Placecast's ShopAlerts to Deliver on Mobile Promise

Greg Sterling posted an interesting announcement from Placecast. If you haven't heard of Placecast and you are interested in monetizing LBS or hyperlocal initiatives you should get to know what they do.I met them a year ago at Where 2.0 and discovered they could close the gap between my geovision and implementation.

Placecast's ShopAlerts allows retailers to create automated SMS alerts that are sent to consumers when they are near a retail outlet with which they have opted-in. Then as the consumer goes about their daily life they are automatically alerted when they are near a retail location of any specials. A key to ShopAlerts is that it does not require a smartphone. Someday this will not be a competitive advantage but for now it is because most people don't use smartphones. According to Screenwerk, four retailers are on board at launch: SONIC, American Eagle Outfitters, and REI.

This is the second announcement this week where a company is delivering on the early promise of mobile and LBS. Loopt made an announcement  for a pay per action solution coming soon.
 
Update 2/27: It looks like North Face is also experimenting with Placecasts approach. According to Media Buyer Planner North Face has a campaign where Placecast "created 1,000 fenced areas in and around the cities where the North Face has many stores. The North Face also chose locations where there is a lot of snow and rain, so it could tailor its messages to the weather."

MediaWeek Scratches Hyperlocal Surface

MediaWeek did an underwhelming job explaining why hyperlocal is hot right now, and the percieved value and pitfalls of hyperlocal. It suggests there may be opportunity for media if the hyperlocal ad/sales code can be cracked.The article rightly states that the current big winners in the space are Yodel, ReachLocal and Local.com.


"These companies, which have exhibited the largest ad growth in the space, do the dirty digital work that many small businesses aren’t equipped to do like creating banners and videos, and navigating search marketing," the article said.

It fails to mention local media success stories, such as Fischer Broadcasting's work in Seattle, and McClatchy Newspapers' efforts which were recently featured at the Borrell Conference. While those companies have NOT seen an explosion of ad revenue from hyperlocal they have had success with hyperlocal business models.



Lastly, there are some interesting quotes from players in the space, such as the CEO of Topix.net. I would love to hear or read the full interviews. They would most certainly prove more insightful than the article itself.

Yext - Why Doesn't Local Media Think of This?

Here's another example of a monetization solution local media could have thought of and didn't and now should consider experimenting with -- Yext Inc. It a is a point solution that could be part of a sales/service package for an SMB and could also be extended to media's local directories pages for lead generation revenue.

Yext places ads all over the the Internet for local businesses . Yext analyzes calls (via speech-to-text) generated by those ads and only transfers calls to businesses that could result in sales. Yext shares its revenue from advertisers with the publishers. The company plans to use the new funding to help it reach a greater variety of advertisers.