CloudMade, a startup offering map-based app solutions, today announced the integration of location-based advertising (LBA) into its platform, allowing developers easy access to monetization tools for their applications and Web apps.
CloudMade’s LBA solution provides developers the ability to tailor the advertisements they display to their application type and user location. With no additional development resources required, a developer can display ads in their Web or mobile app in under five minutes by inserting just one line of code.
CloudMade integrates niche “channels” that developers can hook into to serve relevant ads in their applications. For those with a mobile travel application or website, for example, this could mean choosing to display only advertisements from the CloudMade Travel Advertisement Channel, featuring hotels, taxi companies, restaurants, bars, and more. Alternatively, developers of more specialized applications such as cycle navigation could find displaying only bike and sporting good stores, and only those nearest the cyclist, return higher click-through rates.
The CloudMade mapping platform has been popular with developers since its inception, but monetization has been a key request from its user base; “The number one request from our developers continues to be for location based ads to be included in our platform,” said James Brown, CTO, CloudMade. “We’ve now fulfilled this request coupling it with detailed analytics on user behavior to help developers reduce churn. Next, we’ll be introducing sponsored points of interest and our roadmap features retailer coupons and special offers to put even more money in our developers’ pockets.”
LBA is definitely a hot topic these days, and at MWC in Barcelona, but with every platform coming out with their own solution, fragmentation from a developers standpoint is just growing larger. Standardization with LBA is the next logical step, with a centralized solution needed that can easily be integrated into any platform and provides the furthest reach and largest ad-inventory. Until a clear-cut leader emerges to fill this role, the market will continue to be flooded with fragmented and incomplete offerings.
