Sonata Advertising Platform Brings Online Customers to Bricks-and-Mortar Stores

Sonata is a self-service advertising platform for the retail world.

Currently, 96 percent of world trade takes place through traditional brick and mortar stores. Add almost 1,000 million smartphones with integrated GPS to that retailing picture and a whole range of advertising opportunities, with high added value for advertisers and consumers, opens up. Sonata was begun l to drive foot traffic to local retailers’ point of sale via potential customers’ smartphones.

Sonata divides the world into 90-square-metre plots. The plots are uploaded with local business adverts, which then appear on smartphones and tablets that come in range of the advertiser according to the smartphone’s geolocation. Sonata has been developed by TAPTAP Networks, a Spanish mobile advertising market leader based in Madrid.

The process of uploading an advertising campaign is very simple for the retailer and takes no more than three minutes, according to Sonata. A retailer doesn’t need a website or even a mobile app; all that’s required is a minimum investment of £50. Advertisers follow three steps:

1. registration using an email address;
2. adding the store details (just one or a whole network);
3. choosing the ad’s geographical area and the design of the ad from one of Sonata’s creative templates (or advertisers can create their own design).

“Any local business, including those without technical know-how, can create an advertising campaign,” says Alvaro del Castillo, CEO of TAPTAP Networks and the developers of Sonata.

“An added attraction of Sonata is that local businesses only pay for actual results-calls, registrations, clicks, purchases in the store… whatever form of contact a customer makes-and can choose how much to pay for them,” says del Castillo.

“The Sonata platform is focused on meeting the need of the local small-business sector, which views the online world as a major threat with the ever-growing pressure it exerts from ‘showrooming’ and the selling of cost price goods by major e-commerce players,” explained de Castillo.