Jay Leonard
Everywhere you go on the web, you will see banner ads, more formally known as display ads. On high traffic websites, such as the New York Times, these ads often come from major national brands. Sprint, Marriott, Jim Beam and others pay good money to put their ads in front of users. Banner ads grab attention and pull people to landing pages, where they can find information about the product.
Online advertising is used by all of the biggest names, and 2012 is the first year in which U.S. marketers are projected to spend more on advertising on the internet than in print publications. Projected sales are $39.5 billion. Does it follow that local businesses should follow suit? Perhaps not – a small restaurant in Palo Alto won’t be attracting customers from New York, or able to afford to place ads with the New York Times.
So, is it pointless for small businesses to consider advertising online? Not with cutting edge technology. Now it is possible for a small, local business to place their ads right alongside huge companies on high traffic web sites such as ESP.com.
The solution is geo targeting. Geo targeting identifies website visitors by their IP address and then serves an ad for a business located in their specific zip code. The system means that a business’ ad is shown only to those close enough to be able to visit, concentrating marketing efforts.
The system? It’s called ‘Real-Time Bidding’ or RTB. When a website is uploaded or updated, a signal is sent to an ‘advertising exchange’, a kind of virtual auction in which advertisers then bid for the open advertising space. Bidding is done by use of algorithms, allowing advertisers to weight their bids by geographical location and the content of the site. The available space then goes to the highest bidder. No longer do businesses buy space from the publisher and then see it go out to everyone in the world. Instead, they bid and then the ad is sent to their specific target audience. There is no wasted effort and advertisers are not paying for impressions to people who live on the other side of the planet as opposed to the other side of the street.
Want to know more? Check out the Vantage Local website or call our experienced team at 1-855-77-LOCAL. We are ready to answer any questions you might have.
This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jay Leonard.
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Nice article and quite informative – thanks for adding this – Mark