December 2009 | Download PDF

The Point

Good Riddance to 2009

View Point

I don’t know about you, but I am looking forward to turning the page on the first decade of the 21st century. If you’d like a laundry list of discouraging events in 2009, watch the abundance of “year in review” shows on your den TV. The producers of those shows will have plenty to talk about. Me, I’d prefer to focus on the first year of the second decade of the 21st century, a.k.a. 2010.

If our Interactive Local Media 2009 conference in Los Angeles last week is any indication of what 2010 will hold, I am excited. More than 500 senior executives attended the show, and we heard from numerous important speakers and panelists about the future of local media. If you haven’t already, check out our blog for coverage of ILM:09.

As I sat and listened to keynote speakers and panelists, I was struck by how things have changed over the past couple of years. Panelists who once spoke of the glorious opportunities in interactive local media are now speaking not just from a conceptual level, but increasingly from direct experience. In other words, what might have been thought of as a cool idea just a couple of years ago is now a reality for users and advertisers in the local media arena.

Data Point

Twelve months ago in the December 2008 issue of Chief Executive Outlook, we asked you which local segment would be the big winner in 2009. Thirty-three percent of you voted for mobile search, another 33 percent for online video, 15 percent for verticals, 10 percent for Internet Yellow Pages and 9 percent for local social search.

It is safe to say that anything associated with “mobile” was a big winner in 2009. Users continued to shift from feature phones to smartphones at a rapid pace. With the entrance of Android, Palm Pre and now the pending launch of the Google phone, the world is increasingly being experienced through a 3½-inch diagonal screen. What is so ironic is that for decades we have measured our television sets in terms of diagonal inches and now we measure our phones the very same way. Over the next five years our smartphones will increasingly feel like our den TVs, and our den TVs will increasingly feel like our smartphones. As I said, I am looking forward to the second decade of the 21st century. I hope you are too.