Mobile ads are taking off but mobile specific technology, such as LAT/Long and GPS, sometimes gets messed up when the data are transferred from publishers, said panelists participating at MLM San Francisco today.

Lots of networks provide Wichita, Kansas, as the location of targeted users, said YP’s David Kurtz. Why? “Because it is smack in the middle of the country,” he said. It has nothing to do with the actual location of users. YP, however, still seeks to leverage LAT/Long to the best of its ability. “We use geofencing, really precise kinds of targeting,” said Kurtz. “It is really about understanding the needs of the business you are serving.”

Effective geotargeting can boost “high value clicks from 18 percent to 50 percent of clicks on the landing page.” Geofenced daily deals also get strong results. YP gets 5 percent to 10 percent conversion on such deals when they are integrated within a mobile banner ad. That is well above normal conversions, Kurtz noted. “That to me is the future.”

Some of the granularity that advertisers seek from geotargeted campaigns is best provided by Wi-Fi, noted JiWire Acting CEO David Staas. By default, Wi-Fi has that granularity; it is pure LAT/Long. For instance, his service can tell the difference between people sitting in a coffee shop and walking by a coffee shop. “The power of location comes to play,” he said.

One way to boost clickthrough rates is to provide geotargeted images, noted Ana Martinez, VP of tech, CityGrid. CityGrid sees a 72 percent clickthrough rate for images that have geotargeted information, such as restaurants or other locations, she said.

XAd CEO Chi-Chao Chang added that if you are going to leverage geotargeted information, make sure that advertisers have them set up. “Lots of advertisers don’t have tracking set up,” he said. The company, for instance, works with geospatial agencies that depart from ZIP code information with LAT/Long data and GPS. “If you know that information, you can do a lot more for advertisers.”

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Google sees great usage and potential for mobile with features such as Google Maps, “which is one of the most popular apps on any phone,” noted Surojit Chatterjee, head of mobile search ad products, who was co-keynoting at MLM San Francisco.

Mobile “is an extension of the Web” and can get “better usage than banner ads,” said Chatterjee. But mobile also has many challenges, especially the siloization of apps. Google is working to point users to the right app, he said.

Some opportunities are more obvious. Click to call, for instance, has very strong adoption. It is getting even better as Google integrates more technology that provides better interfaces, better data for execution and better measurement. Chatterjee notes that the average call duration is six or seven minutes long, and provides ample data for measuring sales quality.

Co-keynoter Brendon Kraham, Global Mobile Sales and Product Strategy, noted that “mobile is changing the way that people interact. All mobile is new behavior,” he said. It is especially hyperlocal. Priceline, for instance, said that 65 percent of its people looked for deals within 20 miles, 35 percent within one mile and 85 percent of those searching for a deal with mobile used the deal within one day of a search.

“Discovery is critical,” he said. “If they build it, they will come.” Kraham also said that SMBs risk being left behind. Consumers are 18 months ahead of businesses in their embrace of mobile, he said.

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Mobile technologies such as location, check-in and targeting are prime drivers of a new breed of social media sites, according to panelists speaking today at Mobile Local Media San Francisco.

Check-in is the most actionable, noted Localmind CTO Beau Haugh. “We know if someone is there right now.” Haugh adds that local is “authentic” and people “want authentic experiences.” That makes Localmind “double down on local neighborhoods,” he said.

Yelp Director of Business Development Mike Ghaffary noted that mobile and social are inherently tied together. Yelp is not just assigning part of its development to mobile, but innovating on mobile, he added. Features such as photo search and cool visualizations have been key mobile innovations, for instance. In developing mobile features, Yelp asks “what doesn’t make sense on the Web,” for example. “If we are building mobile first, how would we do that?”

Ghaffary added that he keeps hearing about “Big Data.” But what is underestimated is the development of “Big Data 2.0: Consumer big data. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. Anybody can do it on a mobile screen.”

Schematic Labs CEO Steve Jang added that mobile is especially powerful in a social context because information is shared so quickly and with so little friction. “We are playing to that behavior, as opposed to sitting back and leaning back like the Web. Interaction is intuitive, and we give them a feedback loop that really makes a lot of sense.”

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