Twitter has grand ambitions as an ad platform, and it appears poised to make a foray into the lucrative but fragmented world of local advertising with its new map-based feature called Nearby. While the company says it is merely an experiment, agency execs believe it could help the company compete with Foursquare, Google and Yelp for local advertising dollars.
After seemingly getting back on track in 2010, local advertising is suffering this year, with economic indicators such as the European debt crisis spooking advertisers and sending local media into its second dip in the past two years.
The FCC held a field hearing in Arizona on Monday concerning “Information Needs of Communities: The Changing Media Landscape in a Broadband Age.” This staff-level report outlines recommendations for strengthening news and information-gathering to meet the needs of local communities. One of the report’s recommendations calls on the federal government to consider “targeting existing federal advertising spending to local news media.”
Google Inc., which helped popularize the idea of automated ad sales on the Web, has been quietly turning to an old-fashioned tool — phone calls — to compete in the hot market for local business advertising.
