ULocate’s Spotlight masquerades ads to drive consumers to local businesses

By Chris Harnick - November 17, 2009

ULocate's new feature, Spotlight, is a hyper-local advertising tool being used to drive consumers into local businesses and it has delivered a click through rate that is three times greater than banner ads.

When a consumer clicks on Spotlight, a full application experience is launched serving them details, menus, Web site links, maps and consumer reviews. ULocate is currently working with Citysearch for content in Spotlight.

"[Our strategy is to] provide a successful monetization tool that doesn't compromise the user experience, but rather serves to enhance it," said Lacy Garcia, director of marketing and communications at uLocate, Boston. "We have received positive feedback from users thanking us for removing ads, when in actuality we have not removed them but rather replaced them with Spotlight."

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ULocate is a provider of location-based mobile services.

Go local with mobile
In addition to Citysearch, Ms. Garcia said that uLocate is also in talks with RedPlum and Yowza as other content providers to deliver a wider variety of offers.
Spotlight

ULocate said that Spotlight optimizes the delivery of business results based on location, time of day and the type of content the consumer is seeking.

The Spotlight ads are different than uLocate's other ad offering because they are locally relevant and tailored to provide the best possible result for the consumer, the company said.

Spotlight is currently being used on uLocate's Where platform for Google's Android devices. The company said that it plans to roll out the service on other smartphones such as Apple's iPhone, Research In Motion's BlackBerry and the Palm Pre.
Spotlight

Ms. Garcia said that Spotlight delivers a relative effective cost per thousand impressions that is two to three times greater than normal banner advertisements, up to $8 on the Spotlight ads.

ULocate is known for location-based services, the company powers the Traffic.com, iPhone application.

The application provides users with the fastest and shortest routes and other real-time traffic data. Ad-support within the application is from Navteq's LocationPoint Advertising and advertisers include hotels such as Holiday Inn, Best Western and Hyatt, as well as quick-service restaurants such as Jack in the Box and Chili's (see story).

Ms. Garcia said that Spotlight's creation really came down to the fact that consumers were unresponsive to traditional banner advertisements.

"Essentially we were discovering that consumers don't like ads, and particularly not obtrusive banner ads that are unrelated to the content they are searching for or viewing," Ms. Garcia said. "Our challenge then was to create a monetizable app experience that was not only location targeted, but also contextually relevant and useful to consumers, for example a local ice cream store shown to users looking at a movie for children."

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