Targeting Competitors’ Customers in Mobile

There are tons of targeting capabilities on mobile ad networks: demographic, prizm, contextual, geo, behavioral. Today these work to varying degrees. However when I sat down at the recent Where 2.0 conference with NearbyNow’s CEO Scott Dunlap we had a very interesting and wide-ranging conversation about mobile and some of the things that NearbyNow is currently doing with publishers and for advertiser-customers.

Dunlap gave me some examples of campaigns and targeting approaches now being used. In particular I was very impressed by a real scenario involving two major national retailers, one relatively high end (“Retailer A”) and another very high end (“Retailer Bling”). 

Dunlap told me that when users of any of the mobile magazine and consumer apps operated by NearbyNow took an action that related in any way to Retailer Bling, Retailer A would send a coupon or offer to that user (also indicating the nearest store for Retailer A). In other words, when users tried to look at a map to find the closest Retailer Bling or otherwise clicked on any information associated with that retailer, Retailer A would swoop down and try and acquire that customer.

This is demographic, contextual and intent-based targeting rolled into one. But there’s no personally identifiable information or creepy tracking of history — just a deal from a competitor that pops up when a Retailer Bling customer is identified. The difference between doing something like this on the PC and in mobile is that the latter customer is ready to go to the store and buy something. 

Pretty impressive and interesting.