Advertising and audiences are surging toward online, and journalists can ride that wave, Yahoo!'s Hilary Schneider told the Online News Association on Wednesday.

Yahoo! Hilary Schneider of Yahoo!

Schnieder delivered the opening keynote in Toronto, She is executive vice-president of Yahoo!’s Global Partnership Solutions Division. She has worked at Knight Ridder, Red Herring, Times-Mirror and the Baltimore Sun.

There is a lot at stake, Schneider said, citing forecasts that local advertising dollars spent online will almost quadruple in four years, from $3.4 billion in 2006 to an estimated $12.4 billion in 2010.

A large share of that Web traffic is tied to local inquiries. Schneider said that the top five activities on Yahoo! Are, in order:

• search
  
• entertainment
  
• e-mail
  
• general news
  
• local
  

When Web users go local they are using, in order, search, maps, local news and information, social media, classified verticals, directories and more. Maps are not just for directions, but to provide context.

About a third of Yahoo! searches contain local terms, Schneider said. Of the roughly 500 million users that come in a month, approximately 115.6 million come with what she called "local intent."

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In the case of shopping, the choice is not simply whether to buy online or to buy locally. She showed figures that had $120 billion spent by people who researched and bought online, but $1.3 billion who researched online and then bought offline.

This layered or combination approach to how people do things, and a keen interest in local information give journalists an in. Traditional journalistic values in tandem with new tools give them tremendous opportunities, Schneider said.

Some examples of how traditional journalism works in an online world:

Make the Significant Interesting and Relevant

Schneider used the example of a Flickr image search on Toronto lighthouses that had been geo-tagged and uploaded by users. She also showed a search that populated a neighborhood map with photos taken there. She called these experiences highly engaging for the people who were allowed to search the features that interested them most -– including location.

The day before, ONA attendees heard how washingtonpost.com makes geo-tagging standard practice so that images from all sorts of stories can later pop up when users search on those areas.

Local Meets Global News

By pooling hundreds of dispersed perspectives on a focused national or global issue, varied and personal perspectives can describe stories in deeper and more engaging ways. Schneider used the example of local iterations in cities across the United States of the "A Day Without Immigrants" demonstration.

"Layers of information build relevance," Schneider said. "It’s really about building layers of relevance and then letting users decide what it is they are looking for." Think of a map where people can choose between -– or combine -– a map and satellite imagery. Then add real estate data.

Watchdog Journalism

Schneider saluted Chronicle Watch, the Bay Area's feature of holding civic leaders’ feet to the fire by highlighting local needs such as fixing the road, putting up the stop sign or filling the pothole –- and then keeping on it, online and in other ways, reporting the progress –- or chronicling the lack of it.

An Independent Monitor of Power

Citing Yahoo!’s own Candidate Mashup, in which users click to select the candidates they want to hear answering questions the users are interested in, Schneider drew a murmur of "wow"s from the crowd. In not quite two weeks, the feature drew 1.1 million unique viewers who pulled down 4.4 million video streams, staying for an average of seven minutes.

Yahoo! exhorted its audience to "Go ahead, take control and make this debate count." After viewing, they could vote on their winners.

Schneider said that a lot of Yahoo!"s reach comes through partnerships -– her area.

She advised mainstream media to make some strategic partnerships of their own for content or technology.

While doing that, she said, it will be vital to hold adhere to bedrock journalistic principles, to remain independent, to protect their brands and to work with like-minded organizations.