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:
- 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:
- Historical (i.e. people who go to the movies more than twice a month)
- Current (i.e. people currently within a mile of a KFC restaurant)
- 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.
