Latest Geo Buzz: Geotargeting Mobile Political Campaign Ads
With campaign season heating up, there has been a resurgence of news on geotargeting mobile ads for political campaigns. The use of geolocation to target political advertisements has been around since the 2008 campaign with Google seeing the potential for ad dollars as early as 2007. In late 2010, a Pew Research Center survey reported that “more than a quarter of American adults – 26% – used their cell phones to learn about or participate in the 2010 mid-term election campaign”. Fall of last year saw another flurry of news stories including POLITICO’s article on the increase in mobile ads for the 2012 campaign season and Pandora expanding its ad geotargeting specifically for political campaigns to target voters.
So what’s been brewing this year? In February, The Center for Technology Innovation at Brookings held a forum on the use of mobile technology in politics on an international level. Coinciding with this forum, was the release of an informative paper by Darrell M. West titled M-Campaigning: Mobile Technology and Public Outreach. On Super Tuesday last week, WHERE, Inc., who is owned by eBay, strategically announced a new product that allows political campaigns to target mobile advertisements for donations based on geofences. WHERE’s new Donate Now will likely resurface at ILM East at the end of March in Boston. Walt Doyle, WHERE’s CEO, will be a panelist on Mobile and Local: Closing the Loop on Content, Ads and Conversions with John Valentine of Scvngr/LevelUp, Doug McDonald from dotMobi and Reply’s Darren Waddell.
Maponics will be at ILM East in Boston and we are looking forward to taking part in the discussion of geofences for mobile ad targeting. If you are attending and want to meet with us to talk about our geofence products and solutions email me, Gloria, gdufield@maponics.com to set up an appointment with either Darrin Clement, Maponics CEO, or Mark Dykstra, Director of Sales. Interested in learning more about our boundary products for geotargeting mobile ads? Visit our GIS Map Data or Industry Solutions pages.
Attending ILM East and want to start the discussion now? How important do you think political ads on the hyper-local level will be during the election this fall? Let us know what you think by posting a comment.
