As far as advertising goes, there is still a huge deficit between the cyber-world and the real-world. While most online advertising revolves around e-commerce, online services, and multi-national brand names, local advertising is largely left-out. However, as much of the blame falls on tertiary businesses as it does on online marketers.

In a recent attempt find a local tow-truck service, Froosh at Hip Mojo relates:

[...] naturally, having the laptop as an extension of my fingertips, I typed: tow truck in Google [...]

I got a few random clicks.

I said: “ok, let me search instead for ‘tow trucks + city name’”

Instead of the bonanza of help I expected, I got crap. I then searched for AAA. That certainly did not get me what I was looking for. I then typed “yellow pages tow truck” etc. After a few minutes, I paused, turned my ahead and found that trusty fat yellow book [...]

There was one major service that had bought a half page, color ad, it boasted about having 20 trucks on the road at all times, promising to show up within 30 minutes otherwise it would be free.

I called the company, and within 10 minutes of my call, my brother in law called me to say he was in the tow truck.

I gave up my online search after ten minutes, yet from the time I grabbed the yellow pages to the time it arrived to pick up my brother, it took ten minutes.

Froosh's anecdote demonstrates how us online marketers are all too ready to use Google as our worldly directory of everything. There is still a huge segment of the population, however, that does not turn to the internet for basic information such as business listings. Often, trying to sell online advertising to a business owner who doesn't use the internet for their day-to-day operations is rather difficult. Indeed, it might be some time before all local businesses understand the advantage (re necessity) of advertising online.