It seems like everywhere you turn in the interactive marketing space these days, the conversation inevitably turns to local advertising. It’s kind of ironic to yours, since for years, over a decade and long before the dot-com bubble of the early 2000s, the promise of the Internet (to advertisers and users alike) has been in connecting people from all over the world in an instant. About breaking down geographical barriers. About giving companies the ability to think more globally than ever before. This was the initial promise and why Internet advertising has grown. Why things that go viral really go viral. At that time, a retailer or business no longer had to think of their own place. Geography no longer had to be a barrier other than with the shipping process. The world wide web meant exactly what it said.

So the irony is that today, the promise of the Internet, and Internet advertising, is all about targeting and going local. In reality, it is about creating small but very relevant geographical limits. Groupon, billed as the fastest growing company in history, is all about local deals and deals; and there are also a handful of similar competitors doing business in that sector on an enormous scale. You can’t read any of the trading without seeing something related to local advertising, the local deals market. What is behind all this? Create minimarkets, and lots of them, for businesses and vendors alike.

The other big trend we’re seeing? Mobile advertising and the use of applications. A study I recently read shows that people spend more time inside mobile apps than on the open web. Also, by 2015, 70% of all mobile ads will be local. Again, this is ironic to me as everything we had gotten used to thinking about the power of the web and global technology from an advertising perspective is now being replaced by super silly, hyper local thinking, not just in a dinosaur computer, but through tiny mobile devices. We went from breaking geographical barriers to creating them on purpose through applications and segmentation.

This is neither bad nor good for sellers. It simply shows the evolution of an entire medium and the evolution in terms of trends and consumer usage. It also makes sense. If you’re using a mobile device in the 60654 ZIP code, it stands to reason that you’d be most interested in offers, promotions, or solicitations in that same ZIP code, assuming that’s where you spend most of your time. In other words, it’s really not a huge stretch to think that local advertising can not only stand the test of time, but can continue to rise in prominence and importance to advertisers.

In that way, the evolution I’m talking about is to create maximum relevance for individuals. The ability and appeal of targeting consumers geographically, contextually, behaviorally, or otherwise has always been (or should have always been) top of mind for marketers. And advances in behavioral and contextual marketing techniques have served to make the global web more manageable for marketers. But arguably only now, location targeting has been put on steroids through local deals and mobile apps and technology.

For marketers, these trends are worth taking a close look at. I don’t think the local ad cache will go away. That statement is not an assessment of Groupon’s world or all the other companies entering the space (such as Google) or whether they will dominate this part of the interactive world. I have no idea if they will ultimately succeed or fail. I have no idea if a future iteration of those businesses will be any better. However, I do believe that we are in the early stages of discovering what is possible for marketers at a local level, and certainly most companies would like nothing more than to target their efforts at a constituency that is highly relevant. geographically. .

And more or less instantly.

Local advertising is already big business, and most experts predict that this trend will continue for years to come. Nobody knows for sure who will be the protagonist of the success of this movement; but most agree the move is real and can work for marketers. However, there will be much more to come in this area; we will be watching