Friday, November 08, 2013 (Allvoices) One ad network on the ad:tech New York expo floor is making an impression with advertisers thanks to its focus on local. With Groupon and retailer coupons on the decline, advertisers are looking for a way to reach regional audiences that doesn't rely on location-based targeting alone. Advertisers also need to incorporate images, text, video and sound across all platforms. Local Corporation's strategy is holistic. With display ads on local newspapers and local business registers as well as pre-roll ads and mobile banners, Local Corporation can ensure that people in the right areas are seeing the right ads–and people outside of those areas don't. This optimization should improve click-thru rates, which Local Corporation claims are eight times higher through their network than the industry standard. With 3 billion impressions and 2 1/2 page views per visit on average with 50 million monthly page views in total, that's a lot of clicks. Local Corporation isn't the only company riding the waves of the regional ad market. Pandora has most famously and successfully approached regional advertisers with a new digital ad unit that can do some of the heavy lifting of old media–and radio advertisers are listening. Likewise, Google has finally begun to monetize its Maps product in a serious way, although the company's previous attempts at regional marketing have fallen flat to say the least. Still, advertisers are interested in the opportunity that location-based targeted ads on Google Maps can provide. Local advertising is difficult to scale, so it hasn't been a low-hanging fruit in the first stages of mobile media monetization. But advertisers know mobile now and they're finally ready to do local. Less |