Affiliates Get a Local User’s View: interview w/ Cameron Peron, GeoSurf

I had the privilege of interviewing industry leader Cameron Peron yesterday, who’s doing some amazing stuff with a product called GeoSurf. As everything continues to shift toward a more global economy, savvy advertisers and affiliates need to be providing the best ads and content to the right geographical segments, and GeoSurf has certainly been a thought leader and innovator, providing affiliates and so many other businesses with a simple means of accomplishing that.

Peter:  What exactly is GeoSurf?

Cameron: GeoSurf allows affiliate marketers to view and interact with ads and web content from a local perspective in more than 80 countries and US metro locations.  It delivers immense ROI by allowing you to see who’s bidding/competing on geo targeted ad placements, generate new sources of business and enhance current marketing activities across channels – including SEM, affiliation, display, FacebookAds, etc.”

GeoSurf works via a FireFox and InternetExplorer toolbar – making it really easy to surf web content from high value geos.  We also offer a VPN client, server-to-sever API connection, and killer mobile solution for mobile – covering simple handsets to iPhone and Android.

Peter: What is your role there and can you tell me a little more about the relationship with BI Science? 

Cameron: I am a co-founder and lead our business development activities.  Our team is led by a group of veterans in online media and product development.

GeoSurf is a product under BIScience.  We found the company in early 2009 with the objective of helping media buyers and sellers compete more effectively across advertising channels, geos – both performance and brand related..

Peter: How do you think GeoSurf contributes to the overall growth of the affiliate marketing industry? 

Cameron: Affiliation is not the gold mine that is was say 5 years ago.  Despite this, there is a tremendous opportunity for competitive and savvy affiliate marketers to grow substantially in new channels, like Facebook, mobile, and effortlessly expand and scale on geo-specific level.

Take a look at an average affiliate – we enable them to compete directly against larger players in say 5-10 key growth geo-markets.  For super affiliates and affiliate networks, we help them to focus their business and accelerate their expansion in high value and growth markets – say in 30+ countries or US metros.

In 2 years time, we’ve completely disrupted the ROI measurement and execution model that affiliate marketers use to scale their current channels over key countries and US cities.

Peter: Can you tell me what your dream client looks like?  Is this exclusively an affiliate tool?

Cameron: Great question – it’s quite simple: anyone who is buying and selling media and wants to advance ROI and their media position on a geo targeted level.

Many of our clients are affiliate marketers are affiliates, super affiliates, networks and advertisers , and they all count on affiliation as powerful revenue channel.  GeoSurf is a great fit because it gives them total real time transparency over geo targeted campaigns, allowing them to both scale their current business in key geo markets (ie France, UK, Germany) and easily test and engage diverse geos (ie Latin American and East Asian markets).

Peter: How did you guys come up with the idea for GeoSurf and decide it was worth pursuing?  

Cameron: In early 2009, a small group of us came up with the idea after hearing about the frustration of affiliates and affiliate managers frustration with geo-targeted campaigns from Israel.  It’s no secret that Israel is strong in affiliate marketing and a large portion of their traffic involved monetization in different markets – like France, US, Germany.  Working blind was a constraint that most just took for granted.

We quickly realized that applications for geo-targeting apply to any buyer or seller – in any country – that wants to expand their position on a global level.  60 countries later – here we are!

Peter: Why don’t people just use proxies to view content from other locations? 

Cameron: Proxies were the status quo before GeoSurf.  However they are severally limited in the geos they cover (countries and US metros), ease of use, uptime, and most importantly security.  GeoSurf provides a full turnkey geo-targeted competitive intelligence solution with a full assortment of geos, ‘stupid-simple’ easy to use toolbar / VPN client interfaces, 99.9% guaranteed uptime and 100% secure browsing ecosystem.

It’s great to see our clients telling us about major ROI improvements across all of their media channels as a result of dumping unreliable proxies for GeoSurf.

We’ve also changed the game again with a killer solution for viewing mobile content – browser and application content.  Rather than using emulators, our mobile oriented clients see and interact real time geo-targeted ad display over smart phones (iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry) as well as traditional models, just as a local user does in target countries and US cities.

Peter: Are there any major challenges in building a global business headquartered in Israel?

Cameron: Israel is an ideal location for an online media business and technology enabler.   Overall, there is a tremendous amount of activity in the online and mobile space that is being driven by talent, innovation and a proactive business sense, which is all very ideal for us.  Although Israel is physically father from most active markets, the dynamic environment here is one aspect that has helped us to scale quite quickly.

Peter: If you haven’t met cameron or his team, I suggest you get to know them.  GeoSurf is blowing up all over the world, but their reach in the US is already pretty substantial.  Read more about GeoSurf on TechCrunch or check out an online demo.