Google, Yahoo CAN’T Crack Local Ad Sales Code
Yahoo and Google sure have deep pockets when they want to make big acqusition splashes in their high-priority target markets. When it comes to local, however, they get cold feet about financing real feet on the street to realize their local visions where it really matters: On the ground.
Google came up with a sub-minimum wage pitch for Google fans to pitch in and pitch local merchants, on Google’s behalf: The $10 Google Local Business Referrals Program.
Yahoo has abdicated local prospecting by partnering with vendors in the field and is above all keen on the easy to reach local accounts of large national franchises.
Warren Kay, Director of Strategiic Alliances, Yahoo Search Marketing, addressed the Kelsey Directory Driven Commerce Conference in Reston, VA, Peter Krasilovsky reports:
We don’t have the structure or the appetite to field a local sales force.
While Kay apparently sought to present a down to earth take on the challenges of exploiting the local opportunity at Yahoo, his home-spun turns of phrases do not serve to position the Yahoo local effort in the strongest manner.
National verticals are important to Yahoo, but not doable at the local level due to limited resources for local sales, Kay indicated. Vertical sales orientation is optimal, but most sales organizations are organized geographically, according to Kay:
There isn’t enough of a vertical concentration in geograpic areas. With a vertical focus, you spend too much time behind the windshield and not enough time in front of customers. Verticalization is nice, but if you are delivering compelling ROI, it may not be as important to talk in their language.
Nevertheless, Kay assures SME and local is the future, especially for Yahoo:
We don’t have a permanent seat at the adults table, but we are no longer at the kiddies’ table.
What Yahoo and Google still don’t get, though, is that they are still playing around at local. Kay and his Google peers continue to rationalize about the poor economics of direct local ad sales, so the online local opportunity continues to be wide open, as they shy from meaningful reach out to local merchants.
Online local advertising scale is difficult to come by efficiently, as the efforts of both Yahoo and Google demonstrate. Meanwhile, traditional player Verizon’s online Superpages is widening its footprint by absorbing existing online assets: localsearch.com, switchboard.com…
How will the local space shakeout online? A new market disruptor will hopefully emerge, soon.
SEE: How Pegasus News Fuels Local Media Business Model for Fisher Communications: INTERVIEW and
Google’s $10 Local Search Pipe Dream: Slave Wages to Squeeze Yellow Pages
ALSO: Mint.com: Can Arrington and Calacanis Really Set Web 2.0 Trends?