Yelp's Local-Mobile Success Shows How Consumers Are Using Mobile To Drive Local Purchases

Yelp has become the bellwether for a location-based service, as well as the huge opportunity in local-mobile marketing.

It's also often mentioned in connection with social-local-mobile strategies, sometimes known as SoLoMo.

Consumers also use the Yelp app as an integral step in the local purchase cycle. 93% of U.S. Yelp users in a recent Nielsen study said they at least occasionally make a purchase from a local business after using Yelp.

At BI Intelligence, Business Insider's paid subscription service, we recently analyzed over 20 datasets culled from a variety of sources to probe the viability of mobile and social media as local commerce and retail-drivers. We published our insights in two recent reports, "A Guide to Local-Mobile Marketing: The Best Strategies And Tactics For Leveraging Local Data," and "How Location-Based Data Is Transforming The Entire Mobile Industry."

Subscribers also gain access to over 100 in-depth reports and hundreds of charts and datasets on mobile, social, and their impact across industries, including retail.

Local-mobile strategies are certainly working for Yelp, and the businesses that advertise on Yelp's app and mobile site. Local advertisements on mobile devices constituted 40% of Yelp's overall local ad inventory in the last quarter for which data's available. That's up from 25% just two quarters ago.

In the same period, Yelp's mobile user base climbed to 10.4 million. Yelp is now in fierce competition with Google's local services, as well as FourSquare, which is trying to become a local recommendations engine.

Here's a look at growth in Yelp's local advertising share, charted against the growth in revenue from local advertising.

Yelp's mobile app users are engaged through local discovery and the ability to make on-the-go reservations and appointments. Some might even write reviews on their handheld devices. Yelp can harvest all that relevant user information while also pinpointing a user's whereabouts.

As is the case with Google, the influx of mobile app users - and the increase in local ad inventory on mobile - have inflated Yelp's overall local ad revenue.

To access BI Intelligence's full report, A Guide to Local-Mobile Marketing: The Best Strategies And Tactics For Leveraging Local Data, sign up for a free trial subscription here. Subscribers also gain access to over 100 in-depth reports on social and mobile, and hundreds of charts and datasets.