AOL, Citysearch Hook Up Locally

Valentine’s Day is a perfect occasion to get together, which AOL and IAC’s Citysearch will do with local content and advertising.

An interesting little partnership crossed the Net this morning, with AOL announcing a deal with IAC to tuck content and performance-based advertising from Citysearch across AOL properties.

AOL’s CityGuide, MapQuest, and Local Search all benefit from the added goodies, like reviews, videos, images, and other local content. Citysearch gets to tout an additional 57 million unique monthly visitors to AOL’s local properties to its advertising clients.

Though it’s easy to fall back to PR-speak and call the deal a win-win, the agreement does offer both sides complementary advantages. AOL gains more content, Citysearch receives more chances to deliver performance-based ads and thus more opportunities for conversions.

Local online advertising has a rising-tide quality to it. Jupiter Research anticipates a faster rise for local advertising than the overall online ad market through 2012.

That will entail making local businesses aware of the benefits of advertising online. There should be no lack of companies pitching online ads to local markets, with major Internet players and yellow pages competing for that business.