Anne Bezancon, CEO of 1020 (developers of Placecast), describes the geo-targeting ad service they offer that delivers a relevant message based on a person’s location plus events, weather and other activities at that location. The Placecast Advertising Network infers what someone might be doing, needing, wanting based on the expanded location information which they call “place.”

1. What is the technology behind location-based advertising? Is it GPS? Do you target laptops or mobile phones?
“Location-based advertising” as it is called in mobile or “Geo-targeting” as it is called in the Internet world, refers to advertising that is relevant to the viewer’s location. Placecast starts with the location of the device’s internet connection and adds an entirely new dimension called “place” to infer what type of person would most likely be viewing the ad at that time and location. Placecast works with any type of location technology (GPS, WiFi triangulation, user-entered ZIP code, etc.), across any type of device (laptops, mobile phones, portable GPS devices, etc.) and any ad type (display, text, Flash, audio, etc.).

2. Does the service work everywhere across the U.S.? What about internationally?
Placecast is currently operational in the US and is focused on continuing to build on the momentum we have here. However, the technology platform which makes Placecast’s place-based advertising possible already supports more than 70 countries.

3. Do advertisers create special campaigns for the location-based market or do they use their standard ad campaigns?
We work with advertisers to create campaigns leveraging Placecast’s unique dynamic messaging tools to allow agencies to produce their own creative one time, and have the message for that creative be customized at the time of delivery to be place-relevant. For example, with one piece of creative an airline can advertise “Tickets from [name of airport the user is connecting from] to Maui for [price of the ticket from that airport]” to travelers in airports across the country.

4. Placecast is another ad network. How do you stand out from your direct competition?
Placecast is built around a proprietary technology platform based on supply chain management concepts. Without this technology, online place-based advertising is not possible. Accordingly, Placecast is the only online place-based ad network today, and has been in operation since early 2007. Placecast offers targeting, messaging and engagement capabilities never seen before.

5. Is location enough information to help you strategically target ads to the right person at the right moment? What other information do you gather?
Placecast leverages the knowledge of where someone connects to the Internet, and a rich database of information about that location at that time including census data, events or weather to infer audience behavior and produce a highly relevant ad. Placecast does not need and does not collect any personally identifiable information. Everyone in the same place at the same time will see the same ad.

6. How does location-based advertising help publishers?
Publishers want to maximize the revenue from their inventory while complementing their brand. Before Placecast, publishers of location-relevant content sites like travel information, weather, traffic and events had few effective options for monetization. You are always in one place at one time. While everything else is subjective, time and location are absolute. Placecast uses this information to add the crucial missing ingredient to online advertising — real world relevance. As a result, ads perform better, publishers make more money and have more relevant ads on their site.

7. How many advertisers do you have in your network? How many publishers?
We do not disclose number of advertisers and publishers.

8. You say with better targeting you get a better return and can pay advertisers more. What percentage do you pay out to advertisers?
We do not disclose percentages. As evidence of our advertisers’ satisfaction, to date 100% of our advertisers have returned for additional campaigns.

9. Do you keep information on customers who click on ads so that you know frequent travelers and can target them better over time?
We do not do behavioral targeting, or collect any customer or web surfing history data.

10. What technology or business process will drive your industry in the future?
The increasing adoption of location-based services like events, mapping, travel and weather across both web and mobile.

I posed 7 questions to ADRevolution’s founder and CEO Andrew Westmoreland. In a world with too many ad networks, AdRevolution stands out with a model that gives power to consumers and pays advertisers on real results.

1. What is your business model?
Put simply, advertisers pay us for results, and we pay publishers a revenue share. It’s an advertiser-publisher model built around advertising with guaranteed response metrics.

2. When was the company founded and how has it evolved since its earliest days?
ADRevolution started technology development in 2005. Like most entrepreneurs, I thought that it would take a year to develop… really it took more than two years to get the technology to a beta phase. The original vision was to transform the marketplace specifically in email, but as we evolved we saw that we had a competitive edge for when we choose to fully enter other markets like display and mobile.

All of this said, 2008 is a vastly different year for us. It’s a growth year instead of a beta year like 2007 was. We have already signed more deals in 2008 than we did in the whole history of the company, while at the same time, we haven’t lost a single customer that’s signed up, which shows we’re delivering real value. It’s all very exciting.

3. You’ve recently announced the consumer choice tool. How does it work exactly?
We’re pretty proud of this new tool. It allows the consumer to directly and immediately control their advertising experience. What this specifically means is that they can say which ads they do and don’t like, then have a new suggestion immediately formulated for what they might enjoy as a result. It’s more than doubled our existing distribution volume because consumers are so excited to have control.

4. Who are your customers…consumers, publishers, or advertisers?
We serve three masters: Advertisers, Publishers, and Consumers. We align the interests of all stakeholders in the digital media process. What this means is that advertisers get real measurable results from the ad budget, publishers achieve optimal revenues and consumers receive relevant content. Everybody wins.

5. There are so many ad networks today. How is your solution different from the competition?
Great question. While it’s a crowded space, most networks attack some small segment of the value chain and have forgotten at least one of the major stakeholders. Our solution engages the consumer in an advertising dialogue that doesn’t end with the display of an ad. We give the consumer a voice in the advertising process, and as a result, achieve earnings that are simply unparalleled by our competition.

I also continue to be amazed by how many networks are still out there selling on a cost-per-thousand basis. Everything we do is pay for performance because we know that we produce results.

6. How will technology drive the evolution of online advertising?
I believe that, to a large extent, technology has always promised to deliver accountability and interactivity to advertising in general. We have all heard about the holy grail of 1:1 marketing, but few have done the heavy technical lifting necessary to achieve perfected relevancy. ADR has finally delivered on the promise and where we go, others will follow. The terminal impact of this will mean that all stakeholders will be better off. Consumers will see fewer but highly relevant ads, publishers will profit wildly from their consumer relationships, and advertisers will achieve genuine ROI for every ad dollar spent.

7. Can advertising get too personal?
Absolutely. Like with any human relationship, I think healthy boundaries and mutual respect are key. In the case of ADR, we adhere to the strictest permission standards for email, which means we have cultivated a meaningful and transparent relationship with the consumer before we ever contact them with relevant offerings. Because we have this strong relationship, it’s well received by our audience. In part, this is because the counterpoint to “too personal” is not personal enough. Every consumer is bored and frustrated by the bombardment of irrelevant and intrusive ads. Our goal is to create a completely different kind of relationship, where the consumer gets what they want and are happy to receive it.

It likely won’t surprise you that the most visited Web sites are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft (in that order). Google took the top spot for the first time last month with 141M visits supported by good viewer growth on YouTube according to comScore. Rounding out the top 10 are AOL, Fox Interactive, eBay, Wikipedia sites, Amazon, Ask, and Time Warner. The traditional media sites can’t seem to break into the top 10 (except for Fox). Media properties such as The New York Times, Viacom, CBS and Disney are in the top 30. NBC Universal and ABC are number 49 and 50.

More at Marketing Charts.

Google has announced Google Friend Connect (in preview release) which makes it quick and easy for publishers to add social networking features to their website. By adding a snippet of code, publishers can add user registration, invitations, members gallery, message posting, and reviews. On your website, users will be able to see friends’ comments from their social networks such as Facebook, Bebo, Hi5 and others. They will be able to access social applications, and add items to their profiles. For more info, click here.

All in all, a nice set of functionality.