The announcement comes in a week when Facebook trailed the launch of their "Local Awareness" ad format in the US.
Trinity Mirror's pinpoint enables client advertisers to send targeted push messages to a growing network of permissioned smartphone users, aggregated across the group's national and regional app titles. The technology inside pinpoint allows brands, large and small, to reach prospective customers via their device's existing push notification facility but with richer messages targeted either to their current geo-location or their recent (location) behavior, says Trinity Mirror Solutions.
pinpoint was developed by Trinity Mirror’s New Businesses Division as a new advertising solution and Trinity Mirror Solutions have offered pinpoint as a beta product to more than 60 selected advertisers. To date Trinity Mirror have already run successful trial campaigns for a raft of regional and independent local businesses, including the likes of Live Nation's Wireless Festival, MiniCabster and Birmingham City Council.
According to TMS, a number of national brands, including several multi-site national retailers such as the Argos, the Post Office and Specsavers have booked campaigns to flight across Christmas and New Year.
As an advertising medium, pinpoint provides the mobile advertiser with a choice of different formats. These range from an entry URL campaign (which push to a mobile site, landing page or app download destination of the client's choice) to more sophisticated ad units which can variously pull through imagery, maps and promotional barcodes.
For businesses, pinpoint creates a brand new medium through which to target an on-the-go mobile audience in the immediate catchment area of a local store, offer or event. Advertisers can choose either to notify prospects in a defined radius or on the basis of a pattern of past behaviour.
Matt Colebourne, Director of Trinity Mirror New Businesses, said: "The Trinity Mirror NBD team is dedicated to innovating new businesses that transform the group's digital capabilities across services, publishing, entertainment and advertising.
"We built pinpoint with patented new technology to capitalise on the unprecedented reach and engagement enjoyed across the network of Trinity Mirror apps. The beta version has delivered a resounding proof of concept among our early adopting clients and we look forward to ramping the self-service offer in early 2015 with an eye on our small to medium business clientele.”
Shaun Jordan from Trinity Mirror Solutions added: "pinpoint provides further evidence of our emerging leadership position in digital and we're seeing real excitement from clients, national and regional, for pinpoint and the hyper-local targeting opportunity it affords. To date we've sold campaigns that have variously promoted local deals, driven app download and broadcast new events.
"We are, at the moment, seeing ever more uses for this channel and, of course, it absolutely meets our customers' needs to deal with a publisher that can offer the full range of advertising solutions from brand building through to direct response and from print through to targeted mobile.”
