Safa Rashtchy tidbits

I’m taking things in at the Kelsey Group “Drilling Down on Local” conference today and tomorrow, and will be blogging tidbits here and there. Some bits from Safa Rashtchy’s keynote:

• Current count of about 500k online advertisers could reach 2 to 4 million with local search over the next 5 years.
  
• Ultimately, local search could lead to as much as 50 percent of all purchases online.

One interesting theme was the idea of real-time inventory management, enabled by RFID, as the end game of local search. This would provide the “missing link” between online search and offline purchasing.

“In big metropolitan areas, you can probably find anything that you can find on the Web,” Rashtchy said. “Whatever you’re looking for is probably sold someplace in big metropolitan areas, but the problem is how to find it.”

Incidentally, Rashtchy is senior research analyst of internet media and marketing, and managing director, at Piper Jaffray.