• by Gavin O'Malley  @mp_gavin, March 5, 2009

Online weather service Weather Underground, in partnership with Israel-based ad tech firm Dapper, today is expected to launch a new ad targeting product that generates dynamic ads with creative drawn from advertisers' product catalogs, Web sites or inventory systems.

Dubbed WeatherMatch, the new targeting product combines Weather Underground's ability to identify weather conditions for pre-defined markets with Dapper's technology, which interchanges content in real time within non-rich media Flash files.

"Targeting has become a critical issue for advertisers and publishers, and weather conditions add a new dimension to the targeting process," said Richard Lowden, vice president of sales at Weather Underground. "Weather has an impact on the purchasing behavior of consumers in relation to virtually all products and services."

A fashion retailer, for instance, can associate each item of its product catalog with a particular weather condition. Then, if a user is viewing their ad from a location where the weather is sunny, they will view "sunny" items such as T-shirts and beachwear--while a user viewing the same ad from a location where it is raining will see "rainy" items such as jackets and galoshes.

"The same ad file shows the right item to the right consumer, based on the weather at each user's location--all with one creative," said Paul Knegten, head of marketing at Dapper.

In addition to serving free online weather information online, Weather Underground is presently expanding its business to provide custom-designed targeting tools for media clients. Lowden said the company is presently in discussion with several media agencies that have expressed in the product.

With Dapper, advertisers can serve contextually sensitive display ads assembled from creative elements pulled from their own Web site, from product inventory data, or from any database of marketing offers without client or agency IT department involvement.