Jul 11, 2011 5:31 PM,

AT&T builds local ads into mobile apps

By Kevin Fitchard

Yellow pages arm combines local listings and advertising with the smartphone's location-awareness

AT&T is bringing its yellow pages local advertising business to the mobile app, marrying the location-awareness of smartphones with its extensive database of local advertisers.

More on this Topic

Industry News

Blogs

Briefing Room

AT&T Interactive earlier this year launched in-app pilot program of its YP Local Ad Network for select developers and saw impressive results: 750 million local ad impressions in three months. Now AT&T is extending the in-app program to all publishers, offering up an application programming interface (API) as well as platform-specific software developer kits (SDKs).

AT&T Interactive is no stranger to mobile ads. YP Local has been serving up search adds on mobile browsers, as well as on IPTV sets and plain-old PC browsers. But in-app advertising allows it to tailor ads to geographic locations by using the phone’s GPS or location sensors via the application in which the ad appears. Many applications ask for location permissions on installation to gather their own analytics or power location-based services. Those same permissions can be used to serve up location-specific advertising.

The relevancy of local ads can be measured in much higher click-through and take-up rates as measured in estimated cost per thousand impressions (eCPMs), industry for short hand for the efficiency of an ad in generating earnings. One YP Local in-app pilot publisher, Pinger, reported eCPM rates three-times higher with local ad targeting than national or non-location-specific ads.

AT&T said it expects the mobile local ad market to grow at an annual rate of 57% becoming a $2 billion market in 2014, built both on high impression rates as well as higher revenues per ad. AT&T Interactive senior vice president and chief product officer William Hsu explained that location-targeted advertising filled a big gap in the online advertising space—between high-value ads with low impression rates and low-value ads with high impression rates. As only a limited number of local ads are vying for space in any particular location, they get filled on a much steadier basis. But due to their particularly relevancy they produce much higher eCPMs, he said.