Keith from Ameriprise, Anuj from Google, Me, Jaime from Dairy Queen

Last Thursday I took part in an event hosted by local marketing group i612 . Held at the lovely Fine Line in Minneapolis, I was the sole agency representative on a panel discussing local advertising. Prior to the panel, a presentation by Google’s Anuj Srivastava kicked things off with trends and statistics. Of all the knowledge that Anuj, product manager for Google Places, dropped, what stood out the most to me was Google’s finding that there is a strong correlation between online ad spends and increased in-store traffic. Common sense would correlate online ad spends with online sales, but having online ad spends increasing in-store traffic? That’s big. Obviously it’s a score for Google ($$), but also for the many businesses that don’t have any e-commerce functionality on their websites.

Having dabbled in search marketing in a past life, I hold a place in my heart for paid search advertising campaigns. I have seen what it can do for businesses both small and large, and I feel that it doesn’t get the respect it deserves. So it’s not sexy as foursquare. You know what’s sexy? Results. That said, I’m just as guilty as anyone of gobbling up the latest foursquare case study or news of other location-based platforms. Let’s take a break from all that and get caught up on paid search. Enjoy these golden nuggets from the SEM world.

-MediaPost: Could Paid Search Save Online Advertising?

-InternetRetailer: Google dominates, but Bing gains on Yahoo