Indoor Marketing Poses Threat To Local Media
The ability to target consumers and advertise to them at the point of purchase is moving out of the blue sky zone and closer toward market implementation, posing a threat to local media’s already declining advertising revenue. At last week’s Place summit in San Francisco, the emerging indoor marketing industry showed it still has a few kinks to work out, but it may eventually pose a serious threat to local media. “The people who should be nervous are traditional media,” says Neg Norton, president of the Local Search Association. “That’s the pool of money that’s ultimately going to get reduced.”
Small businesses see the prospect of tracking consumers inside brick-and-mortar as another means of bridging the gap between their online and offline behaviors, further localizing “big data” to potentially influence consumption. “The goal of the newspaper insert is to drive shoppers to stores,” says Ben Smith, CEO of Wanderful Media. “Once shoppers are in the store, indoor-marketing techniques implemented by retailers can encourage shoppers to buy more.”
