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Tag: geotargeting

  • Twitter Expands Geo-Targeting Options for Promoted Tweets

    Back in July, Twitter began to allow promoted tweets to be targeted by location. The geo-specific ads were dubbed ‘targeted tweets” by Twitter, and allowed brands to reach specific audiences without first sending a tweets to every single one of their followers. The feature was first tested with big name advertisers like Coca-Cola and Wendy’s but is now currently available to anyone who would have reason to promote a tweets (or an account).

    Today, Twitter is expanding geo-targeted tweets to reach specific markets in the UK and Japan. Now, advertisers will have a few more options when they want to get location specific.

    The new areas include UK regions and major metropolitan areas, Japanese locations like the Tokyo region, Osaka, and Nagoya, as well as a few more U.S. states.

    Here’s what targeted tweets product manager April Underwood had to say on the Twitter ad blog:

    You will be able to make use of these new geo-targeting options in conjunction with targeted Tweets. This combination will enable you to deliver Promoted Tweets tailored to regional audiences. For example, retailers can use Promoted Tweets to promote distinct offers to users in Manchester and London, or a US statewide political campaign could focus its Promoted Accounts campaigns precisely where a candidate is running for office.

    In short, as marketers, you will reach the users you’re seeking more easily, in real time, and users will see more relevant, useful Promoted Tweets and Accounts in their Twitter web and mobile apps.

    As Twitter expands their local targeting options, it just proves how committed they are to their advertising strategy. They’ve also been making some tweaks to their self-service ad platform, like the recent addition of account reporting and the ability for marketers to manually choose which tweets to promote.

  • Google Launches New Local AdWords Targeting Options In 11 Countries

    Google has made some updates to local targeting for AdWords in 11 countries. Here in the United States, Google notes that it has recently changed its metro targeting areas to Nielsen DMA (Designated Market Areas) regions.

    “Now your online campaigns and reporting will more precisely match TV-based audience data and campaigns. If you’ve been using metros, you’ll notice that the new geographic shapes look different on a map,” says product manager Derek Coatney, on the Inside AdWords blog. “While you might see some increases or decreases in traffic with the new regions, we estimate the impact will be small for most advertisers.”

    Metro Targeting

    In Canada, Google is expanding its launch of ZIP code targeting, which was already available in the U.S. Canadian postal code FSAs can now be targeted. Advertisers can now reach over 1,500 of them.

    “Now you’ll be able to plan, buy and get reporting with AdWords the same way you do with direct mail,” says Coatney. “Plus, with the “Bulk locations” tab in the AdWords location targeting tool, you’ll be able to easily enter up to 1,000 locations per country at a time.”

    ZIP targeting in Canada

    Google is adding city and region targeting options to the following new countries: Belgium (city), Bulgaria (region & city), Denmark (city), India (city), Ireland (city), Romania (region & city), Sweden (region & city), Taiwan (city), and Vietnam (city). In Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, India, Sweden, and Taiwan, Google has added location extensions, which show the closest business address and phone numbers with search ads.

  • Geotracking Techniques Getting Closer and Closer

    The idea behind anonymity in regards to the Internet is contentious at best — are you truly anonymous if online activities can be tracked to IP addresses — it might just be a thing of the past completely. More and more, there are legitimate concerns over what happens to all the geolocation data we produce. Who uses it, how long is it stored. These are just some of the concerns.

    However, thanks the ingenuity of some academic types, these fears may be much closer to being reality than some would ever hope.

    In a report appearing in NewScientist.com, it is possible to track computers to a much closer physical location than previous methods were capable of. Before the new method was discovered, the closest IP address-based tracking attempts could get was in the neighborhood of 20-plus miles. With the new technique discussed at NS, this distance has been staggeringly lowered.

    Target Aquired

    Instead of miles, we’re talking meters — within 690 meters, if the numbers are to be believed. The technique, developed by a Chinese computer scientist named Yong Wang, uses landmarks, Google Maps, data packet inspection, and IP addresses to complete its task. In order to factor the distance of the computer being targeted, Wang’s method monitors the time it takes to send a data packet to the computer being tracked, and converting this time into the corresponding distance.

    The NewScientist article has more details:

    Wang and colleagues then send data packets to the known Google Maps landmark servers in this large area to find which routers they pass through. When a landmark machine and the target computer have shared a router, the researchers can compare how long a packet takes to reach each machine from the router; converted into an estimate of distance, this time difference narrows the search down further. “We shrink the size of the area where the target potentially is,” explains Wang.

    Finally, they repeat the landmark search at this more fine-grained level: comparing delay times once more, they establish which landmark server is closest to the target.

    The report also reveals that, because of the large amount of landmarks being used (greater than 70,000), they can get a much more accurate read on the target’s location, as close as the aforementioned 690 meters.

    In fact, the report reveals this technique has been used to get within 100 meters of a target’s physical location. Furthermore, this process works even you don’t want your location being known. Wang says, “This is a client-independent method. The client does not need to approve anything.” The technique’s fearful capability doesn’t stop there either. If the target computer is hiding behind a proxy server, Wang’s process will be able to determine it. While the location will remain unknown, the fact the target computer is using a proxy will not.

    While this may not mean much in the way of PC users, who are largely stationary (and no, I’m not including laptops, either), mobile Internet use is increasing at an exponential rate, and as of now, mobile device users aren’t afforded the same privacy consideration as other Internet users are. Combining Wang’s geolocation process with the desire of businesses to use this data for advertising purposes, a melding of the two could quite feasibly lead to Minority Report scenes playing out in real life:


    So? Should more be done to protect users and the reams of geo-based location data they produce or is it up to the user to “opt-out” of these services? Let us know below.