The Local Market

According the Boston's Yankee Group, more than 30% of businesses with 20 to 99 employees and 40% of those with 2 to 19 employees were using local search engine advertising.

BusinessWeek referenced this in a recent article titled "Search That Works" http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/06_12/b3976463.htm

Profiled is a San Francisco based business called Absolute Adventures and it's use of geotargeted advertising:

In August, 2004, [Absolute Adventures’ CEO Carissa] Zenorini signed up for Yahoo! Local Sponsored Search, which lets you target ads to a specific state, city, or even neighborhood. Now her ad pops up only when someone within 75 miles of San Francisco searches using the keywords she has chosen. She pays 10 cents to 99 cents per click, spending a total of about $3,000 a year. The local approach is working. Absolute Adventure’s revenues doubled, to $400,000, in the 12 months ended in August, 2005. “Online advertising is the single most important contributing factor to our success,” says Zenorini. “We ask every client how they found us, and apart from repeat business, about 97% found us online.”