I have often wondered aloud why there has been no competitor to Adsense in local search.

Well, it seems like the industry has been wondering the same thing. Over the past few months we have seen the launch of CityGrid and there are a variety of mobile ad networks out there that are targeting local such as Where.

Now search-based online ad network Chitika has announced its LAX Local Ad Exchange. The platform will target local sites, search queries and mobile users. As far as I can tell this is an enhancement of Chitika’s current ad exchange. Chitika currently claims 80,000 publishers in its network. My guess is that they are now targeting specific traffic as local (they claim they serve 100,000,000 impressions/month on mobile alone) and working with big local advertisers such as Yellowbook to present relevant local inventory when they think the query matches local intent. Here’s their nifty graphic:

The CPM on local is just too good to ignore. I have worked on sites that have local traffic and with a few simple tweaks to the types of ads they are serving and how they are displayed, we have been able to increase eCPM from $2 to $20-$30 almost overnight. Yellow Pages publishers and others with significant amounts of local advertisers are constantly looking for alternative sources of leads for their customers (read “non-Google”).

On the surface Chitika’s access to a large source of local inventory (Topix is one of their big publishing partners) and its ability to optimize ads to local queries could prove quite attractive to a lot of players in the biz.

Note to entrepreneurs: As more of these ad networks come out of the woodwork, seems to me that there will be a big opportunity to create an interface that allows you to interact with all of them via one dashboard.

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5 Response Comments

  • Craig Mullins  July 9, 2010 at 10:59 am

    I bet it’s coming soon:

    seems to me that there will be a big opportunity to create an interface that allows you to interact with all of them via one dashboard

  • Dan Hatcher  July 9, 2010 at 6:10 pm

    I remember the time when I had to stop at the gas station to use a phone! Now we can deliver and get delivered ads while driving down the road! What is the world coming to? 🙂

    I guess it’s time to start using this stuff. You snooze you lose!

  • Mike Stewart  July 11, 2010 at 12:40 pm

    Andrew, I am working on a dashboard. ETA is 3rd Quarter. Send me an email and I will forward to the developers to give you a rundown of the vertical as well as set you up with a beta.

    It the desktop framework is build in a Joomla CMS and manages software applications, tools, profiles and more!

    Kinda taking my spin on an existing product that will make it much easier to collaborate and communicate activities for clients.

    I have found to best way to find a solution that doesn’t exist is to learn from the mistakes of others.

    Large scale providers only focus on productivity and activities. They do very little to focus on improving service, planning, and accountability, while also losing sight of the holistic search marketing approach.

    Cheers,
    Mike Stewart
    “just another Loyal Sycophant”

  • Scott Wiseman  July 16, 2010 at 10:00 pm

    Local SEO is so easy to obtain high listings. But to effectively track it and show clients is what I love doing. Nothing like showing a local small business or a franchise how Local SEO will rock their bottom line

    Scott Wiseman
    Directory of Search Technology
    http://taurad.com
    310 295 1876

  • TechieBird  December 27, 2010 at 1:27 am

    I have planned to use chitika ads in my site.