All size businesses direct almost two-thirds of their marketing dollars into activating local media ad platforms and the remainder into promotions. For businesses with 500 or more employees, this spending averages $4.48 million for advertising and $2.18 million on promotions. The 2018 U.S. SAM™ survey uses a sample of 1,500 businesses of all sizes doing local advertising and promotions, including local, regional and national businesses for insights into historical and intended marketing practices.

The significance and strength of local is revealed in the finding that overall U.S. businesses invest about two-thirds of their total marketing budgets (promotions plus advertising spending) in advertising on local media ad channels.  The top five media for advertising and promotion include targeted social ads, email, direct mail, direct home and mobile location aware.

Three major trends:

• Social ad channels are popular for reaching targeted audience segment. Nearly two-thirds (61.2 percent) of businesses advertising in local market use “Targeted Social Ads” as part of their media mix.
• Each of the top five media channels offer deep targeting, whether individual targeting as with email (49.3 percent usage) and direct mail (37.6 percent usage), or with household targeting with “Direct Home” (35.7 percent usage) media like door hangers.
• The prominence of a mobile ad channel, “Mobile Location Aware” (35.5 percent usage), does audience targeting based on geofencing or geotargeting.

As businesses continue their push to target local consumers, the media that delivers deep analytics to them will be the preferred choice for businesses’ advertising and marketing dollars.

The survey data is available through BIA’s local advertising dashboard, BIA ADVantage and is offered in a searchable, downloadable format. Insights and analytical reports from the survey are also provided. Additional information about BIA’s SAM study can be found here.