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Brands run cross-platform location-based ads with 1020 Placecast

Avis and Budget Rental Cars, Microsoft Windows Mobile, FedEx Kinko's and Hyatt Hotels have all tapped 1020 Placecast to run cross-platform location-based advertising.

Ad network 1020 Placecast claims record growth in the expansion of their publisher base over the last six months. Since October 2008, the company has amassed more than 250 wired and mobile Web publishers, including Menuism.com, HotPads.com and FlightStats.com.

"The Placecast platform is designed specifically to help better monetize location-oriented content for publishers," said Alistair Goodman, CEO of 1020 Placecast, San Francisco, CA. "Sites like these are rich in information about places and user intent, whether it's looking for a restaurant or searching for an apartment or information about a flight.

"Placecast takes this information, supplements it with other data about a location like demographics and psychographics, and matches it with quality brand advertisers that are interested in reaching that target audience," he said. "In addition, Placecast adds relevance to the campaign by customizing the ad unit with relevant information such as the closest retail address and phone number, with click-to-call on mobile.

"We also license our technology platform to mobile and Web partners and publishers so that they can enhance the value of their inventory."

1020 Inc. is the developer and owner of Placecast Media, an online advertising company using location-based information across the Web, mobile, Wi-Fi networks and email. 1020 is funded by Voyager Capital and Onset Ventures.

The core capability of Placecast's platform is to target audiences with integrated campaigns across any device. Placecast's current clients are running campaigns across both Web and mobile.

"People are now consuming media throughout the day on many different connected devices," Mr. Goodman said. "While the Web still accounts for the largest portion of available inventory, mobile is seeing explosive growth.

"Increasingly, we are partnering with publishers like FlightStats and Eventful, which have great audiences for advertisers and both Web and mobile content," he said. "For advertisers, delivering a campaign across both Web and mobile channels creates additional touch-points with the consumer and reinforces their brand."

In addition to its growing publisher base, Placecast claims that it is also seeing growth on the advertising side.

The company's reach is currently 100 million-plus unique users on the Web in the United States and 200 million impressions a month on mobile devices.

That is a 300 percent growth rate in six months. According to 1020 Placecast, that validates the company's belief that location will drive the next wave of innovation in digital advertising.

Placecast's growth parallels the growth in location-aware services and location-based advertising.

An ABI Research report from last fall projected that the LBS market would bring in $13.3 billion by 2013, a significant jump from the $515 million the industry earned in 2007.

The data show that location-aware ads drive higher response rates, whether online or in mobile, according to Sterling Market Intelligence and Local Mobile Search.

However, the enormous potential of location-based advertising has yet to be truly exploited by marketers large and small, according to the same analyst firm.

While there are hurdles to reaching this full potential -- first and foremost carrier backing -- many industry players see location-based targeting as the future of advertising.

Placecast is able to target using location information without access to carrier data.

"Placecast profiles places, not users -- we do not collect, store or mine large amounts of user data," Mr. Goodman said. "Instead, Placecast builds a rich understanding of places, including commercial zones, local businesses, census data and psychographics like PRIZM segments.

"Advertisers are able to reach their audience using these and other data points for targeting," he said.