There’s been a lot of talk of location-based ad targeting for mobile, but it’s still not quite a reality yet. Still LocalResponse, took a step closer with a $5 million fundraiser from Cava Capital, Vodafone Ventures, Advancit Capital, and Progress Ventures.
LocalResponse is looking to take the money and develop its delivery system, as well as sales. Currently, the company is delivering location-based ads via Twitter, collecting check-in data from Foursquare and Yelp check-ins, but there are also indirect check-ins like mentions, photos, and geo-tags.
Right now, the company aggregates around one billion check-ins a month from 100 million unique users. It’s limited because ads can only be served via Twitter “@replies” and it’s limited to smartphone users with Twitter accounts who publicly publish their location, but it’s gotten an average of 40 percent click-through rate.
Next, the company is looking to do check-in retargeting and buy ads on exchanges, matching Twitter accounts with the user information often collected by publishers to determine location. While this doesn’t solve the mobile location conundrum, but it opens up the company’s available inventory.
LocalResponse is also doing sentiment targeting. An example is Verizon to target users entering any mobile phone store and tweeting an offer for $100 to switch to Verizon; the campaign got a 135 percent clickthrough rate.
Source: AdWeek
