New York City has a new res­i­dent in the form of Sonata, the mobile adver­tis­ing com­pa­ny from Madrid that dri­ves real foot traf­fic to local bricks-and-mor­tar busi­ness­es. The glob­al mobile adver­tis­ing firm has just opened its first US office in the Big Apple, appoint­ing mobile and dig­i­tal media vet­er­an Evan Krauss as its NY-based Chief Oper­at­ing Officer.

Krauss will report direct­ly to Sonata’s founder and CEO, Álvaro del Castil­lo, who recent­ly com­mit­ted to bring­ing his high­ly suc­cess­ful brain­child to the US (it’s been going down a storm in Europe).

Zero-risk mobile adver­tis­ing 

Those hold­ing media jobs in US mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies will doubt­less be won­der­ing what lies behind Sonata’s suc­cess. Launched in Madrid in 2010, it’s the fruit of the men­tal labor of for­mer retail­ers – a real-time bid­ding (RTB) mar­ket­place that lets cus­tomers bid on events like click-to-map, click-to-call and redeem-an-offer in tight­ly geo-fenced zones rang­ing from 10 miles right down to 100 yards. The aim, which it’s been real­iz­ing with admirable suc­cess, is to dri­ve mea­sur­able foot-traf­fic direct­ly to the points-of-sale of a raft of enter­pris­es large and small, from stores to restau­rants, the­aters to dealerships.

And, as retail­ers will only pay for results, Sonata gives them a zero-risk and high­ly cost effec­tive mobile adver­tis­ing solu­tion to boost rev­enue at their bricks-and-mor­tar outlets.

US expan­sion 

Com­ment­ing on his new role, Krauss said:

“Local has long been tout­ed as the key val­ue propo­si­tion of mobile adver­tis­ing because it can lever­age dig­i­tal adver­tis­ing tech­nolo­gies to deliv­er in the moment ads that dri­ve real con­sumers foot traf­fic. How­ev­er, it is only over the last year that we have enough scale and effi­cien­cy in the mar­ket to bring local mobile adver­tis­ing to life in a real way. My first order of busi­ness is to quick­ly hire the best tal­ent to serve our part­ner and cus­tomer needs in the U.S.”

This guy knows what he’s talk­ing about: he’s been work­ing in dig­i­tal media since 1995 and has truck­loads of expe­ri­ence under his hat, devel­op­ing new prod­ucts and busi­ness for firms like AOL, Yahoo!, Excite and Jump­tap. Before jump­ing aboard Sonata, he was Exec­u­tive VP of Glob­al Adver­tis­ing Sales at Shaz­am, where he led the way in build­ing its mon­ster-suc­cess sec­ond screen adver­tis­ing business.

Sonata’s CEO says he’s “thrilled” to have Krauss on board to guide the company’s US expansion.