Pasade­na-based mobile adver­tis­ing start­up Uber­Me­dia is aim­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on a poten­tial­ly break­through quar­ter for the mobile ad indus­try with the launch of a new ad prod­uct dubbed Uber­Ads. Those hold­ing media jobs in mobile adver­tis­ing agen­cies are like­ly to be tick­led pink by this inge­nious new tar­get­ing sys­tem, which pin­points app users based on their geo­graph­i­cal posi­tion and data from social media.

Tar­get­ing social

Uber­Me­dia CEO Bill Gross explains:

“So if you fol­low Tom Cruise on Twit­ter and are near a the­ater, you could see an ad for movie tickets.”

Ear­ly signs from brands using the sys­tem are promis­ing. NBCU­ni­ver­sal recent­ly test­ed it for Cruise’s sci-fi block­buster Obliv­ion and were delight­ed with the results: the nor­mal click­through rate is below 1 per cent but Uber­Ads gen­er­at­ed a rate of 4 per cent. NBCU’s Dig­i­tal Mar­ket­ing SVP, Doug Neil, explained that the Obliv­ion ads yield­ed 2 mil­lion mobile impres­sions by focus­ing on Cruise’s 3.9 mil­lion-strong army of Twit­ter devo­tees and oth­er app users.

Uber­Ads will be used by NBCU in the near future to run ads for its forth­com­ing sum­mer hor­ror offer­ing, The Purge, pulling data from Twit­ter, Pin­ter­est and Insta­gram users for the inter­est-lev­el ads. Neil said:

“We are able to zero in on peo­ple who have already talked about The Purge on Twit­ter. We like that type of tar­get­ing capability.”

Sum­mer – the sea­son of the mobile?

The evi­dence is that brands are turn­ing to mobile adver­tis­ing on an unprece­dent­ed scale this year. Expe­dia and Live Nation, for exam­ple, are increas­ing their mobile spend with Amobee, alert­ed to the fact that smart­phone sales are bur­geon­ing and more and more con­sumers are con­stant­ly check­ing them while on the hoof.  Direc­tor of Media and Ana­lyt­ics at Expe­dia, Eliz­a­beth Dor­rance, said that the sum­mer months will bring the sea­son­al upsurge in long-week­end type trips, but mobile will play a much big­ger role: “So peo­ple‚ while dri­ving, are more like­ly to book hotels last minute on their phones.”

Del Monte is also spend­ing more over the sum­mer on mobile adver­tis­ing. While research firms like Gart­ner and eMar­keter only pro­duce data about mobile adver­tis­ing spend­ing annu­al­ly, sum­mer is like­ly to be the sea­son of the mobile: peo­ple will spend more time out­doors away from PCs, but they won’t be aban­don­ing their mobiles.