Global restaurant search and discovery service, Zomato has introduced ads on its mobile apps, marking a significant leap in the value it brings to restaurants advertising on Zomato allowing users to see in-line ads for restaurants contextual to their search and location, appearing on search result pages.
The firm has also launched in Ireland.
Zomato Co-Founder and COO, Pankaj Chaddah, said, “Merchants have been eagerly waiting for this for a while, but we took our time as we wanted the ads to be as relevant to the consumer as possible. We experimented a bit over the past few months, and we believe we have the right product in place now. This increases the reach of our advertisements by 100%. We have been focusing on mobile as a company for a while now and this accompanied by The Zomato for Business app, which is already gaining traction steadily, holds great promise.”
In-app ads make sense because more than 50% of Zomato’s 30,000,000+ monthly visits come from its mobile apps across the globe, testimony to the fact that local search is moving to mobile very quickly and the firm’s revenue model is based on hyper-local advertising contextual to the user search criteria, where users searching for a type of restaurants in a particular area see ads for other relevant dining establishments in and around that location; this allows restaurant businesses to target customers already searching for dining options in their catchment area.
At present, over 4500 restaurant businesses in 15 countries globally advertise on Zomato, with the number of merchants increasing by the day. Zomato’s mobile focus is also accompanied by the recently launched Zomato for Business application – an app built exclusively to help business owners engage with customers and drive business. The ads will increase restaurant exposure and up customers search and in the end drive the traffic to restaurants.
Heino Gehle, Country Manager, Zomato South Africa adds, “We’re always looking for the best way to bridge the gap between restaurateurs and customers. Our mobile ads have been designed to provide restaurant information to those who are on-the-go and looking for a great place to eat at around them. Zomato also provides restaurants with analytics to track their performance, engage with their patrons by responding to reviews and feedback, as well as directly add information on promotional offers.”