PaperG, Wishpond Team for Dynamic Local Display Ads

The idea of dynamic ad creative isn’t new — though still not widely used — nor is local product availability data. But PaperG and local product inventory syndicator Wishpond are teaming up to enable dynamic display ads to show local product inventory data across the Internet.

A version of this has been done in the past by Yahoo (with ShopLocal data) and on sites like Topix (via Krillion). My sense, however, is that we’ll see an explosion of dynamic display ads with local messaging and/or products in 2011.

Google will certainly do a version of this in 2011 at some point on its Display Network if not in product ads that appear in search results. It’s already doing plenty of dynamic advertising in search and display ads (online and in mobile) with location, phone extensions and product extensions. How long before “local product extensions” shows up?

PaperG’s Victor Wong told me that the Wishpond partnership will enable small and large retailers alike and merchants to participate. PaperG is working directly with national advertisers and agencies, while Wishpond is developing a direct local channel and courting SMBs. PaperG will take Wishpond’s data (from scraping or direct merchant feeds) and dynamically insert it into display ad units that can incorporate any targeting capability: location (obviously), demographics, behavior and so on. PaperG will get national-local data directly from the retailers. And PaperG’s automatic display ad creation tool PlaceLocal is the platform behind the new program.

JiWire is also developing a similar program and capability around local products through its acquisition of NearbyNow.

Wishpond is the latest company to join the local product inventory club, which includes:

• Google
• eBay/Milo
• JiWire/NearbyNow
• Krillion
• Retailigence
• Goodzer
• LuckyLocal

PaperG’s PlaceLocal product was developed as a way to automatically create display ads for local businesses without any effort on their part. In that sense it’s like iPromote. However it’s a broader tool and joins Tumri, dotomi, Yahoo and Teracent (part of Google) in being able to customize display ad creative on the fly. JiWire says it can also do so.

The significance of these efforts can’t be overstated. As I said yesterday with store locators, more and more national advertisers will be locally customizing their online and mobile campaigns through a variety of means and dynamic creative is one of the chief methods that will be used.