Friday, August 25, 2006
Geotargeting Missing in Action
Mobile ad solutions are ramping up, and one of the mechanisms that will drive mobile ads is the ability to target the users by geography, especially when GPS phones become widespread.I agree that this service has legs, but somewhat limited because people will only be able to stomach so much advertising on the tiny screens of their cell phones.
What I don't get is why more hasn't been done with geotargeting online. Yahoo is upgrading the geotargeting capabilities of its Search Marketing product, but what is being done today is a fraction of what is possible.
Signing into a website usually requires giving your email address and address, and only a minority of sites are using that to target the ads. But with IP tracking, there's no reason why websites can't automatically pass that information on to its ad servers so that only ads relevant to your jurisdiction are shown.
For example, while reading the SFGate website from my house in Portland, wouldn't automatically generating ads with fares between our sites from Southwest be a more relevant ad than a Netflix promotion? This example shows how regional publisher could boost their conversions by sorting the locals from the out of towners. I also hate going to a company's website and having to choose my country and language of choice. So irritating!
Geographically targeting ads (and I would gladly entire my zipcode to be cookied for future reference) is one of the easiest ways to upgrade conversion rates, yet it is done very rarely. That should change soon.
Posted By John Gartner at 02:50 PM
Permanent Link: Geotargeting Missing in Action
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