Local display doesn’t get as much attention as search for SMBs, but we know that in many situations, it can complement search campaigns, or even produce better results. No one pushes harder on this than PaperG, which has developed a network of local media sites for its automated display solutions, and is now working with 20,000 SMBs. It has put together a great Infographic based on its research, coming up with some striking data.

Supporting the sense that display and search are complementary, PaperG notes that 35 percent of people who see a display ad will later search for the business. It also notes that display is cheaper on a cost per click basis that using radio or direct mail. The average CPM cost is $1.50, compared to $4.50 for radio, and $350 for direct mail.

The cost of a display ad for key verticals also runs substantially less than desktop or mobile search. Dentists, for instance, will pay a CPM of $2.58, compared to $6.13 for desktop search and $3.55 for mobile search.

“We’ve seen display work well when positioned as creating “brand awareness with performance upside,” says CEO Victor Wong in an email. “Certainly advertisers with multiple locations or that spend $1,000+ a month on print advertising benefit from greater brand awareness from online display at far cheaper costs than traditional channels. That said, we’ve now gotten targeted display to start working for single location businesses spending $500/month and with re-targeting, we can get results for as low as $100/month.”

Here’s what we’ve been waiting to announce: Google Offers’ head Nitin Mangtani will join our great list of keynoters at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston. We believe Mangtani’s appearance marks one of the first public debuts of Google Offers, which is playing a major role in Google’s vital local strategy, along with Google Places, Google Maps and Zagat ratings and reviews.

Previously announced ILM East keynoters include Groupon Vice Chair +++ Ted Leonsis; American Express SVP of Social Media Leslie Berland; CityGrid Media CEO Jay Herratti; New York Times Research Ops VP Michael Zimbalist; and New York Magazine Digital GM Michael Silberman.

Mangtani joins Google Channel Sales BizDev Head Christine Merritt at ILM East. Merritt will provide Google’s perspective on its emergence in the local ecosystem, and the most effective way to work with Google as a partner.

The next wave of Deals is, in general, a key focus for us at ILM East, along with mobile local media, social local media, video local media, hyperlocal and locally targeted national advertising.

In addition to the keynotes from Google Offers and Groupon, we have a special Day 1 session dedicated to the next wave of deals, featuring EverSave’s Jere Doyle; Find n Save’s Christopher Tippie; Closely’s Perry Evans; and Boomtime’s Bill Bice. That session will be followed by a broader view of deals and ecommerce, which featured NextJump’s Charlie Kim; Cartera’s Jim Douglass; and Bundle.com’s Jaidev Shergill.

Other recent adds to the program include The Boston Globe’s Lisa DeSisto, who joins Boston.com VP of Digital Products Jeff Moriarty as a presenter; and MIT Sloan Associate Professor Catherine Tucker, who gives the low down on the effectiveness of local social media.

Before the show, we’re making a special trip to The Boston Globe’s R&D Lab (Limited Space, RSVP required). Or come to Andrew Shotland’s SEO for the Enterprise session, which also features SEO Expert Will Scott and Advance Digital Media VP John Denny. We’re looking forward to a great show.

Venture Capital
•David Hornik, Principal, August Capital
•Scott Maxwell, Senior Managing Director, OpenView

Mobile Local Media
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Doug McDonald, Director, dotMobi
• John Valentine, VP, East Coast, SCVNGR/LevelUp

Hyperlocal
• Merrill Brown, Principal, MMB Media
• Josh Fenton, CEO, GoLocal24
• Zohar Yardeni, CEO, Main Street Connect

Social Local Media
• Geoff Cramer, CEO, Social Made Simple
• Adam Japko, President, Digital Sherpa
• Jeff Moriarty, VP, Digital Products, Boston.com
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact

Video
• Juan Delgado, Managing Director, Americas, Perform
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications

Deals and Promotional Ecosystem
• Bill Bice, CEO, BoomTime
• Jere Doyle, President and CEO, EverSave
• Perry Evans, CEO, Closely
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave

Transactions
• Charlie Kim, CEO, NextJump
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Retail Advertising, Cartera Commerce
• Jaidev Shergill, CEO, Bundle

National/Brands
•Adam Epstein, President, AdMarketplace
•Pete Gombert,CEO, Balihoo
• Steve Sherfy, Local & Mobile Search, GroupMSearch
• Karl Siebrecht, President and CEO, AdReady

Elections 2012
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360

SMB Marketing
• Dave Galvan, President, Schedulicity
• Maria Kermath, Director, AT&T Ad Solutions
• Randy Parker, President, SMBApps
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Reply.com

Sign up now (and hint: reserve your room earlier rather than later).

Yelp reviews are susceptible to a lot of noise – relatives and friends of a business, mischief makers, people without any perspective (or taste). In fact, most review sites – Trip Advisor, Zagat, etc. — are impacted by these factors.

Some sites have tried to get around this problem by using proxies for reviews. A few years ago, for instance, Grayboxx used “mentions” of a location as a proxy for reviews, assuming that the majority of mentions would be positive ones. That method, however, proved to be inaccurate and especially dicey in smaller markets. Other sites are experimenting with the use of check- ins and Tweets as review/rating substitutes.

Now comes Bundle, a new service with seed funding from CitiBank, Microsoft and Morningstar. Bundle, which is based in New York City, has built the algorithms to clean and sort “mentions” from 20 million + Citibank credit cards. While other services work with credit card companies for loyalty programs and recommendations, we haven’t seen companies that can actually apply algorithms to aggregated, anonymized credit card data.

Bundle scores are based on the popularity of a restaurant (i.e. number of visits); the number of repeat visits by customers to a restaurant; and the amount people are willing to pay when they eat at the restaurant. One assumes scoring can easily be applied to other categories as well.

CEO Jaidev Shergill tells us that the company started 2 ½ years ago as a money management site that would analyze statements for better budgeting practices, etc. But the company changed its business model to “solve problems for people using our differentiated data asset.”

“Local search and discovery have become bigger and the importance of accurate, relevant reviews is increasingly important. However, there is no way to tell whether the review is relevant to you,” says Shergill. Credit card data, coupled with aggregated demographic and behavioral data, clears the hurdle.

The service launched last December in New York and San Francisco, and nationwide on January 1. “We have two million merchants ‘rated,’” said Shergill. “That’s as many as Yelp. It will get richer as the months go by.” He also notes that unlike review sites, Bundle doesn’t need to go market-by-market for reviews.

Shergill acknowledges some limitations to Bundle’s methodology. If there is no data, there are no ratings. So that rules out cash-only places. The data also can’t distinguish how many diners are on the check, although individual prices can be estimated based on pattern analysis. But a quick look at my zip code (“92009”) showed fairly robust, accurate results.

Bundle CEO Jaidev Shergill is speaking at ILM East March 26-28 in Boston along with Next Jump CEO Charlie Kim and Cartera SVP Jim Douglass. Register here.

Bundle CEO and Founder Jaidev Shergill

ILM East is coming back to Boston March 26-28 with a lineup of do-ers and innovators that are transforming and re-defining the local space.

Highlights include a featured keynote from industry legend Ted Leonsis (Groupon Vice Chair/Amex Board Member/Sports team owner/AOL mastermind), along with keynotes/interviews from Jason Calacanis, Leslie Berland, Jay Herratti, Michael Zimbalist and Michael Silberman.

Other highlights of the 2 ½ day event includes a pre-conference rundown on Local search run by Andrew Shotland of Local SEO Guide; a full plate of Top BIA/Kelsey research and forecasts; a special Venture Capital panel; and innovator panels on Social, Mobile, Deals, Video and Hyperlocal (the latter co-moderated with Merrill Brown.)

KEYNOTES/KEYNOTE DISCUSSIONS
• Ted Leonsis: Owner, Monumental Sports (Washington Capitals, Washington Wizards;) The Vice Chair of Groupon;, Board member of Amex, former Vice Chair of AOL; Author, The Business of Happiness
• Jason Calacanis: CEO, Mahalo; Investor. Calacanis’ career has been at the cutting edge of local and social media and reflects all the big trends, from his development of The Silicon Alley Reporter to Weblogs (AOL), Mahalo, and the creation of TechCrunch50 and Launch.
• Leslie Berland, Vice President, Social Strategy, American Express. Berland’s a major deal maker deeply involved in Amex’s mega FourSquare and Facebook deals.
• Jay Herratti, CEO, CityGrid Media. Herratti always gets top rankings at our events. He runs IAC’s super quad of the CityGrid Media Network, Citysearch, UrbanSpoon and InsiderPages.
• Michael Zimbalist, VP, Research Operations, New York Times Co. Zimbalist leads the NYT’s 12 person research unit. He’s deeply immersed in cutting edge social, mobile, tablet and video efforts.
• Michael Silberman, GM, New York Magazine Silberman is the mastermind of NYMag’s development of a super set of verticals catering to the “New York state of mind.”).

FEATURED SPEAKERS
• Bill Bice, CEO, SpaBoom
• Merrill Brown, co-founder. MSNBC.com, Court TV
• Jim Douglass, EVP, Cartera Commerce
• Jere Doyle, CEO, EverSave
• Walt Doyle, CEO, Where
• Adam Japko, CEO, Digital Sherpa
• Maria Kermath, Dir.,, New Tech & Sales Apps, AT&T Advertising Sales
• Mark Josephson, SVP, AOL Local
• Charlie Kim, CEO, Next Jump
• John McIntyre, CEO, Pixelfish
• Randa Minkarah, SVP, Revenue, Fisher Communications
• Randy Parker, President, SMB Apps
• Mark Schmulen, GM, Social Media, Constant Contact
• Andrew Shotland, Publisher, Local SEO Guide
• Andy Slater, VP, Digital Agency Sales, Katz 360
• Christopher Tippie, CEO, FindNSave
• Darren Waddell, EVP, Product and Corporate Marketing, Reply.com

Join hundreds of senior level local executives at ILM East for the local community’s best networking and insights. You can register here for earlier bird rates.

Internet Pioneer Ted Leonsis

ILM West is shaping up to be one of the great ones. Taking place Dec. 12-14 in downtown San Francisco, ILM West really reflects a sea change in local marketing from advertising to the new hybrid model of advertising and commerce (i.e. prepaid deals, reputation management, mobile app sales etc.).

We’ve made some big additions since our last update, starting with Google and Facebook. These add to the existing lineup, including our “rock stars” (Clear Channel CEO and industry legend Bob Pittman AllThingsD’s Kara Swisher, Media News Group/Journal Register CEO John Paton and Deseret Media and former Harvard Business School Professor Clark Gilbert), and major sessions on deals, offers, verticals and the whole spectrum of local trends.

We will pursue three unique angles on Google at ILM West:

1- The local efforts, under Marissa Mayer’s local team. Jeff Aguero, head of local marketing, will present on everything local, from Zagat, to Google Places, to the Big G’s new “Get Online” program for SMBs. These strategies have really developed since this summer.

2- The global reseller effort. Global Channels head Todd Rowe will engage in an in-depth conversation with BIA/Kelsey President Neal Polachek on all his efforts.

3- Google Mobile. Mobile and Local Search exec Surojit Chatterjee will provide insights into this critical area for Google as part of our All SoLoMo morning on Day 3.

We’re also going deep with Facebook at ILM West. Facebook’s new local leader Matt Idema is our afternoon keynote on Day 2, with a lot of new details and a progress report on the local and vertical strategies. On Day 1, we are also taking a special look at working with Facebook’s platform with execs from Trada, Oodle and Kenshoo Local/Social weighing in. Eager but not sure how to play with Facebook? You will be when ILM West is done.

The SoLoMo event on Day 3 itself is going to be quite the cornerstone for ILM West. Curated by the research teams from our Social Local Media and Mobile Local Media programs, SoLoMo features top line data; and indepth and fresh looks at SoLoMo implementations from leaders at Google, AT&T Interactive, Zaarly, PayPal, XAd, JiWire and AppStack (Steve Espinosa’s new project.)

You can see the full agenda here. And register here.

Remember: We are making a donation to the SF/Marin County Food Bank for all registrations that come in by Thanksgiving.

Whenever one writes about the future of newspapers and other news organizations, a voice in the back of your head says: “they’ve tried that already and it didn’t work.” Fifteen years into the digital revolution, that’s the dilemma confronting the news industry as it once again revisits possible solutions. Thankfully, no one is giving up.

Paywalls. Video. Search. Hyperlocal. Mobile. All these things are extensively discussed in “The Story So Far: What We Know About The Business of Digital Journalism,” a new Columbia Journalism School report from Bill Grueskin, Ava Seave and Lucas Graves. The news-centric report doesn’t deal very much with our favorite subject — the transformation of the local marketplace, and the newspapers’ potential role in it. But there is plenty on the plate here.

While there are no ready answers – if we knew the answers, we would have provided them a long time ago — there are strong overviews on each subject. The real focus here is reconnecting to the real “fans” and “regulars” that may engage with a news product 50x more than the “occasionals” and “fly-bys” that make up the bulk of unique visitors. “When people talk about the size of an audience, that’s a sham,” the report quotes Scout Analytics’ Matt Shanahan.

One goal stressed in the report is building a direct relationship with fans to help push contextual advertising. “By producing relevant journalism, deploying data intelligently and relying on social media – not just search engines – to drive traffic, (publishers) can gather a more devoted and involved readership, one that advertisers will also prefer,” notes the authors.

Examiner.com, for instance, does very well when it encourages writes to match their output to social media, search…and advertising. Pet writers did very well last year matching coverage of dog adoption and pet shelters, pushing CPMs from $3-5 to $11 for P&G’s Iam’s Pet Food, a key Examiner sponsor.

In theory, other passion subjects do well too. High school sports especially stands out. The Dallas Morning News’ High School Game Time registers 14 pages a month compared to entertainment (2.5 pages), news (2.78 pages), weather (4.83 pages), and sports (7.71 pages). It also grosses $700K a year of new ad dollars, in partnership with local cable coverage. This year, it is also launching a $1.99 iPhone app., which represents new circulation revenue, along with heavy user paywalls, such as the one recently enacted by The New York Times.

That’s important. Like others, I’ve actually come to conclusion that the news organizations that have the market power to erect such pay walls are the ones that ultimately survive. For The Times, which has boosted per copy costs to $2 a day, circulation dollars have inched up to $683.4 million a year; just behind display advertising, which has fallen from $1.27 billion to $780.4 million. Next year, it doesn’t seem out of the question that circulation will surpass display.

Ad agencies have never really been a major part of the world of local online advertising. Apart from some geotargeting for their national and regional clients, they haven’t paid much attention to the many opportunities in local (geo-target banners, local search, couponing,directory and social).

Where there has been agency support, it has been largely on the certified marketing rep (CMR) side that is moving Yellow Pages/directional media dollars around to IYPs and other local “service” media. Companies like TMP’s 15 Miles and Wahlstrom have done well with this, as have more broadly configured “third party resellers/SMB engagers such as ReachlLocal, Yodle, WebVisible, Orange Soda and Clickable.

Other groups, such as AdReady and PaperG, have acted as agencies for clients as they provide local “versioning” for them. Best Buy, for instance, creates different ads in Phoenix than in Miami. AdReady does a lot of versioning work with major clients such as Alaska Airlines. Vertical ad networks such as Adify have also gone into geo-targeting, as have media placement services companies such as Centro, which has worked with mega-advertisers such as GM on their local initiatives.

Recently, however, we’ve been seeing ambitious local initiatives at several of the large agencies. From what we can tell, the initiatives have been spurred from the client side, as national and regional clients have watched local’s momentum – or should we say “Geomentum,” which is a division of MediaBrands, which itself is owned by InterPublic Group, the third largest advertising agency holding company. It has a nine person leadership team, and can also draw off of MediaBrand resources.

We talked with new Geomentum President Lisa Bradner, who most recently served as a Forrester analyst. Bradner told us the problem has always been that it is so much easier to buy national. Local provides all kinds of insights and understanding about clients. But the challenge is to make it scale, she says.

Her efforts will focus on helping people understand the granular research on how/where to spend local. It is a combination of testing and measurement, she says. Whatever happens, advertisers are cutting newspaper spending, and they’re looking for new ways to reach people locally. Verticals with a strong local component such as retail, financial services and insurance will each do well out of the gate, she suggests. Consumer packaged goods and pharmaceuticals also have a local component, but “they’ll be slower to get there.”

What many advertisers want to know is how they can effectively localize their advertising from market to market – an effort that has been worked on intensively by specialists, such as Gannett’s ShopLocal. “Walgreens might lose sales in Poughkeepsie for different reasons than Santa Monica,” says Bradner.

The key is to “take it below the DMA level,” says Bradner. “You want to target the great white space between 1:1 and the DMA,” something that Bradner dubs “one to some.”

We know that certain Web phenomenon are women driven. Groupon and DailyCandy, for instance, are heavily dominated by women; Facebook to a lesser degree. Gilt Groupe, the high end “flash sales” fashion site, is more of a women’s thing (although a surprising number of men also use it). Local community news and school information is something else that has traditionally been dominated by women (especially mothers, who take a statistically greater interest than fathers.)

Now ComScore has done a comprehensive study of the differences between Women and Men on the Web. Among the key findings. Women far outpace men for the conversational features. Social Networking, Instant Messaging and email.Worldwide, the difference is 16.3% to 11.7% for social networking; 11.3% to 10.4% for Instant Messaging; and 7.7% to 6.8% for email. Men, however, slightly outpace women in their use of directories/resources: 2.4% to 2.2%.

All this plays out in the the different ways that the genders use Twitter, which I would have thought would be dominated by tech-oriented men since it is a “technology.” But ComScore points out that overall usage is about equal. What men and women do there, however, greatly differs. A higher percentage of Men (38%) tend to post tweets than Women (28%). Women tend to use Twitter to find deals and promotions. They also use it as more a conversation medium and to follow celebrities.

Newspapers aren’t doing well, but they still represent one of the leading ways to reach audiences, online as well as in print. New data from ComScore Media Metrix, apparently released to coincide with Editor and Publisher’s Interactive Media Conference taking place in Las Vegas, showed that 57 percent of Internet users in the U.S. looked at a newspaper site in May at home or at work.

The New York Times is the leading online brand, thanks in part to its national footprint. Also receiving significant national traffic is USA Today, which is #4 among the newspaper groups; The Washington Post, which is #5; and The Wall Street Journal, which is #10. More in the realm of local pure plays are Tribune (#2), Advance (#3), McClatchy (#6), MediaNews Group (#7), The New York Daily News (#8) and Hearst Newspapers (#9).

ComScore also notes that the average CPM on online newspaper sites was $7, which is nearly three times the average CPM rate, which is $2.52.

Outside of top knowledge worker markets such as New York and Washington, we aren’t sure that 57 of 100 Internet users would say “sure” if we asked whether they read the online version of a newspaper in the last month (Anyone want to do my “train station platform” test?) But the statistics have been consistent, and suggest a possible second life for the newspaper industry.

“Neighbors Online,” a new study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, has found that 20 percent are using digital tools such as email, texting and social networks to communicate with their neighbors. Twenty two percent have signed up to receive local issue alerts via email or SMS.

Eleven percent also report reading or participating in community blogs; nine percent exchange email with neighbors about community issues; and 4 percent exchange SMS about community issues. Women are more likely to be engaged online.

The study, which had 2,258 respondents, found that just 54 percent of respondents have any kind of community discussion with neighbors during the preceding 12 months; 44 percent have had face to face discussions. Just 24 percent said they knew the names of most of their neighbors. Frequent Internet users are much more likely to talk with neighbors than others – fitting into general societal patterns about “information intensives” that we have tracked for years.

One area that several companies have focused on are home owners association blogs and email services. Companies such as eneighbors.com have worked to create a third-party involvement with associations. At one point last year, its sponsored ads on Google read: “I switched because no one visited our HOA website.”