By Tomio Geron, Reporter - Dow Jones VentureWire - San Francisco, April 17, 2008

 

Location-specific ads have long been promised on mobile phones as a way to provide highly targeted messages for marketers and more relevant information for consumers.

But a new company, 1020 Inc., backed by unspecified August 2007 Series A funding from Voyager Capital and Onset Ventures, aims to provide such geo-targeted ads not only to mobile devices but also to laptops, PCs and GPS devices.

1020’s Placecast service, which is essentially a location-specific ad network, collects geographic information and provides ad messages relevant to that location. For example, if people are at an airport, they could see travel-related ads, while if they are at a convention center, Placecast could serve an ad from Chanel or another high-end retailer and show the nearest store location.

“The real novelty about Placecast is that [until now], online you can not do place-based advertising the way you can offline,” said Anne Bezancon, founder and chief executive of 1020. “We’ve figured out a way to tie the virtual world with the physical world.”

While triangulating location from mobile devices has already been rolled out by Google Maps and others, identifying location from conventional Internet connections - and using that for commercial applications - has not been commonly seen. To do this, 1020 is working with Internet service providers, who can provide that static location. The information is anonymous and will not identify individuals.

This provides ISPs with a revenue share with 1020. Other companies that are trying to provide ISPs with a new ad-based revenue stream include NebuAd Inc., which is not focusing on the location component.

With Placecast, marketing messages can be tailored specifically to that place, providing new types of information. For example, if a car company is advertising, it can show the new model, where the closest dealership is and what color is at that location.

Bezancon said she believes the company’s cross-platform approach will give marketers a wide range of options tailored to different platforms.

“A cross-platform phone, Web [and] GPS offering is very compelling,” she said. “In a number of campaigns, advertisers want to use very different formats on different devices.”

1020, founded in 2005 and based in San Francisco, has about 15 employees and has so far signed up Amtrak, FedEx Corp. and Hyatt Corp. as advertisers.

Jodi Jahic, principal at Voyager Capital, and Susan Mason, general partner at Onset Ventures, are on 1020’s board.