Dive Brief:
- Nextdoor is introducing in-stream native ad units, according to a report from Adweek. The native ad units are the first formal step into advertising by the social network that connects neighbors.
- Nirav Tolia, CEO of Nextdoor, told Adweek that Nextdoor’s ad revenues will amount to $1 billion by 2020. The network is expected to hit 100 million users around the same time. Users must input their home addresses to join Nextdoor, and Tolia touted those addresses can be harnessed by marketers to target ads.
- In its launch of the native ad units, Nextdoor has been charging a premium, cost-per-thousand-impressions (CPM) rate of $25 to advertisers including Lowe’s, AT&T and Ring.
Dive Insight:
Successful social networks like Facebook and Snapchat have been able to attract large ad buys from big brands because they have loyal audiences who spend a lot of time engaging on the platforms. Nextdoor, which offers a free private neighborhood community of users, believes it offers advertisers an important differentiator to the major social platforms — its store of data to help companies serve up ads to customers in communities where those companies provide goods or services. Nextdoor claims it covers 70% of U.S. neighborhoods, a figure forecast to increase to 90% this year. The social network has tens of millions of users, 50% of whom visit Nextdoor on mobile devices. It's currently valued at over $1 billion.
Location data can help marketers better target their ads and are a key benefit of mobile advertising although many marketers are still trying to figure out how to leverage it.
Tolia bullishly projected in the Adweek article that Nextdoor’s advertising windfall should be as large as Twitter's next year and as large as Snapchat's in two years. However, it’s more likely that Nextdoor will push into Groupon’s territory. The neighborhood network’s ambitions are hyperlocal and it hopes to draw mom-and-pop retailers, franchisees and big-box stores. Already, the social network has been a home for local businesses, which have crowded its classified ads and events calendars, among other features. Tolia highlighted coupons as a massive opportunity on Nextdoor for marketers from those businesses.