Local advertising is widely seen as the next great battleground in search advertising. Today Local.com’s shares zoomed 65% because a judge granted it a patent that would allow the Irvine, California-based company to “respond to directory assistance inquiries using protocols including voice-enabled and SMS systems. The patent can help search results to be provided to consumers via mobile channels, including voice.”
We’ve covered local search many times before. Check out some of our posts outlining the market size here or here. By the way, if you too read those two posts and think someone is lying, like we did, read the post and comments here.
Local.com - even after today’s surge - is only worth $105M. Local is one area that newspapers should be owning. Even if this is irrational, even if this patent does little, you have to start wondering why cash rich newspapers that are seeing their businesses erode don’t move in on this company?
Anyway, it’s also worth noting, that not surprisingly, the value is not in technology, but in the monetization thereof: last week on June 25th Local.com was granted U.S. Patent Number 7,231,405 for Location-Based Search (MWR), the stock did not have the same effect as today, when it was granted U.S. Patent Number 7,200,413 for Ad-Supported 411 Local Search Model.
Clearly, it’s the Advertising, Stupid.
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