Nextdoor says it gives marketers a data advantage that Meta, Google and Reddit can’t match: neighborhood gossip.
The hyperlocal social network told CMO Insider exclusively that it is launching a new tool for advertisers called Neighborhood Intelligence. The company mapped 350,000 individual neighborhoods (about 12 per zip code) to create what’s called a community map. Marketers can use this chart to understand how people in different communities are talking about their brand and target specific geographies on Nextdoor with ads that relate directly to those conversations.
ISPs may serve different ads to communities complaining about their reliability and to communities complaining about their costs. Brands can also use the chart to identify “similar communities” whose characteristics are similar to those of communities where their products are already selling well in stores.
Nextdoor CEO Nirav Tolia told me that while its digital advertising competitors have become very sophisticated at finding people who are likely to buy products online, he believes its data will be more useful for businesses whose sales vary by geography. Think car dealerships, solar panel companies, and restaurant chains. Tolia said these businesses don’t necessarily want to spend marketing dollars uniformly across every location, or even within a zip code.
“Giving them a way to target ads based on local needs, that’s not something Meta can offer,” Tolia added. PepsiCo is one of the marketers that has expressed interest, he said.
On the surface, Neighborhood Maps seems like a fairly niche proposition—a complex tool that might struggle to attract enough advertisers to use it on a regular basis.
Tolia disputes this notion. He said that while brands can use social listening tools on platforms like Instagram, X or Reddit to understand general consumer sentiment, these tools often cannot pinpoint the geographic location where these conversations are taking place. Many consumer brands want geographically aggregated sentiment data, he said, because product preferences can vary dramatically in different locations.
“I really don’t think demand is the missing piece here; the missing piece here is building it,” Tolia said of the neighborhood map. “We’ve been asked many times.”
Nextdoor said it will initially focus on using the chart to target ads on its own platform, but may eventually expand it to ads elsewhere on the web.
Nextdoor isn’t the only company packaging unique data on user behavior into insights tools for advertisers. Last year, Uber Ads launched Uber Intelligence, which provides anonymous, aggregated data about users’ trips and their delivery habits. Last month, DoorDash launched what it calls Brand Center, a retailer intelligence tool that provides data on what consumers are buying and which products are replaced when the ones they ordered are out of stock.
Nextdoor’s launch comes as its advertising business has shown strong momentum after years of struggling to catch up with larger rivals. Citi analysts wrote in August that the company saw traction in advertiser verticals such as home services, technology and telecoms, health care and financial services, thanks to improvements in its performance advertiser tools and pricier formats such as video.
The company, which generates most of its revenue from advertising and has about 110 million users, saw revenue grow 15% to $75 million in the most recent quarter ended in June.
Axel Springer, the parent company of Insider Inc., is an investor in Nextdoor.