Big news in LBS today...we announced WHERE Ads, a service that delivers hyper-local ads to mobile application and web publishers. Also, a small social networking site called Facebook confirmed (all off the record??) that they are going to allow their users to post location based updates.
First things first....our news. Yep, we are out in market with a hyper-local ad network. Here is the press release. We built WHERE Ads on our own product initially to deliver a better user experience, and based on the CTRs, we knew we were on to something. Consumer reaction to the ads was quite positive, with many users thanking us for removing the ads.
Based on this success, we figured some of our friends in the mobile publishing space were experiencing the same issues and would appreciate a creative solution. We spoke to a handful of companies, and they all agreed that what we were doing would help them better monetize their traffic. Thus a new ad network was born. It's still early, but we are seeing great reaction from the users of our publisher partners sites. I also think there is pent-up demand for local ads on mobile. @NoahElkin of eMarketer had a great write up.
In other news, Nick Bilton at NYT had a post today about Facebook allowing users to share location in their updates. Notable comments and speculation as a result of the launch include many thinking that this move will shove FourSquare, Loopt, and Gowalla into the deadpool. Bilton says that a FBer claims that their motivation is focused elsewhere:
"Instead, Facebook wants to go head-to-head with Google in the fight for small-business advertising. Facebook redesigned its business pages last year, with the hope of offering more features for small-business owners. According to Facebook, the Web site currently hosts more than 1.5 million local businesses from around the world."
Hmmm...two big moves from leaders in their respective markets going after small business location based advertising. This is gonna get interesting.
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