The Future of Local Reporting?

If your business thrives on local customers, you need to find ways to talk to them as directly as possible. In some cases, that means finding the radio stations that they listen to, or the television stations that they watch or even the billboards that they pass on their way to and from their homes. One of the most reliable ways to connect with local consumers had been to go through local newspapers. Notice the past tense in that sentence.

As newspapers continue to lose subscribers, that once reliable outlet for connecting with your local customers becomes less reliable. Smaller audiences mean smaller ad prices and smaller returns on ad spends. Newspapers know this and are looking for ways to regain the value of their local relationships. One way is to refocus their energies towards extremely local news.

The Washington Post is doing this with a new online local news site called LoudounExtra.Com. The website hopes that by bringing together "hyperlocal" reporting with online distribution, they'll be able to build a targeted and condensed audience. That audience would then be sold to advertisers looking to build their own customer base.

It's another example of publishers trying anything to grow their business while their audiences shrink. As an advertiser, these new 'hyperlocal' sites may be worthwhile. The best way to know is to use AdSymetrix.

Simply Tag Your Ad and watch as AdSymetrix tracks and monitors the responses. You'll know whether the hyperlocal news site is an experiment worth your advertising dollar.