• by Gaetano Pollice , January 2, 2009

Since you're already being tracked by an omnipresent GPS system thanks to that chip in your iPhone, a little location-based advertising technology shouldn't much bother you. At least that's what interactive media company 1020 Placecast and real estate Web site trulia.com hope in their new endeavor to run targeted ads specific to where a visitor searches for a new abode. But the location itself isn't the be-all and end-all - Placecast utilizes an algorithm that correlates the location with other psychographic, demographic and geographic data to customize the ads for that particular site visitor. Avis Budget Group, for example, already ran a three-month campaign on Trulia, which provided specific car rental locations relative to the zip code of the home seeker's search. Fingers crossed that those in the market for million-dollar estates receive targeted ads for solid gold toilet seats and not, say, Ikea Billy bookshelves.