As someone who focuses strictly in those areas I understand that many of those areas still can be in the land of slow dial-up connections and internet usage patterns are much different than those of us that have broadband speeds on our mobile phones, in other words many of the changes that are happening in the metro areas have been slow to hit the rural communities.

In fact many people have said that the Yellow pages and print newspapers would continue to have the rural areas as a stronghold.

Well, more and more I am getting comments such as “I am dropping my ad budget with the Yellow pages this year” or “The newspaper keeps coming in dropping their price but even at that price it is not worth it.”

What this tells me is that even in the rural areas the conservative small businesses are starting to understand that they have options for more targeted advertising online at more cost effective pricing than they ever had in the offline and shotgun advertising world of print newspapers.

Many people are overlooking the rural broadband stimulus as a driver in pushing legacy media to the cliff faster than it is already happening, but if the rural areas were the strong hold those media companies are in trouble, we are seeing it from our customers more and more everyday.