1020 Placecast - Mobile Advertising with LBS legs

1020 Placecast is a new company in the mobile advertising location based services (LBS) space. It has just launched the first cross-platform (online, mobile and WiFi) LBS ad partnership for the social network Eventful.

Eventful?
I have not heard of Eventful but it boasts over 7 million users (18-34 year olds).
And Placecast?
I am not sure if the brand is 1020 Placecast or just Placecast but it is a company lead by former NAVTEQ, Sapient and Agency.com people.

So what is this type of advertising?

I think that if you are on Eventful’s site. If you do a search or hit concerts or something the ad would be targeted to the address or context of the ad. So an ad for outside or road activities would pull up a Subaru advert (for those that don’t know Subaru is a car brand – don’t laugh – but I didn’t know that until recently I only like BMW’s – I live in Germany for god sake!!).

From the press release
“Placecast gives us the ability to leverage location and date to deliver more engaging offers to our advertisers and consumers while maintaining the privacy, confidentiality and anonymity of our user base,” said Jordan Glazier, Chief Executive Officer of Eventful, Inc. “It’s an ideal solution for us given our community of highly engaged consumers who use Eventful to discover local events.”

Placecast is currently deployed across Eventful’s online advertising inventory and email programs, delivering targeted audiences to advertisers and customized messages to users. “Integrating Placecast was extremely simple,” said Chuck Norris, Eventful’s CTO. “We were up and running in a matter of days.”

“We are excited to unlock the potential of Eventful’s unique advertising inventory and engaged community of users,” commented Placecast Founder and President, Anne Bezancon. “No other platform can make use of location information the way Placecast can, reaching across multiple channels to seamlessly deliver more relevant ads to users. Combined with our specialized sales force, it is a perfect way for publishers such as Eventful to maximize the usefulness of their location-based content.”

What we think?
So, I am not sure how mobile this service is yet or which mobile sites Placecast is dealing with. But I sort of like it. I have yet to see it in action and I always fear that context alone is not great for best ad placement. But context mixed with location does increase the issue of relevancy. I will try and get an interview after CTIA.