Modern online advertising technology (Google, Facebook, etc) allows an advertiser to target a specific demographic based on any number of criteria. As someone who manages advertising for a number of websites, one of the most important targeting criteria is geography. Service providers and retailers want to communicate with local clientele, not some random Joe.
This is great for websites, but how long will it take for this same ability to translate into other platforms?
Assume for a moment that I publish an eZine. I decide to sell a PDF edition and offer advertising space to companies who want to reach my readers. If I’m a speculative fiction rag, I might sell a full page to TOR, but I’m not going to be able to land one for the local book shop. It’s not economically feasible for the local shop to purchase advertising that will only be relevant for a small subset of those it will appear in front of.
What if I could geo-target advertising, though? What if I could allocate a single page for ads relevant to the subscriber’s mailing address? I could then offer a low-cost advertisement to a number of local stores. Each store would only appear in those issues that were sent to subscribers living in their local market.
The same logic could be used for POD as well, with ads being determined by the demographics of the purchaser.
Geo-tracking would be very cool. Taken a step further, you could have an HBO advertisement that changes based on age or gender—Sally sees one for Desperate Housewives, while Sam sees one for Deadwood.
So tell me, is this technology available today? If so, point me at it.
Tags: advertising, publishing, technology