• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 14, 2013

Serving ads to consumers within a certain radius has become the nirvana of mobile advertising. adMarketplace will launch a service that taps into the data collected from a mobile device.

The search company added an extra column in the information that mobile ad networks submit to support geolocation when serving paid-search ads -- not just the Internet protocol (IP) address, but GPS coordinates from the phone.

"IP targeting is great, but there's a problem with floating between two to three ZIP codes, and there's also a lot of shared IPs," said Andries de Villiers, vice president of revenue at adMarketplace, which supports a network for search engine marketing. "GPS coordinates from a phone give you much better information. Starbucks can serve you a coupon while sitting here in front of the coffee shop, and then you'll walk across the street to Kohl's and receive an offer from the retailer. It's that sensitive."

Today, adMarketplace collects the data for "start app" from some publishers, mobile-only networks like Jumptap, but hope to add others like AdMob, Mojiva, and Millennium in the future. All must have the capabilities to capture the information. They have partnerships with apps on phones with access to the data, such as Unique Device Identifiers and GPS coordinates, as long as the phone supports location-based services.

adMarketplace developed the feed to accept the information from the networks. One or two mobile-specific networks have begun to send the data. Most of the search company's business resides in desktop search, but that is quickly changing. It has grown from 2% to 3% of overall revenue to more than 10% in a matter of months.

The automotive brands do well on mobile search because consumers check car prices and locate a dealer. There are thousands of underdeveloped Web sites with strong search terms, like carss.com, and when users go to that page via a misspelling on the mobile phone, they can present search results for Honda, Acura, Mazda, Auto Trader, and cars.com.

Brands related to ecommerce, retail and anything with shopping key performance indicators also do well. adMarketplace supports companies like Sony, Volvo, ADT, AT&T, RadioShack, Expedia, Sears, and Dell. "There also are thousands of self-serve advertisers we have to get on board," de Villiers said.

Historically, these types of companies gravitate to desktop, but now they have begun to receive traffic on their Web sites via mobile phones. They are all starting to capture the GPS location themselves. Once mobile ad networks catch up and feed adMarketplace the data, the search company can return highly targeted ads on mobile.