Foursquare has been shifting its platform lately in an attempt to realign itself as a Yelp web 3.0 of sorts, and on Monday the company rolled out ad retargeting and in-app ads support.

The company is currently seeking out advertisers who want to re-target ads to Web users based on their check-ins and to serve up interstitial ads via the Foursquare mobile apps platforms.

Foursquare has had a hard time raising money lately, relying on a funding round based around loans instead of outright investments. Many analysts have questioned whether or not the Foursquare business model is feasible.

Under the new system, users who check into stores might see a pop-up for that store’s products immediately upon check-in. Users might then see the same or similar ads the next time they are sitting at their desktop or using their notebook.  read more

Foursquare CEO Dennis Crowley is bringing monetization to his company’s location based service with the help of monetized ad spots that are targeted to certain user groups, such as repeat customers.

Crowley was speaking at the Pando Daily event in New York on Thursday night where he announced the discounts program. Users will find discount ads under the Explore tab. According to Crowley the Foursquare ads will be “targeted just at local, and exclusively on mobile.”

At this time the trial period will include around 25 customers including Best Buy and Old Navy. If users respond favorably to the sponsored ads more will roll out in the future.

Foursquare waited to release the program because the company will still figuring out how to more effectively understand their collected user data. According to Crowley:

“We just now have the tools to build the recommendation engine, to build the dashboard.” read more