Placecast Gains $5 Million in Series B Funding

1020 Placecast has raised $5 million in Series B funding “from a group of high-profile investors including Quatrex Capital and current investors Onset Ventures and Voyager Capital.” The company is going to grow its LBS mobile platform efforts accordingly.

The press release says that the funds “will be used to accelerate progress on the company’s opt-in location-triggered marketing capability, which enables brands to engage with consumers via mobile phone based on the user’s specific location.”

Placecast has been doing a terrific research/anecdotal series entitled “The Alert Shopper” about how people shop and think about media in relation to shopping. Below is a video that illustrates their opt-in mobile marketing approach:

Recently in a survey conducted by Harris Interactive, on behalf of 1020 Placecast, large percentages of respondents said they highly receptive to mobile advertising in the form of alerts after an opt-in to receive them.

These data show why SMS marketing will never be supplanted by apps, search or mobile Web. Each has a role to play but SMS alerts will be a central part of mobile marketers’ customer acquisition and loyalty strategies for some time to come. Expect more integration of these mobile ad/marketing efforts in the future however.

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Location on Firefox 3.5 Part Deux

Here’s what it looks like at the top of Firefox 3.5 when it asks for your location:

It says (site name) wants to know your location. learn more and then “tell them” or “don’t tell them” and “remember for this site.”

There’s a kind of double-opt in going on here. I enable the site or the browser to geolocate me and then I authorize the sharing of that location information with the publisher.

The actual experience on the new 3.5 version of FF is better than Geode.