In a bid to boost revenue, Foursquare will now let brands that don’t have a physical location advertise on its most prominent real estate: the app’s home screen.
MasterCard is the first business without a brick-and-mortar presence to place an ad on Foursquare’s home screen as part of a month-long campaign that wraps up on Dec. 20. While the function of ads in that placement had been to alert users to the presence of a business in their vicinity and drive in-store visits, MasterCard’s campaign is more of a branding initiative.
People who tap on the ad — which will be shown to Foursquare users nationwide — will be taken to a page listing nearby restaurants that accept MasterCard. (The credit card company is currently donating a penny to cancer research when cardholders spend $10 or more on meals.)
For Foursquare, opening up the ad placement looks like an effort to entice larger brands who didn’t have a use case for marketing on the app when its ad offering was aimed at restaurants and retailers.
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