Friday, January 18, 2008

Local search worth $2.5bn in U.S. in 2012?

Greg Sterling writes about some recent research on local online ad spending. JupiterResearch seems to have the most conservative estimates, forecasting the market for local search advertising (the business I'm in) will be $2.5bn in 2012 (U.S. only).

Some of this will come from additional advertisers spending ad dollars on local search, but a portion might also come from higher keyword prices for local search. I have a good idea what kind of keyword prices a site like CitySearch is getting in the U.S., and I'm keen to find out what a Czech user is worth compared to a U.S. user. I'm not currently running ads on the site, but as I'm getting most of my traffic on the Czech-language pages of Nelso currently, these keyword prices will have a lot of influence on whether I can make money running a local search site for Prague.

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