What’s the Future of Local Advertising?

What will local advertising look like a few years from now?

BIA/Kelsey recently released slides about the local ad marketplace in the US.

A few interesting points they make:

1. It’s Big – The local ad market brings in $133 billion annually
2. It’s Fairly Traditional – 92% of local ad spending still goes to traditional media companies (TV, radio, yellow pages, etc.)
3. It’s Top-Heavy – 81% of the spending is by the largest 22% of companies

What are the takeaways? There is a lot of hype around ‘local’ at the moment, what with FourSquare, Facebook Places and the Google/Groupon non-deal, but for the companies that get it right there are huge real opportunities in local advertising over the next few years.