Loopt turns to Mobile Spinach to power local coupons

Loopt, an early leader in location-based services, will start offering users targeted local coupons and discounts.
The Mountain View-based startup has teamed up with another San Francisco Bay Area company, Mobile Spinach, to power the offers. Through the partnership, Loopt will send users offers in their neighborhood with directions, which they can then redeem by showing their phone while at the restaurant.
Mobile Spinach, a company with a free database of local offers, will start powering Loopt offers in San Francisco with New York and Los Angeles coming onboard later within a few months. A couple examples of Mobile Spinach deals include free sushi rolls at Blowfish Sushi in San Francisco’s Mission District or 30 percent off Palio D’Asti, an Italian restaurant in the Financial District.
The lucrative promise of the very hot location-based social networking space is that it will offer people hyper-relevant advertising based on where they are. Most competitors in the space have taken steps toward building up ads and offers programs in hopes that they’ll have high acceptance rates. Yelp has nearby specials and offers in its mobile apps while Foursquare gives “Mayor Offers” to players that hold the coveted virtual mayorship in the game. Google has also been refining all of its local services with special search suggestions based on location and mobile coupons.
Loopt has been pretty aggressive in experimenting with its own mobile advertising. Unlike most other mobile apps, which show ads every time you see a page, Loopt changes its impressions based on what’s visible on your phone’s screen. So if you scroll up and down away from an ad, it will change every time it scrolls back onto your screen. It’s a neat trick to boost overall ad impressions.
This also isn’t the first time Loopt has done coupons and deals. The company has also partnered with NAVTEQ to send out promotions for discounted or free items at national chains like Jack in the Box. Mobile Spinach will help it build up coupons for local and independently owned venues.