Targeting Ads By Past Social Media Behavior

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.