Andrew Shotland wrote yesterday…
Ian White’s Urban Mapping provides neighborhood data to local search companies meaning when you search for “Starbucks in Soho”, chances are the search engine you’re using uses Urban Mapping’s data to figure out where “Soho” is. Neighborhoods are weird things, most of them do not have defined boundaries of where they start and stop. I sort of know what I’m talking about when I say the “West Village” of NYC but chances are my definition is different than yours.
At SMX Local today, Ian went through the data that AOL accidentally leaked (something like 20 million searches) and found that 9% the search terms people used included what he classified as “neighborhood-specific” terms. Compare that to zip codes which accounted for less than 1% of the searches.
Jennifer Saba writes in Editor & Publisher on September 27, 2007 about a a Bank of America report by Joe Arns…
[O]nline ad revenue per reader is now roughly one-third to one-half of that generated by print readers — a marked improvement from just a year ago.
Based on the total ad revenue per reader, in Q2 Bank of America estimates that on average, newspaper publishers generated about $25 to $38 of ad revenue per daily online reader compared with $70 for each print daily reader. This suggests that online readers are worth about 36% to 55% of the value of print readers, up from 28% to 42% in Q2 2006.
“In our view, the gain in online revenue per reader is remarkable given the severe cyclical headwinds that have had a disproportionate effect upon classified advertising — which makes up nearly 80% of the online newspaper ad revenue pie,” wrote Arns.
Driving the online monetization: the shift of classified ad spending from print to online and the surge in local retailers turning to online advertising.
Peter Krasilovsky reports about CitySquares‘ latest developments…
neighborhood-centric directory of local businesses has got about $1 million in venture funding; almost 400 advertisers paying roughly $600 a year, mostly for “deluxe” business profiles; and an 88 percent renewal rate.
They seem to be getting some traction, and they’re going places…
In mid-October, CitySquares is going to re-launch using new neighborhood slicing-and-dicing capabilities from Urban Mapping and Localeze, all based on an open-source Drupal platform. The site is also confidently planning to expand beyond Boston, with another northeast city set for Q2 2008, and a third one for Q3.
Co-Founder Ben Saren says the site’s re-do reflects a key truism: hyperlocal is about neighborhoods, but the reality is that neighborhoods are often “in-between” other neighborhoods. The new version of the site is going to present searchers with the five closest neighborhoods, as well as proximity options. “They can be five miles or ten blocks,” he says. That’s the Localeze part of it.
They’ll also identify neighborhoods within neighborhoods, such as Observatory Hill, which is a section of Cambridge. That’s the Urban Mapping part of it. The ability to sell across neighborhoods will help sell ads for the many small businesses “in between.”
Ghost of Midnight is an online journal about fostering community within neighborhoods, with a special focus on Front Porch Forum (FPF). My wife, Valerie, and I founded FPF in 2006... read more