The contraction of the newspaper industry has left a lot of journalists without work. And some of those writers have taken matters into their own hands, establishing hyperlocal news sites on the Internet, where the cost of entry is low. But even though it doesn’t take much to launch a site, companies from AOL on down have, so far, been unable to figure out how to monetize the hyperlocal news business.
A new ad marketplace designed to address that need will launch this week. Local Yokel Media is an ad-serving platform that aggregates hyperlocal and local websites and blogs. Advertisers can then easily target via Zip Code, which, according to Dick O’Hare, the company’s CEO, is a more effective way to deliver advertising than looking at IP addresses or cookies.
“As audiences have continued to migrate online, there have been bigtime implications,” said O’Hare. “Print newspapers, yellow pages…it creates a vacuum of truly local coverage.”
Invoking the oft-cited statistics that 80 percent of discretionary spending is done within 10 miles of home or work, O’Hare said that consumers are very receptive to ads for businesses in their communities and local businesses are anxious to reach audiences in their immediate service areas. A platform that addresses those needs improves ad performance. O’Hare said that LYM can serve as a site’s sole source of advertising or as incremental sales to sites that have their own sales forces.
The problem is this doesn’t solve the reticence of local businesses to delve deeply into online advertising beyond search and daily deals.
LYM will initially focus on the New York DMA, which, he said, has 1,000 hyperlocal sites, excluding Patch sites.
“Independent journalists do a great job with content,” he said. “But when it comes to monetization, they need a premium third party solution”
-
‘Not the future’: European publishers remain steadfast in blocking alternative IDs to third-party cookies
Some European publishers believe alternatives to the third-party cookies, probabilistic or deterministic, will do more harm than good to their ads businesses.
-
Media Briefing: Why Leaf Group spun off its media arm into a standalone company
World of Good's newly appointed CEO Lindsey Abramo spoke with Digiday about her plans to lean into experiential and embrace niche vs. scale.
-
Dentsu’s latest ad report shows slowed growth, driven mostly by inflation
The good news in Dentsu's ad forecast is that there's still growth. The bad news: most of the growth is the result of inflation, while real ad pricing actually dropped a bit.
-
SponsoredWhat the measurement and currency discussion really means to TV advertisers
Ali Mack, head of TV and agency, Experian Major streaming video providers have recently made headlines by adopting new currencies for ad measurement, threatening Nielsen’s long-standing TV ratings monopoly. NBCUniversal, for example, has certified iSpot and VideoAmp as currencies for advanced audiences and formed the Joint Industry Committee with Paramount, TelevisaUnivision and Warner Bros. Discovery. […]
-
How chef influencer Tue Nguyen works with the BuzzFeed Creator Network
BuzzFeed's Creator Network has been valuable from an audience and production education standpoint, but Nguyen still drives most of her business on her own.
-
Dentsu’s new Web3 readiness tool shines light on the tech’s potential to complement AI
Dentsu's Innovation Initiative is launching a web3 readiness index next month — at a time when the industry is obsessed with AI. Could the two technologies actually make a good pair?
