Kyle
It seems like local mobile is all the rage these days. We’ve run so many stories about social, local, mobile (SoLoMo) startups lately. Another industry that’s taking advantage of local and mobile is advertising. That’s what West Palm Beach startup Moasis is doing for advertisers. In a nutshell they’ve setup a very targeted hyper local geo-fenced platform for advertising.
There are huge benefits to geo-fenced advertising. Of course adwords has the ability for advertisers to drill down and purchase local clicks, but the benefits to doing it mobile are ten fold.
Anyone who’s read Nibletz, the voice of startups everywhere else, for any amount of time knows that we’re on the sneaker strapped nationwide startup roadtrip which means we travel a lot. There are so many instances where we’ve done internet searches on the phone to find something close by, be it a pizza place, drug store, Best Buy, or other store, the mobile device is quickly becoming the place for search.
The father and son team of Steve and Ryan Golden along with Jason Mascari founded Moasis to take advantage of the endless possibilities that come from the power of delivering targeted local ads to the mobile device.
We got a chance to interview Moasis. Check out the interview below:
What is Moasis?
Moasis is a platform built by marketers for marketers. We allow advertisers of all sizes and budgets to discover the intersection of location data intelligence & instant local delivery anywhere, all within one platform. Our approach simplifies hyper-local mobile marketing to mobile phones, tablets and beyond utilizing our propriety geo-grid™ logic. Moasis is setting out to enable businesses of all sizes to discover and respond to consumers on-the-go. Finally, an affordable real-time bidding platform gives you access to billions of mobile devices and displays at a price that you determine. A simple, yet refreshing solution for local mobile marketing by Bringing Location To Life.™
In layman’s terms, how does it work?
We give advertisers the ability to “hand pick” the locations where they want to display their ads, on mobile devices and beyond. We work with publishing and application partners who seek to provide relevant ads to their end users to deliver that experience and earn premium local revenue dollars.
Who are the founders and what are their backgrounds?
Moasis was founded by a father/son team, Steve and Ryan Golden, as well as Jason Mascari. All three of us are entrepreneurs and marketers. We saw a void in the marketplace and came up with a unique solution to allow small and medium-sized businesses and national companies alike to hone-in on mobile users where they are through a geographic-grid-based hyper-local ad platform.
Where are you based?
Moasis was founded in West Palm Beach because it’s where two of the founders happened to be, and because we knew we could facilitate much of our start-up collaboration without everyone having to be in the same physical location. We are fortunate right now as a startup to have access to great tools and technology to facilitate an “office with no walls”.
What’s the startup scene/culture like where you’re based?
West Palm Beach is not a hotbed for technology start-ups, unfortunately, which is something we knew at the onset. As Moasis continues to grow and the need for the team to be physically located together increases, we will be moving to San Francisco where we can more easily have access to resources and be part of the growing tech community. We are inspired knowing a lot of great companies started in small areas around the country before they moved to a major DMA.
How did you come up with the idea for Moasis?
We are marketers foremost. Most products are developed by engineers and from an engineering point of view. We develop all products from a marketing/advertising point of view. Moasis was born from hearing the pains from SMBs, agencies and brands in our past professions. The lack of a scalable, easily accessible, geo-targeting approach was lacking in the space. (e.g. A location core engine as a solution to the space rather than a feature). We wanted to create a mobile oasis where any company and budget can have access to the ecosystem. Very much in the same way Google keywords provided an easy and affordable marketing solution.
How did you come up with the name?
It evolved from the words “Mobile Oasis.” A place of refuge in a cluttered and confusing landscape.
What problem does Moasis solve?
We eliminate the need for businesses to becoming gurus in marketing, data and targeting by providing a simple platform that allows them to do it all, easily and effectively.
What’s your secret sauce?
Hyper-local with a Geo-Grid™ twist.
Here’s how it works: Moasis has divided the globe into precise geographic locations defined by latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates, known as a “grid” that is comprised of “cells.” Cells in high-density population areas are further subdivided to make them more manageable (down to a couple of blocks). But the overall pattern covering the globe remains uniform and precise.
What makes this relevant to marketers is that the Geo-Grid is infused with technology that enables them to target and reach consumers on-the-go. Content like ads, offers or coupons gets delivered within the cell (or cells) the marketer chooses, where it can then reach consumers on virtually any internet-connected device.
For marketers, handpicking where they want to target consumers (“hyper local”) is a big deal. What’s also important is that they do so accurately, simply, and with results that can be analyzed.
With the Moasis Geo-Grid, advertisers will be able to add rules like “only deliver this ad between 4:30 p.m. and 7 p.m.,” or “only target the cells at the beach if the weather is sunny.” They also will be able to pinpoint events like the Olympics, a golf tournament, or a U2 concert, and reach attendees there with targeted offers.
While the Geo-Grid is a form of a geo-fence, it also goes beyond that technology. Here’s why:
Geo-fencing marketing scenarios are based on a simple radius around a point of interest or merchant location. A radius geo-fencing approach might be used as part of push-marketing campaigns where brands and merchants hope to bring in nearby shoppers by offering promotions and discounts. But because there could be multiple radius-based geo-fences in one area, overlapping a bit here and there, the consumer might quickly get overloaded with options. Most marketers do not want the waters muddied with overlapping ads targeting the same consumers, because it can make it nearly impossible for them to analyze how well their ad worked.
The Moasis Geo-Grid, with its predefined cells, offers a clearer location definition. Marketers easily select and place where they want to reach consumers. The Moasis location engine does the heavy lifting of selecting the right areas. Additionally, having these predefined cells to target creates meaningful messages to users specifically because they are reaching consumers where they work, live and play without trying to be an expert on geo-targeting. You shouldn’t have to be a marketing guru to speak to your consumers on-the-go.
The Moasis Geo-Grid ignites location data and enables businesses of all sizes to discover their consumer and respond to them…right now! By definition, mobile consumers are constantly on the move. Having the ability to analyze and speak to them from one platform is one way to make your life as a marketer easier.
What’s one dilemma you’ve encountered in the startup process?
What challenges us is that people tend to assess new technologies based on their comfort zone or current knowledge base (of geo-fencing, for example). Therefore, a lot of people don’t spend the time to really learn what we are doing and miss out on early opportunities. Therefore, I think the biggest dilemma for all startups is the education process. As a startup you must continuously be educating your customers, partners, investors, employees, etc. Having a good plan and process on how to educate as you start and grow is key. While you are small it is easy to be agile. The challenge will be how to keep that education focus while you grow.
What’s one challenge you’ve overcome in the startup process?
Bringing a concept to fruition is very challenging and tough to overcome. Some companies never get out of concept, others suffer from analysis paralysis. Anytime you can move a product from concept to production in relatively short timeframe is always a rewarding milestone.
Who are some of your mentors and business role models?
I was fortunate enough early in my career to work with some very intelligent marketers. I would give credit to Paul Gunning, who is the current CEO of Tribal DDB worldwide, and Richard Guest, current President, US Operations at Tribal DDB, as my mentors and business role models. Additionally, my father and business partner is one my role models too. I have seen from early childhood that nothing is free, and hard work along with tenacity is how you keep moving forward.
What’s next for Moasis?
We are a hyper-technology company. Initially focusing on advertising made sense based on our backgrounds as the best way to generate revenue right away. The future and our roadmap explores the geo-grid on “what we want to organize, deliver and analyze” in a scalable and methodical manner.
Linkage:
Check out Moasis here at moasisglobal.com
Here have some more startup interviews from “everywhere else”
First, this makes a huge amount of sense. If you deliver pizza in Manhattan, you’re only going to want to advertise people in a few blocks around you. If you delivery pizza in rural Arkansas (where I live), you’ll want to advertise in a several-mile radius. By using population density to determine geo-segmentation, they’ll be able to offer a consistent pricing structure on a per-grid-segment basis, but the grids in cities will be much smaller.
I assume they’re basing this off of census data, but who knows :) I’d love to poke my head around under the hood there. If one could get their hands on some of the data that cellular infrastructure providers have available to them, they could potentially identify local festivals, sporting events and other public gatherings based on the load on nearby cell towers. I assume this is how Google’s traffic information is gathered, and I’ve not heard of this type of sociological application before. It piques the interest of the data nerd in me.
I’d also be interested in seeing their proposed pricing structure. If segments were completely market-based, there would be some great deals in the beginning for advertisers, especially in rural areas. This would of course bring in more advertisers, and prices would naturally stabilize according to demand.