At Palore, we examine SMBs’ online advertising behavior, collecting information on the online presence of small businesses, ad spend data, advertising packages, etc. We recently completed a advertising-related survey of small businesses in the Boston metropolitan area that includes over 20 local, vertical and IYP sites. We looked at over 30 categories of businesses.

The first chart below shows the average monthly ad spend by businesses in four categories: jewelers, hair salons & barbers, spas & beauty salons and health & exercise clubs.

In our survey we tried to stay away from the leading categories and focus on the second tier categories, where we found the above four with many advertisers.

Next, we looked at the advertisers again to check what percentage published their website with their ads. Note the correlation between monthly ad spend and website publication.

It seems that in some verticals there is a higher awareness of the importance of online presence than there is in others. Of course it is also possible that some verticals, such as barber shops, have less of a need for a website.

Fellow authors of this column focus on the challenges facing small business owners in the fast-growing search marketing world. We hope to bring various analyses of the online behavior of SMBs and their online advertising preferences. We’d love to hear your thoughts, and if there’s anything you’d like to see us dive into, let us know.

Hanan Lifshitz is CEO and Noa Gertin is Director of Marketing at Palore, a provider of local businesses’ advertising data and information on their online activity. They also blog at The Palore Blog. The Small Is Beautiful column appears on Thursdays at Search Engine Land.

Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

Related Topics: Small Is Beautiful