Unique Cartographic Technology Brings Media Buying Efficiency and Scale to Target-Defined Local Service Areas
New York – Digital media industry veteran Dick O’Hare today launches Local Yokel Media (LYM) the Internet’s first hyperlocal online ad marketplace specializing in monetizing hyperlocal ad impressions. For the first time in the Internet’s history, any local or national business serving a defined geography can target audiences in their immediate service areas on local online content communities have come to know and trust.
“We have seen a seismic shift in traditional local media over the past five years,” says Mr. O’Hare, Local Yokel Media’s CEO and Founder. “Hyperlocal content, specifically, community- level content being produced both by individuals and institutions, has proliferated as local coverage by more traditional, offline local media organizations has waned. It is said that 80% of consumer spending happens within 20 miles of home. This presents a compelling ad targeting opportunity for local, regional and national brands looking to target extremely tight geographies. We have found this level of local contextual relevance drives ad performance. In some instances, it can even outperform search engine marketing.”
The hyperlocal market segment has been growing rapidly over the last few years with market entrants such as AOL’s Patch, Gannet, Post Local and others. Where many of these players are focusing on content creation, LYM’s unique market position is that of monetization specialist.
“Genuine local targeting and ad creative can produce dramatic response-rate improvements for marketers,” says Greg Sterling, of Sterling Market Intelligence and Opus Research. “There are billions of dollars in the local market; this is a giant opportunity that has been waiting for a scalable platform and approach.”
“Hyperlocal is a growing market with lots of companies coming into that space. Dick has the right background and perspective to help these new niche sites generate ad revenue while at the same time making it painless for national and local marketers to zero in on their customers where they live and work,” says Wenda Harris Millard, President and COO of Media Link, a leading media advisory firm.
With its proprietary ad serving platform and unique, cartographic technology, LYM aggregates hyperlocal websites (websites whose content address a specific community), local blogs and websites of community newspapers, organizes them by zip code and makes them easy to target. Local Yokel Media’s internal campaign data show this level of “geo-contextual” ad targeting (targeting down to the community level in contextually relevant content) drives ad receptivity and overall ad performance. This now can be done from one platform.
LYM’s unique value proposition lies in its ability to deliver very granular, local ad campaigns at scale while offering professionally created ad templates advertisers can leverage for optimal results. These campaigns can be executed at a small fraction of the cost of more traditional offline local marketing efforts like direct mail.
Early ad campaigns confirm that consumers are more receptive to ads that target their specific needs in their own local community, thus improving overall ad performance. By contrast, a consumer targeted by zip code, a traditional big-media approach, might have to drive 50 or 60 miles to reach an advertiser’s storefront.
“The results we received from our campaign with Local Yokel Media were multiple times what we previously saw from our offline ad campaigns, ” says Dan Hageney, Founder of Connecticut Green Organic Lawn Care Company serving Fairfield County, CT.
More than 60 publishers have signed up for LYM’s ad marketplace and many are already seeing positive results. “Local Yokel Media has done a terrific job in delivering curated ads with more premium revenue to our local websites,” says Marty Hersam, COO at Connecticut’s Hersam Acorn Newspapers. “We look forward to working more closely with them to capture more local advertisers looking to target the communities we serve.”
Dick O’Hare, a digital media industry veteran for the past 15 years holding senior management positions at DoubleClick, AOL Media Networks and Yahoo, Inc. has assembled a seasoned digital media team with decades of experience from such industry stalwarts as Yahoo, AOL, DoubleClick, iVillage and Quigo. The LYM team is committed to making geographically targeted local advertising easier on both the local advertisers and publishers.
“Local Yokel Media is poised to finally crack the code of making local advertising work online. Dick is one of the smartest online execs I’ve ever met and his hyperlocal ad strategy is certain to be successful,” says Dave Morgan, CEO of Simulmedia, former founder of Real Media and TACODA and an investor in LYM.
Local Yokel Media (http://www.localyokelmedia.com) the Internet’s first hyperlocal online ad marketplace specializing in monetizing hyperlocal ad impressions has raised angel funding from seasoned industry veterans like Mr. Morgan, Joe Apprendi, CEO and Founder of Collective Media and Joe Zawadski, CEO and Founder of Media Math.
