Brightkite Launches Ultra-targeted Advertising Solution after Successful Brand Pilots

Some big name Brands have been investigating social media as a way of reaching relevant audiences. Chevrolet, Jack in the Box, “The Jersey Boys” show and realestate rental company, Mynewplace, use the Brightkite Social Discovery Network.

After piloting their newest ultra-targeted advertising solution with more than 20 brands over the past summer, Brightkite has now announced general availability of the system.

Specifically designed to give brands the ability to break out of traditional age and gender targeting, the new Brightkite “ultra-targeted” advertising solution expands the range of more relevant criteria for the brand.

Those criteria include:

brightkite
  • Location and Place
  • Behavior and Activity
  • Conversational Context
  • Time of Day
  • Weather
  • Demographics
  • Media Usage

In addition to these criteria, Brightkite can add time-relevance to their campaigns:

  1. Historical (i.e. people who go to the movies more than twice a month)
  2. Current (i.e. people currently within a mile of a KFC restaurant)
  3. Future (i.e. people in places where it will rain during the weekend)

Chevrolet used the ultra-targeted ads to reach people within three miles of a dealership on Saturday or Sunday afternoons. Response rates of people visiting the dealership were reported to be between one percent to two percent.

Jack in the Box used the ultra-targeted ads to connect with people within two miles of restaurants in the week following the launch of their smoothies. The smoothies were launched in different places at different times, so the campaign staggered location by location. The advertising campaign offered an SMS coupon for a free smoothie.

“The Jersey Boys” show targeted people who were visiting Las Vegas – that is people who were in Las Vegas at the time, but whose home town was outside of the Las Vegas area. These people received ads with a special offer to encourage them to come to the show. Redemption rates for the promotion exceeded two percent.

Mynewplace.com wanted to target people with locally relevant ads. The ads were dynamically created and delivered with full knowledge of the city the ad recipient was currently in. Rather than the generic “Find homes to rent near you,” the Brightkite ultra-targeted ads were set to say “Find a home to rent in Roseville,” localized to whatever city the recipient was currently in. The clickedthrough delivered them to the Mynewplace.com listing of homes to rent in proximity order to the recipient.

“Our first rule of advertising is to think about the user experience. Consumers actually like advertising when it is relevant to their needs, and find it an annoyance when it is out of context. We use a combination of location, activity, demographic and time targeting to match the right advertising campaign to the right user at the right moment. Ultra-targeted advertising gives us happy users and happy advertisers. We are consistently seeing click through rates of more than five percent for our ultra-targeted campaigns.” – Jonathon Linner, Brightkite CEO

Brand in Hand, a buyer of mobile media for brands such as P&G, General Mills and others, has been using the Brightkite’s ultra-targeted advertising system.

“We have run a number of Brightkite’s ultra-targeted advertising campaigns for our clients, and Brightkite has delivered against clients’ targets. We’ve targeted women in beauty salons and women talking about subjects relevant to our clients. Brightkite’s ultra-targeted campaigns enable us to minimize wastage and communicate to our clients’ audiences effectively.” – John Hadl, Brand in Hand CEO

In November 2010, three years after launching, the Brightkite real-time social discovery network has more than two million people using the free service every month. To access the service, all you need is a mobile phone or Web browser to bring your friends together in the real world, wherever you may be.

Alan Gray is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of NewsBlaze Daily News and other online newspapers. He prefers to edit, rather than write, but sometimes an issue rears it’s head and makes him start hammering away on the keyboard.

Content Expertise

Alan has been on the internet since it first started. He loves to use his expertise in content and digital marketing to help businesses grow, through managed content services. After living in the United States for 15 years, he is now in South Australia. To learn more about how Alan can help you with content marketing and managed content services, contact him by email.

Technical Expertise

Alan is also a techie. His father was a British soldier in the 4th Indian Division in WWII, with Sikhs and Gurkhas. He was a sergeant in signals and after that, he was a printer who typeset magazines and books on his linotype machine. Those skills were passed on to Alan and his brothers, who all worked for Telecom Australia, on more advanced signals (communications). After studying electronics, communications, and computing at college, and building and repairing all kinds of electronics, Alan switched to programming and team building and management.

He has a fascination with shooting video footage and video editing, so watch out if he points his Canon 7d in your direction.