Eventful.com Deploys Location-Based Ads

Community site Eventful will begin carrying location-based advertising through a partnership with geotargeting ad network 1020 Placecast. The latter firm’s advertising platform aggregates a variety of data to determine an individual’s approximate or precise location.

Ads powered by 1020 Placecast can be targeted to a user’s location in a number of ways, including volunteered information such as a Zip Code or contextual data such as the type of venue searched for. Internet users are divided into segments: A person searching for a classical music concert will likely fall into a different segment than another looking for a Coldplay concert.

Both 1020 and Eventful will sell ads, available on Eventful’s Web, mobile iPhone, and e-mail platforms.

E-mail ads are dynamically targeted to a user’s location. “The first thing to know is that e-mail is really not very friendly to dynamic advertising,” said Anne Bezancon, 1020 Placecast’s CEO. “It is not fully HTML compatible. We have resolved a technical hurdle to be able to publish on-the-fly advertising that is localized to the user where he is opening his e-mail.”

Each ad is inserted in the e-mail and is delivered with messaging relevant to a user’s location. Mobile ads can be delivered based on the GPS position of the iPhone, Bezancon said. With Eventful, users can research events taking place on any evening in their neighborhood, place, and time. For instance, Bezancon said, a user looking for a concert might be served an ad for a test drive at a local dealership, complete with a click to call phone number.

Eventful publishes widgets on a number of social networking sites, including MySpace, and 1020 expects to implement its Placecast ads within those widgets some time soon.