Local social platform Nextdoor has teamed with Canadian digital outdoor pioneers Dive Billboards on a new strategic partnership called Nextdoor Outdoor, which will merge online and offline content for advertisers across Canada, the U.S. and U.K.
Nextdoor, which launched as a social networking platform for neighbourhoods in 2011, before expanding to Canada in 2019, positions itself as a “hyper-local” advertising option for brands looking to target consumers by neighbourhood and community.
Dive, meanwhile, specializes in curating real-time dynamic social content (like the content on Nextdoor) and bringing it to life on digital billboards. “Over the years, we’ve seen that if you take your social strategy, plus out of home, with the right targeting, it equals better engagement, more success,” said Mike Girgis, a Dive co-founder. “We’re just making it really easy for the brands and advertisers to connect these two mediums.”
Dive also provides human curation and moderation to ensure a brand-safe environment, he added.
Brands have worked with Nextdoor because they are interested in that hyperlocal digital offering, said Nextdoor Canada’s managing director, Christopher Doyle. “Now they can take that awesome, locally relevant content and—working with Dive—we can now light that up for brands on out-of-home spaces like Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto or Times Square in New York City.”
Nextdoor Canada and Dive have worked together a couple of times in the last year.
For the Fred Victor charity last holiday season, they created “The Kindness Billboard” to encourage donations and celebrate those who had given, for example. And for Nextdoor’s sponsorship of Toronto FC, they created a “Neighbour of the match” program celebrating TFC fans making a difference in their community (see the video below). ‘
“The opportunity to feature the stories of the neighbour of the match on these Dive screens is incredible,” said Doyle. “Out-of-home makes these programs come to life.”
The partnership with Dive is among a number of recent moves by Nextdoor to enhance its advertising offering, including a self-service platform with tools to better reach specific target audiences announced Wednesday. It recent months, it has also confirmed collaborations with both Integral Ad Science and Oracle Advertising to enhance brand safety and measurement.
Nextdoor Outdoor, however, is a made-in-Canada strategic partnership that it plans to take international.
“We’re really excited and proud to take a Canadian-born innovation and product that we’ve been testing and bring that across the border in the U.S. and around the world,” said Doyle. “The creative executions are sort of limitless.”
