(1888PressRelease)
September 09, 2009 - Patch.com and Everyblock.com are not the only blog networks aiming for local advertising dollars that are moving away from traditional offline media and onto the web. The Blog Network Association (BNA) is a global network of blogs and local business pages positioned to make a serious play for hyperlocal news and information in over 400 cities destinations.
Rather than mimic the portal model of local information and business listings, BNA is made up of an alliance of bloggers with their own domains for each city they cover.
“We believe drilling down to what locals are missing, as local newspapers go belly up and more and more people seek out local news online, is a move that will be rewarded with a piece of the billions in increased online ad revenue projected by experts,” says Mark Braunstein, Co-Founder of BNA.
According to Braunstein, “We’ve been sort of quietly building this relatively large network of blogs and business listing pages for 9 months while the hype over hyperlocal blogging has been steadily building. The recent purchases of Patch.com by AOL and EveryBlock.com by MSNBC.com indicate we’re not the only ones thinking local advertisers are ready to come online with their ad dollars in a very big way in the coming years.”
BNA has blogs in North American, UK, Australian cites and destinations and is adding more bloggers in more cities every week. Projections for growth in online advertising spending by local businesses range from $3 billion to over $6 billion by 2012 according to recent articles appearing at Forbes.com and studies by eMarketer.com.
Braunstein, along with partners Jack Humphrey and Monica Holbrook, leads a team of programmers and a small staff of sales reps gearing up for heavy ad sales activity this fall as the network gains momentum and notoriety.
With local papers in serious trouble, many of which are taking a hard look at internet delivery, it seems that a handful of online marketers and “ejournalists” are beating the papers to the punch.
“One thing’s for sure. We understand how the web works and how people want their content. And they want it free, local, accurate, and entertaining. Most papers, like Rupert Murdoch’s conglomerate, completely misunderstand what is going to work online. Free, ad-supported information has been around for years online. People aren’t going to pay for content they can get for free on our network and others,” says Jack Humphrey.
For information: http://blognetworkassociation.com/press/
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