Despite the smartphone's status as a 'location aware' device, the majority of in-app ads on handsets focuses on national, or even global, brands.

Few are the promos that relate to products or services tied to a specific area - much less those that stem from a user's local high street.

PressOK Entertainment's new venture, however, proposes to make local mobile advertising a reality, offering marketers a route to targeted consumers who live on their doorstep.

Play time

Dubbed PlacePlay, PressOK has billed the tool as a 'location enablement platform'.

In short, games that employ is SDK are switched on to their local surroundings, allowing developers both to make money from local advertisers and engage players in close proximity to one another together in play.

The SDK, which is currently avaialble for iOS and will roll out on Android shortly, is designed to combine the player's location with in-game and social data, allowing the right ads to be pushed to the device at the right time.

The platform's flagship toolset – PlacePlay Tournaments – also ensures players are starting up the games in the first place, bringing together users from an area in competition.

"As a game developer, we always believed that a gamer’s physical location could be made relevant to their game experience to drive engagement and revenue in regular games, and this is what PlacePlay delivers," said CEO Ryan Morel.

"By adding PlacePlay Tournaments, developers now have an easy way to increase engagement, and if they want, use our integrated local advertising to increase their revenue."

Laws of location

The end result, PressOK claims, is high click-through rates (CTRs) and improved eCPMs (effective cost per thousand impressions).

Indeed, data compiled after PlacePlay's three month private beta not only revealed that tournament participants played titles 1.6 times more than standard gamers, but also a gross eCPMs rate of somewhere between $10 and $20.

Developers interested in employing PlacePlay's SDK can find out more on the platform's website.