Key insights include:

— The top three actions overall include clicking on a location specific ad, searching for the nearest location and/or conducting additional research.

— Smartphone owners show higher response than non-smartphone owners to locationized messaging.

— iPhone users are most likely to conduct additional research; Android users search for the nearest location; and BlackBerry users immediately make a purchase.

The post Local Ads Preferred Among Mobile Audiences appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

The last act at ILM West was a panel on the future of “SoLoMo” (Social/Local/Mobile). Moderators Mike Boland and Jed Williams tag-teamed a panel of four:

-David Courtney, CEO, JiWire, a location-based media channel connecting advertisers and mobile consumers via public Wi-Fi or location-based mobile apps
-Steve Espinosa, founder and CEO, AppStack, a developer of mobile apps
-Ankit Gupta, cofounder, Pulse, a developer of iOS apps
-Venkat Kolluri, CEO, Chitika, an ad network based in Boston, specializing in search and local advertising

Moderators Boland and Williams pepper-sprayed the panel with a series of predictions (sometimes deliberately provocative) about major events in SoLoMo over the next 12 months. Panelists were asked to react.

Prediction 1: In the next 12 months, Facebook goes public and moves into mobile.

It was first acknowledged that a significant portion of Facebook’s user base is already accessing the network from mobile devices.

-Espinosa: Yes, this is likely to happen — it’s already in Facebook’s roadmap. But its monetization of mobile will probably be via sponsored content, rather than display advertising
-Courtney: Yes, likely. Facebook can do anything that helps users connect with their friends.

Moderator Williams then asked: “Where does social curation/discovery come in to the search function?”

-Gupta: Opens up more possibilities for the user, more content.
-Espinosa: Social information will be normalized and thus made useful; This is the key development for social content, more than curation per se.

Panelists generally agreed that there’s a big challenge in figuring out the correct ad unit. For example, how does a recommendation by a friend get transformed or incorporated into an ad?

Prediction 2: In the next 12 months, location check-in, as we know it, will die:

Courtney: The active user base (of check-in services) has already been declining (e.g., Foursquare). Therefore, location-based apps, where location is automatically detected by mobile app, is likely to gain share over manual check-in apps.

Prediction 3: In the next 12 months, New social sharing will open up, with Facebook’s Open Graph and expanded social verbs (want, read, listen, etc.).

-Gupta: Advertising won’t necessarily seem like advertising.
-Courtney: The quality of mobile ads is improving and becoming more app-like. The two formats are becoming more similar.

Prediction 4: In the next 12 months, the retail point of sale is poached by connected devices and social signals.

Kolluri: RTB (real time bidding) is occurring. Promotions can now be tailored to individual consumers at the point of individual transactions. The technology already exists.

Prediction 5: In the next 12 months, location becomes the most important targeting metric for mobile ads and deals.

Courtney: We’re betting the company (JiWire) on this!

The post ILM West: The Future of SoLoMo appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Retail inventory has been revving up as a new, highly mobile-oriented tool for retailers to highlight stock on hand and steer consumers to store locations. It is an important lead-generating feature on new shopping portals, such as FindnSave. Research by JiWire shows that 62 percent of consumers seek product availability when researching goods online. The company also notes that “low consideration goods found in local shopping centers” are core to inventory promotion.

Key entrants in the space include JiWire, via its acquisition of NearByNow; eBay, via its $75 million acquisition of Milo.com last year; ShopSavvy; and now Google, which is diving in via Google Product Search, a spin-off of Google Base, the now defunct classifieds aggregation product.

Vancouver-based Wishpond, an angel-funded company, is another entrant. Wishpond has largely positioned itself as a platform, equally focusing on inventory from both local and national retailers. The others have focused more explicitly on national retailers.

The company has signed up 1,700 retailers in the U.S. and Canada and seeks to differentiate itself by enabling merchants to upload their product inventory in a variety of ways. In addition to providing retailers with free self-serve management tools, merchants can import their inventory via Web crawling, shopping cart plug-ins, batch upload, through their Point of Sales system and other methods. Wishpond also goes beyond inventory by adding real-time price checks, stock availability checking and merchant meta data. It offers these data to publishers and mobile app developers through an open API.

We don’t comment here on how unique these solutions are. All the contenders in the space claim to be unique. But the combination of broader reach and inventory upload options have helped Wishpond build an inventory of 6 million products, or twice as many as reported by Milo.com, which has some local stores but is more focused on a number of large, core accounts.

“The consumer starts their search for a product or item, not a retailer,” says Wishpond founder and CEO Ali Tajsekandar. “We help retailers get their products seen by local consumers wherever they are searching online — Facebook, Twitter, Google, Mobile and more.” By working with Wishpond, retailers will see their product inventory distributed to search engines and other sites where consumers are most likely to search for it, including Google Product Search, Facebook, Twitter and various mobile apps.

Wishpond also helps companies manage their online promotions on various ad channels and social networks. “We can help a merchant set up a Facebook “store” in a few clicks,” he notes. “Once connected, the fans can browse promotional products or search full inventory and find location details on the nearest branch that carries a given product.”

While monetizing has not been a core focus as it ramps up, Tajsekandar notes that Wishpond has a program for upselling stores to various SEM packages for merchants that want to give their inventory and promotions greater visibility.

The post Wishpond Adds Social, Local Elements to Retail Inventory appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In December, we discussed the implications of Groupon’s pact with public Wi-Fi network provider JiWire as a potentially significant next step for social commerce — hyperlocal group buying that leverages geotargeting to serve nearby deals to connected customers. The partnership has now gone live across JiWire’s footprint of more than 30,000 locales (cafes, coffee shops, airport lounges) in areas where Groupon is present.

David Staas, JiWire senior VP of marketing, gave BIA/Kelsey a sneak peek into Groupon’s hyperlocal design, and the implications for potential customers who can now access a collection of deals within a certain distance of a given location.

Ad formatting will roll into the JiWire Compass template, which initially appears as a standard display ad, but when clicked on, opens up into a richer, app-like experience with geofencing and mapping capabilities.

JiWire’s network automatically determines a user’s location and then searches for locally relevant deals. Results show how many local deals were found and their distance from that location. The deals are listed as tiles (or “snapshots”) in a left-hand column, and are adjacently mapped across the rest of the ad. Clicking on a tile brings up full information on the deal in the format that Groupon subscribers are accustomed to (savings, number of deals available, time remaining to buy). 

The partnership is still developing, with Stass acknowledging that experimenting and learning are key objectives. Right now, JiWire is only aggregating and optimizing existing Groupon deals, but this could evolve to include deals sold specifically for its network. Furthermore, it is still trying to answer “what is the proximity sensitivity?” In other words, how far is a customer willing to travel within a city for a really good deal?

This is a question that daily deal companies are asking as they probe new ways to effectively target and drive additional inventory. Staas believes that “location can be a targeting attribute.” Groupon’s chief competitor, LivingSocial, has introduced sub-metro deals in cities such as New York and Washington, D.C., where simply getting a deal in that metro may not be enough. Now Groupon is moving location targeting to a more micro, and mobile, level.

Location targeting and verticalization are already emerging as principle differentiators in the noisy group buying space. Both will see continued development in 2011.

The post Social Local Media: Groupon’s Hyperlocal Play — A Next Step for Deals? appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

To date, most location-specific advertising requires in-store check-ins to unlock discounts and special offers. Naturally, that necessitates having a storefront that lends itself to walk-in — and check-in — traffic. Foursquare, Gowalla, Loopt and others have garnered first-mover hype with these location-based services but have struggled to achieve mainstream adoption beyond the tech elite.

JiWire is extending geotargeted opportunities to brands that have a local presence but may not have a storefront with a sign bearing their name. The public Wi-Fi network provider is introducing Compass, an advertising platform that creates a geo-fenced, ad-in-app interactive experience for users, allowing them to discover nearby brands and then connect with them.

Compass is a direct outgrowth of JiWire’s recent acquisition of NearbyNow, one of several companies (eBay’s Milo, Google Product Search, Krillion) competing to showcase real-time product inventory at store level. Fusing NearbyNow’s capabilities, Compass enables its 40 million on-the-go users to survey brands that are in stock at local stores, then engage them directly. These behaviors include accessing walking and driving directions, clicking to call or text a retailer, reserving and/or purchasing products, and booking appointments. Advertisers can layer on additional content such as promotional videos as part of customized tabs that they build out.

David Staas, JiWire’s senior VP of marketing, told BIA/Kelsey that the integration of NearbyNow allows JiWire to generate “advertising with location content as part of the overall message.” The implications are a more delightful customer experience and a potential move to performance advertising models based on the actions that the ads can motivate. Ads will be sold on a CPM basis to start.

Here’s how it works. JiWire’s networks serve a mobile, tech-savvy clientele in public places such as cafes, coffee shops and airport lounges. These users are shown standard display ads. But when they click through, the ads expand into a full-screen, app-like experiences. JiWire-NearbyNow synergy kicks in when the app is launched, as Compass uses geo-fencing technology to target a user’s location to present location-relevant store information and product data.

Launch partners include Clinique, HP, Ritz Camera and Groupon. JiWire struck an agreement with the deal-a-day giant last week to generate neighborhood-level deals … a fit for JiWire’s transient audience. For Groupon, the pact marks a new level of geographic granularity.

More generally, the implications could be numerous. Check-ins could be scaled to a wider base (JiWire’s 40 million customers to Foursquare’s 4 million) and scaled to businesses with strong brands but without storefronts. It also broadens the opportunity beyond retail outlets and into a variety of franchise industries. Furthermore, it begins to close the loop on LBS and social buying. Geo-fencing locates consumers at neighborhood level, feeds them an array of search-and-shop options, and offers related deals.

The post JiWire’s Compass Links LBS, Search and Social Commerce appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

During the 72-hour whirlwind that was ILM:10, several other announcements also came down the pike. Among them:

– Group buying giant Groupon continues its flurry of partnerships. The Chicago-based deal a day inked separate deals with the Chicago Tribune Media Group and JiWire. The Tribune agreement calls for Groupon to power local deals each weekday on the company’s recently launched ChicagoShopping.com site. ChicagoShopping.com wants to add depth to the deal-a-day experience by enabling users to personalize deals around specific shopping interests.

Groupon has several co-branded deals with traditional media companies, including McClatchy and Media General. Typically, it furnishes the publisher with an exclusive offer for its market audience and splits revenues equally. All merchant sales, creative and payment processing is handled by Groupon, which as a result, is able to add valuable buyer information to its database.

The pact with JiWire marks an important step for Groupon in targeting more granular, sub-metro deals. It also opens up new inventory possibilities for a brand that has quickly seen demand outstrip supply. JiWire’s network of public Wi-Fi hotspots (more than 30,000 in locales such as cafes, coffee shops and airport lounges) will allow for hyperlocal targeting of deals at venue level. JiWire users are typically on-the-go and tech-savvy, which may ripen new deals categories such as travel-oriented restaurant and retail chains.

Deal-a-day competitor LivingSocial has also debuted sub-metro deals, but not with such granularity. In related efforts to open up new inventory, Groupon introduced personalized deals over the summer.

– It didn’t take eBay long after its $75 million purchase of Milo to begin incorporating the company’s real-time shopping data into its product line. EBay is integrating Milo’s local store inventory and pricing information into its RedLaser barcode scanning applications.

RedLaser’s single-scan interface enables product and price comparisons at nearby stores. Milo’s data adds yet another content layer. EBay is also expected to incorporate Milo functionality into other online and mobile products, notably its Shopping.com site and perhaps ProStores (an online storefront software company for SMBs).

– ComScore released an early wave of holiday online spending stats (Nov. 1-Dec. 3). The gradual economic comeback has triggered a 12 percent increase year over year in total online spend. Cyber Monday (Nov. 29) eclipsed $1 billion in e-commerce by itself.

Large national brands have experienced the strongest growth. The top 25 online retailers are up 20 percent over 2009, and some of that increased market share is at the expense of small and mid-market shops, where sales remain flat.

The post Post ILM:10: News and Notes Aplenty appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Evidently, the popular adoption — or lack thereof — of location-based applications and services may simply be a function of whom you talk to. JiWire asked the on-the-go audience that it serves ads to across public Wi-Fi networks, and the holiday outlook for LBS is markedly sunnier than the dimmer results recently released by PEW.

In a sample of its tech-enthusiast users for its Q3 2010 Mobile Audience Insights Report, JiWire returned that an astounding 89 percent of respondents are likely to use location-based tools this holiday season. These are the same Foursquares, Gowallas, Loopts, SCVNGRs, et al that only 4 percent of PEW’s cross-section reported using in a study published earlier this month. The key differences: JiWire’s audience is exclusively Wi-Fi (thus catering to an on-the-move crowd), with much of its wireless distribution occurring in venues such hotels and airports that skew toward higher-end demos that are heavier holiday spenders.

David Staas, JiWire’s SVP of Marketing, told BIA/Kelsey that “over the last 12 months, we’ve seen an explosion of location-oriented content that’s taking place because of consumer demand. Consumers are starting to think from a location-centric perspective.”

JiWire’s majority, 61 percent, value finding store locations above all other mobile features. Interestingly, 33 percent prefer using LBS to search the product inventory of nearby stores. This validates Google Product Places, Milo, Krillion and a host of others that are partnering with retailers to share real-time inventory, an idea founded in research that indicates that most purchases still occur in store … but nearly half of them are motivated by online research.

LBS has begun to earn a checkered name in some circles because of the gimmickiness and fatigue associated with check-ins and virtual rewards. But JiWire suggests that 49 percent of the on-the-go crowd use these capabilities. They’re checking in principally to unlock deals and promotions, not to accululate virtual capital, supporting the notion that tangible bait is pivotal to drive store traffic.

This reaffirms a previous JiWire study that showed that the majority (51 percent) of its on-the-go audience was comfortable sharing location in exchange for more relevant advertising because, as Staas said, “it’s a value exchange. They’re getting something useful back.”

Also noteworthy: 30 percent of the sampled audience is willing to travel more than five miles to redeem a mobile coupon. For all the talk of hyperlocal and geotargeting, these results affirm the importance of a different term, one that Gannett Digital Network General Manager Josh Resnik recently shared with BIA/Kelsey — “hyper-relevancy.” People will travel if offers are contextually and psychographically germane. “It’s about matching audience with location,” Staas said. “Location has different components, including marketing to the right consumer.”

So, where does the truth lie? Again, it probably depends on whom you ask, and chances are it falls somewhere in-between. By the same token, several recent announcements have the potential to mainstream LBS well beyond the walls of technophilia. Facebook Deals and Places, coupled with Google Places. Place Search, Product Search and Hotpot, run the gamut of LBS, encompassing local, social and retail.

The post JiWire Report: LBS Checks In for Christmas appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

A majority of the on-the-go crowd is open to sharing its location in exchange for relevant advertising. Men share their location more often than women. And couponing is still king, with check-ins playing catch-up. These are just a few of the findings from JiWire’s Q2 2010 Mobile Audience Insights Report, which studies consumer behavior and device use related to location-based advertising and content. 

Among the top takeaways from the report:

– In exchange for relevant advertising, 51 percent of JiWire’s “On-The-Go Audience” is willing to submit its location.  Interestingly, women, who are generally much more likely to participate in social group buying services such as Groupon and other deal-a-day providers, are less likely to share their location (54 percent of men; 42 percent of women); 25-to-34 year-olds show the greatest propensity to share location, with the 18-24, 25-34 and 35-44 age brackets all answering yes at 50-plus percent.

– Unsurprisingly, the 18-44 age demo represents the strongest interacters with location-specific mobile ads; 25-34 is the only group in which more than half (53 percent) of respondents were willing to engage these ads. Again, men (47 percent) are more likely than women (40 percent) to participate in this behavior.

– For all the chatter about check-ins, “mayorships” and game mechanics, couponing still scores at or near the top in advertising and application appeal. Thirty-nine percent of respondents say that coupons are their favorite form of location-based advertising. Meanwhile, only GPS/Maps is considered a more “valuable” location-based application.  The check-ins that Foursquare, Gowalla and others have popularized rank fifth on the valuable-applications list, with “collectible badges and competition” seventh.

The post JiWire Mobile Study: Positive Perception of Location-Based Advertising appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.