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.”
Crowley says the company’s revenue model through 2015 will place the location based services provider right in line with Twitter and Facebook no a “revenue-per-user” basis.
With its ability to target users as they are near locations Foursquare could arguably create a more effective ad platform that actually created customers while promoting spur of the moment purchases.
