Peugeot Launches Location-Based Mobile Ads in Europe

European auto manufacturer Peugeot has launched a location-based mobile ad campaign in France, designed to target users as they approach dealerships there and encourage them to test drive the brand’s new RCZ model.

The campaign, powered by Navteq’s LocationPoint ad product, will serve ads to users close to one of 428 individual Peugeot outlets throughout the country.

Those ads will appear across Navteq’s network of mobile applications, which reaches around 150 million users a month globally, the company said. The units will feature built-in calls to action including click-to-call and click-to-map to allow users to navigate to dealerships from their current location.

Location-aware mobile ads reflect the “technological spirit” of the Peugeot brand, the company’s marketing director Marc Giuliolo suggested. “The ability… to generate traffic into dealerships by targeting and engaging people on the go as they near points of purchase is a very powerful marketing tool,” he said.

In February Navteq took a large step forward in expanding the reach and scale of LocationPoint, areas of weakness according to some agencies. The company added major handset manufacturers RIM and Samsung, as well as location-based app providers Appello, CoPilot Live, Navigon, NDrive, Poynt, and Telmap.

Throughout 2010 the company conducted trial and commercial campaigns in both the U.S. and Europe for brands including Puma, Domino’s, McDonald’s, and Best Western.

Speaking with ClickZ in February, Navteq’s director of publisher relations, Shawn Gunn, said the company was targeting its sales efforts to marketers with physical locations, such as quick-serve restaurants and retailers, for example.

Peugeot’s campaign is targeting users within a range of several kilometers of its outlets, but an advertiser could use the platform to geo-fence a region as small as a few feet in diameter, Gunn Said, providing brands with numerous locations the ability to target extremely accurately.