Display Marketing: HowToGoMo

Written by Claire Thursday, 03 May 2012 14:27

Mobile is local. You've all heard it a million times.

But how do you really gain that local traffic? A highly targeted paid search campaign that lacks in volume? We already know that you can't truly trust Google's location targeting on mobile.

The key to running a local mobile marketing campaign is to seek out the best sources and run various campaigns. The combined performance will add up quicker than you'd expect.

StepLeader and CBS Local have stepped forward with quality local display inventory for mobile. Both have found the niche that offers local news content to mobile subscribers, which in turn allows marketers to run highly geo-targeted campaigns that are well-optimized for their target audience. They both offer a wide range of device inventory, including traffic from feature phones, smartphones and tablets.

StepLeader (previously named News Over Wireless) is based out of Raleigh, NC and has proven itself as a quality source for many of our campaigns. They are able to provide highly granular reports to break down performance by many different metrics. Working with them has definitely been a breath of fresh air compared to some of the other inventory sources we've worked with.

We're hoping that CBS Local proves to be as successful as StepLeader, as their inventory concepts are similar. Like StepLeader, they offer both mobile web and in-app advertising space. We chose to connect directly to their inventory using our in-house ad server, which is a huge plus when it comes to a new inventory source. Running campaigns using our server allows us full control over creative, price, placements and optimization; it takes out the middleman.