Local online advertising is growing into big business. With ad revenues expected to reach $144.9 billion in 2014 according to BIA/Kelsey.

As the slow decline of traditional  advertising dollars shift to digital media buys, there is a battle brewing between the Internet big boys and social networks. All, of which, are trying to carve their own niche and gain the local advertising dollar.

Google’s re-branding of it business center to Google Places was the gun-shot to begin the race.

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, Foursquare, Yelp and even Apple are all stepping up their local advertisement game. Google already offers a new advertising program called Tags. For $25 per month you can make your business stand out in Google Maps

Local adverting can be broken down to 3 main categories; Search, consumer review sites and  social networks. The mobile presence is also very large and begining to explode. Although the mobile market seems to be more app drive than search engine driven.

SEARCH

Obviously the main players have the upper hand here. Bing diplays Foursequare data in maps. Now that the Yahoo deal(get Link here) is final, Microsoft will gain more market share. And, Google is Google. The services of  Google Places such as tags and promtional tweets get deaper in to the local advertising market. Let’s not forget Twitter which also doubles as a search engine. Twitter offers geotagging and the news, soon-to-be Twitter for business. (get Link here)

CONSUMER REVIEW

Yelp and City Search – Foursquare with its “tips” section lets user comment their current location and give a review. All Google Place Pages include consumer reviews with both text and star ratings. These reviews are also easily accessible via Google Buzz for Mobile and Google Maps

SOCIAL NETWORKS

Twitter, Foursquare, Google and Facebook are the main palyers in the local advertising competitition.

Google’s Google Buzz  has not hit a home run with users. There’s also Google Latitude — an always-on location-sharing service that started as a Loopt clone — which now has 3 million active users. It’s the intersection of Buzz and Latitude on mobile devices that will help Google nail down local advertising dollars.

Twitter is really trying to ramp up relevancy of geo-located tweets, but they’ve never quite been able to do what Foursquare has done — demonstrate the significance of location-sharing. As discussed above, there could be a perfect storm brewing for the day when geo-aware tweets are tied to places and Promoted Tweets are available to all potential advertisers.

Facebook announced it has plans to start adding location tweets which will give Foursquare a r un for it’s money.

All in all it’s going to be a bumpy advertising ride. I think the small business will win out in the end.