I found an interesting post on marketingvox.com that discusses a new partnership between the Travel Ad Network and the L49 advertisers, which will allow geographically specific ads to appear on maps.com. They call this "geo-contextual targeting".
The ads change as the user changes the view of the map and zooms in or out based on their destination, interest, or intent. They also call this "mapvertising". Corporations that are participating include American Express, Apple, and hotels such as the Hilton and Comfort Inn.
While I think that this could be helpful at times, lets say if you were looking at a vacation spot and a hotel ad for the area popped up, but is this crossing the line? This kind of reminded me of the facebook advertisement controversy or when you shop online and the website offers "other things you might like." I could see how these pop-ups could get annoying, but I guess it is not much different than the pop-ups we deal with everywhere else on the internet right?
1 comment:
I always laugh at the terms people come up with to cleverly disguise advertising ploys. "Geo-Contextual Targeting" is wordy enough that it sounds uber professional enough to confuse regular people into thinking this is helping them more than bombarding them with more branding. But I can't get mad at them, they are just trying to make a buck like the rest of us.
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