Local Pervasive at Ad:Tech

I was at the Ad:Tech show in San Francisco yesterday and am going back today for more meetings. I unfortunately missed the local-mobile panel (you can read a recap here). Yet there’s a distinct local presence at the show, including Placecast, RippleTV, Local.com, Urban Mapping. Topix and others, including a range of mobile platform providers and marketing companies.

Reflected in some of my conversations yesterday with some of these companies is the fact that many agencies and marketers don’t understand or clearly see the local opportunity and, beyond that, aren’t equipped to take advantage of it. I told a couple of people yesterday that for online marketers to understand it and get really excited it may need to be reframed as “demographic targeting.” In the offline world, demographic targeting is synonymous is local targeting of course.

More accurate local targeting (zip-level or below), combined with US Census data, offers demographic targeting to online markets. Even more precise targeting, such as GPS, Wi-Fi triangulation or several other strategies offers something potentially richer and more complex.

For example, I spoke with Placecast CEO Anne Bezancon yesterday and she distinguished “place” from “location.” Location is a specific geographical point or Lat-Long, whereas place takes into account not only location but other factors, such as demographics, dayparting and context. She said serving an ad to the attendees of Ad:Tech is very different than simply serving an add that is geotargeted to San Francisco.

This kind of targeting and relevance is where online advertising needs to go, only the industry doesn’t quite “get it” yet.

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Related: Urban Mapping launches “GeoMods” ehanced ad targeting tools.