'Net Features : localresponse

Targeting Ads By Past Social Media Behavior

Michael Garrity — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 17:11:00 GMT

Often, as unfortunate as it is, brand marketers will miss out on potential customers (and revenue) because they don't have the ability at the time to capitalize on their interest in a product or service. Until recently, those customers were basically lost, but now advertising platform provider LocalResponse wants to bring them back.

The company, which specializes in helping marketers respond to real-time consumer intent, is launching a brand new product called HIT (historical intent targeting) that will let brands “go back in time” to deliver ads based on a consumer’s past social media behavior across a variety of public networks, including Instagram, Twitter and Foursquare.

LocalResponse’s ad targeting and display platform will mine public social media channels to seek out customers that have expressed interest or “intent” in the products, brand or lifestyle associated with their advertising partners, allowing these marketers to target consumers who have shown explicit intent (such as a Foursquare check-in) or implicit intent toward their brand.

HIT works by mining tons of historical data that looks at tweets, shares, posts, check-ins and more across a range of social media sites. So, for instance, if a consumer once tweeted positively about a film they saw during the summer, studios can use that information to send them ads about the movie’s upcoming DVD release many months later. In fact, one of LocalResponse’s early partners during its pilot program was Sony Pictures, and it’s reported “impressive results” from its campaigns so far.

In launching HIT, LocalResponse is able to ensure that marketers aren’t relying too much on more recent or even real-time data, allowing advertisers to leverage consumers that displayed interested in a brand or product on a social media site months, or even years, before. As a result, ads can become even more contextual and valuable for marketers.

Display Targeted Ads Based on Social Media Activity

Allison Howen — Sat, 26 May 2012 16:00:00 GMT

If you need a better way to target consumers, you might want to check out a new advertising product from LocalResponse that helps brands target customers based on their real-time social media activity.

The Intent Targeted advertising platform enables brands to deliver display ads to consumers who have expressed interest in the brand on public social media channels, including Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Foursquare.

LocalResponse delivers the Intent Targeting display ads after sorting through public social media channels to find customers who have expressed interest in specific brands, or lifestyles that are associated with brands. For example, a consumer who tweets that they are looking to trade in their BMW would be an ideal candidate for an Audi ad to be displayed on their desktop.

“Our ability to make ads more relevant by customizing them based off social media expression allows us to target against very unique data sets, which creates a massive opportunity for advertisers to achieve engagement on campaigns that are in many instances two or three times greater than any campaign they’ve been able to run before,” says Kathy Leake, president and co-founder, LocalResponse.

Location-based Sentiment Marketing with LocalResponse

Mike Phillips — Tue, 10 May 2011 14:10:00 GMT

A new location-based marketing service called LocalResponse (currently in beta) hopes to capitalize on location and sentiment to connect advertisers with active consumers. While location-based marketing is nothing new, targeting consumers based on their current emotions is what sets LocalResponse apart.

For example, a user might send a tweet to their followers about a disappointing experience with Brand A. In response, LocalResponse can identify that message then help Brand B send an immediate tweet to that user with an offer to try their competing service. Or, a more obvious strategy is to use check-ins from services like Foursquare to alert the user to a coupon.

But the real key to LocalResponse's strategy is understanding language. Whereas most location services rely on specific data (such as a check-in on Foursquare), LocalResponse will target users based on what they actually type on services like Twitter – such as, "leaving X" or "going to X". According to LocalResponse's data, 80 percent of all check-ins on Twitter use natural language such as this. In all, LocalResponse can analyze posts from 200 million users worldwide.

For now, the service can only message Twitter users until other services like Flickr or Foursquare find a way to insert brand messaging (if ever). And that might be a problem, as a small percentage of Twitter users are responsible for the majority of activity. But what might be even trickier is avoiding the “intruder” label. Getting pounded by branded messages simply by mentioning that brand might backfire considerably.

A few brands have already jumped on board, however. They include Coca-Cola's Powerade Zero and "a major telecom".