YP Data Helps National Brands Go Local

YP (formerly known as Yellow Pages) has rolled out a new ad tool called Cross Device Retargeting that helps national brands deliver customized ads based on local search that travel from desktop to mobile.

A recent comScore study found that 77 percent of YP’s 80 million monthly users access the service to find local merchants. Cross Device Retargeting, powered by Tapad, will use three datasets to help brands deliver ads to mobile based on desktop searches and vice versa.

“That data, that local business search intent, is incredibly valuable,” says Luke Edson, senior vice president of YP’s national markets group. “Let’s say a customer starts a search and then moves off through their day. Since people switch devices all the time, [Cross Device Retargeting] is able to serve an ad on their smartphone and tablet after their search.”

The product uses three sources of data to drop cookies during YP searches and then match ads across devices. The first is YP’s local search data, which the company does not sell, but does offer to customers. The second source of data comes from Tapad, a cross-device technology firm. The company is able to access data around IP addresses to find which devices sign into the same Wi-Fi around a home or office. The third source of data is geolocation, which comes from YP’s first-party search data from mobile devices.

The end result is real-time, cross-device ads targeting customers based on their local search history. “If we know consumers are in the market for a car because they’re searching for auto dealers and they’re within some proximity in real time, that really becomes a useful ad that will convert,” says Edson. “Because they’re in market, they’ve done their search, and now their location will also indicate that their physical proximity is very close to a dealership. And we think that is one of the advantages of this product release.”

The product is currently available to YP advertisers.