This is a post about the Kelsey Group’s DMS ’09 conference which happened last week in Orlando.

In a presentation titled “Understanding Users and Advertisers – A Deep Dive Into Exclusive TKG Data”, Steve Marshall from BIA/Kelsey provided attendees with some juicy nuggets of information from the 13th wave of their SME Local Commerce Monitor study (and the 6th wave of their user study). This study looks at SMB advertisers and users trends.

Advertiser highlights:

• The latest wave tells us that SMBs have an on-going need for new customers, are using more digital/online media and plan a big increase in the use of ‘Web 2.0’ capabilities.
  • Penetration of online media exceeds traditional media for the first time
  • Major increases planned in usage of video, social sites and corporate blogs to promote their company

User highlights:

• Search engines continue to have the greatest penetration of information sources for finding local goods and services
  • 90% of consumers surveyed use search engines for that purpose
  • newspapers are up but print Yellow Pages and Internet Yellow Pages are down
• According to the study, only 16% of consumers trust “social networking sites” as information for local shopping. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m convinced that if we were to ask how many people “trust their friends” for information on local shopping, that number would go up drastically. Social networking sites = friends!
• 68% of consumers surveyed said that had at least one profile in a social network site
• 47% think that product/service ratings are important, an increase of 5 percentage point since the last wave