Local/Regional/Hyperlocal

Twitter activity is highly concentrated among a small subset of heavy users, according to an analysis from researchers at the University of Illinois, published in First Monday. The study used Twitter Decahose as the basis of its analysis, with the data set examined over a period of 39 days constituting about 0.9% of Tweets ever sent and 35.6% of all active users as of December 2012. Among the highlights of the study was the revelation that the top 1% of Twitter users accounted for 20% of all tweets. Expanding that out a little, the top 5% accounted for 48% of all tweets and the top 15% accounted for 85%. Read more »

58% of national brand advertising campaigns employed geo-precise targeting (including geo-fencing and geo-behavioral targeting) in Q1, according to a new report from xAd. That's more than double the 27% from a year earlier, as the proportion using standard geo-targeting dropped from 64% to 40%. Still, fewer advertisers used geo-precise targeting in Q1 than in Q4 2012. That's because some campaigns benefit more than others from such targeting, and Q4 saw more campaigns seeking to leverage the benefits of geo-targeting to promote their holiday and Black Friday promotions. Read more »

66% of small businesses are putting mobile technology to use in some way to market and/or operate their businesses, according to survey results from Constant Contact. The most common ways of doing so are to optimize social media marketing (73%) and email marketing (71%) for mobile devices, with far fewer (34%) offering mobile-optimized websites. The results come soon after research from eWayDirect, which similarly found that slightly less than half of B2C marketers were optimizing emails for mobile. Read more »

Perhaps due to the growing influence of social shares on search rankings, local SEOs are increasingly seeing social media as an effective marketing channel for local businesses, according to results from a BrightLocal industry survey. More than 8 in 10 respondents believe that social either works well for certain business types (57%) or that it is very powerful (25%), up from 76% last year, while fewer than 1 in 10 are of the opinion that it's over-hyped. When it comes to generating leads customers for clients, though, SEOs are biased towards search, with 82% saying that "general search" is one of their top-3 most effective online channels. Read more »

The influence of mobile devices on local content continues to grow, details the Local Search Association in a new study [pdf] prepared using comScore data. According to the study, 48% of mobile phone users accessed local content in December 2012, up from 42% a year earlier. And that figure should only grow alongside rising smartphone penetration: smartphone users were more than 5 times as likely as non-smartphone users to access local content (77% vs. 14%). In fact, a significant 24% of traffic to online directories and other local resources came from mobiles and tablets in December 2012, quadruple the 6% share from a year earlier. Read more »

Smartphone and tablets owners are extremely reliant on their devices when researching local products and services, per new data [download page] from xAd and Telmetrics. The second annual US Mobile Path-to-Purchase Study reveals that 46% use their device exclusively as their primary or default tool aiding their local purchase decisions, with the remainder leveraging other media sources such as the PC. Additionally, half use their device at the beginning of the research process, and one-third use their device throughout the purchase process. Read more »

6 in 10 search marketers believe that it will be either much more (27%) or more (36%) important to rank in global search engines this year compared to last, according to results from BrightEdge's "2013 Search Marketer Survey" [download page]. A key aspect of reaching consumers around the world involves getting to the Chinese customer, and 41% of respondents believe it will be more important to rank in Baidu this year, versus about 1 in 10 who see this being less important. A recent report from Covario found that Baidu accounted for 1 in 4 global paid search clicks in Q1. Read more »

More mobile location-based advertisers are using geo-fenced strategies, and new survey results from CouponCabin.com indicate that 20% of smartphone owners surveyed have visited a store after receiving notification that specials, coupons, or deals were available nearby. The CouponCabin.com survey results, released in conjunction with the company applications' new geo-fencing feature, also reveal that two-thirds of smartphone owners would be at least somewhat interested in a mobile application that lets them get notifications for geo-targeted coupons. Read more »

Political advertising fueled a 13% increase in local TV ad revenues last year, to $20.8 billion, details BIA/Kelsey in newly-released data. Certain markets which featured heavily-contested campaigns saw significant jumps: for example, the Wisconsin markets were up by more than 40% overall, while the Ohio markets experienced an average increase of almost 38%. While online properties saw rapid growth, over-the-air (OTA) delivered a healthy increase of 12.8%, up to $20.2 billion. With revenues growing faster than expected last year, the researchers project spending to "normalize" this year. Read more »

What would it take to get smartphone-toting women shoppers to share their location? A $25 in-store credit would do the job for 83%, according to results from a study of the apparel shopping behaviors and preferences of 1,000 smartphone-owning women, commissioned by Swirl and conducted by ResearchNow. But for almost half of these women, a $5 in-store credit would suffice, though a $1 credit would only entice 20%. The study also indicates that about 6 in 10 would fork over their location info in exchange for a gift with their purchase, one-quarter would do so for early access to new styles, and about 1 in 5 for personalized style recommendations. Read more »