Geo-targeting for online direct response...

I was just looking at Placecast to understand their geo-targeting capabilities online. I saw these guys at AD:TECH a few months back. The language on their home page is kind of murky, but taking a peek at the sample ads they show illustrate what they do very well. Hit you with a banner online localized for where you're located in the real world.



Now add this tidbit my pal Dave Smith included in his Mediasmith Anvil newsletter last month:

Online ads drive online sales. But did you know that they can be even more powerful in driving off-line sales? According to Magid Abraham, president and CEO of comScore, “Even in terms of raw increases … online ads had a bigger impact on off-line than on online sales in a majority of our studies.”

In the collective results of 18 studies comparing the sales revenue from customers exposed to online display ads, search ads, or both, with control groups that did not see the ads, comScore found a very interesting statistic. The off-line revenue of those who saw both search and display ads, in the same time period, increased almost 300% over that of the control groups.

Put those two tidbits together, throw in the open iPhone API (yes, this is my Melanie Griffith in Working Girl imitation) and you've got a big step in the direction of the "guy walks past a Starbucks and gets a coupon emailed to his cell phone" fantasy ad-men have been talking about for the past 8 years.

It's easy to see how this could be a really powerful tool for driving traffic from online to retail...