Val-Pak, Ten Square Team for Interactive Coupon Trial

Ad technology company Ten Square will debut its advertising platform in a 90-day trial using interactive coupons from direct mail marketing firm Val-Pak.

Ten Square delivers and tracks ads, promotions and coupons over the Internet to interactive, flat-panel screens — like displays at retail store check-out counters, on Web-enabled gas pumps and ATMs.

Thursday’s deal with Val-Pak, which handles about some 15 billion coupons mailings annually, gives the company access to a large, national content partner, which has established relationships with local merchants.

“Val-Pak’s number one priority is to deliver savings to local consumers, and we’re looking forward to the Ten Square network being extremely well-received this fall in Atlanta,” said Val-Pak vice president of Internet technology Todd Leiser.

Ten Square said it will use data from Val-Pak’s Valpak.com site on Internet-enabled gas pumps at twelve Chevron and Texaco stations in Atlanta, GA.

The sites will deliver and track closed-loop coupons and promotions for local stores, based on demographic data derived from ZIP codes as well as “psychographic” considerations.

Ten Square founder and chief executive officer Scott Slinker said his company’s major value-add to advertisers comes from its ability to aggregate vertical, Internet-enabled platforms for neighborhood-wide saturation.

“Take a ten square-block area — you find cell phones, ATMs, all kinds of appliances that people are interacting with. Individually, you have cell phone networks, ATM networks,” he said. “But there’s no one network that ties all those vertical markets together.”

Slinker said Ten Square, which he estimated will deliver about four million promotions per month throughout the trial period, plans at a later point to monetize its consumer data.

Spending was not disclosed in the deal.

Ten Square’s product is somewhat similar to that of PRN, which provides in-store television, interactive kiosks and TV walls to large consumer retail chains, including Wal-Mart, Circuit City and Sears.

Like Ten Square, PRN advertises promotions on brands sold nearby. But unlike PRN, Ten Square does not install its own fixtures.

The company accesses Web-enabled devices through separate deals with the manufacturers — like retail petroleum technology company Marconi Commerce Systems, in the case of interactive fuel pumps.