind of buries a great exposition on this topic in Marchex Gains, Beats Estimate. He differentiates Local as NOT YP and also not about Long Tail (which has always galled me [...]
May 7, 2008 at 4:30 pm |
Great Post, Lousy Title, Greg. I think you got into a great tangent on this post. Probably need to rename the post or pick up a new thread. I riffed on this a bit at http://www.seeingforests.com/local-deconstructed-buying-of-disaggregated-products/. We really are in a period of change where terms like “deconstruction” and “disaggregation” are applicable – just not what your average media buyer understands. You’re spot on about it being the offline consummation of an online shopping experience. Local is about connecting those two together through new buying processes and product location.