Vice-president of the Association for Local Search in the US Wesley Young noticed that Facebook is testing a new format of advertising - local notifications which are based on predictive targeting.

When Wesley Young was going out of town he received a notification from Facebook: “You’re near 3 highly rated restaurants you might like”. After clicking on the notification a three-point map appeared next to his current location. On the map was displayed the block with the information of these restaurants. It included the name of the restaurant, the rating, the kitchen and the number of reviews.

According to Young, the new predictive targeting allows to show ads proactively even before the user enters an appropriate search query.