The power of location data

Way too many clients still stick to pure demographic data when they hand out their briefs to their agencies; and way too many planners stick to the easy way of answering these briefs. As media professionals we have syndicated studies, social media listening, search data and a number of other resources at our disposal to understand the audience as well as possible on which we can base our recommendations. Yet everyone seems to be forgetting the most powerful tracking tool is sitting on your desk or in your pocket, the mobile phone. One way to add another layer that helps to identify & reach the right audience, at the right time, with the right message is to use location data, which enables improved storytelling backed up with solid real-time and historic data.

The behavioral data from geo targeting helps to shed lights on the audience by merging their offline and online interaction together and draws a clear picture who they are to granular level.

With tagging of devices we can test and re-target with different creatives for different locations, time of days. Additionally we can amplify the target audiences and with machine learning the campaign can be continuously optimized. Thanks to the Wi-Fi connections of the devices we know quite precisely where they are during what time and what content they consume. This allows us to reach them at their home, work and/or shopping locations and see how the audiences behaves and bucket them accordingly. This is extremely powerful, because the mindset during different days of the week and locations delivers astonishing differences in the performance. Using this information we can create more personalized messages, engage personalized in one to one conversations and optimize beyond the traditional metrics. Allocating the messages to the best path to purchase – including time, location, device, connection type etc. guaranteeing the best engagement.

The advance in geo targeting enables today's marketers to draw any shape (subway line, kindergardens, office areas or any location you see fit) in an extremely precise way. This is where the creativity and knowledge from the offline experts comes in. With exchange data analysis we could map the hottest areas with implications for the offline buying as well. The technology isn’t perfect yet and there is no certain way of understanding the effectiveness to 100%, but the ad exposure in the “tagged” locations can be utilized as a reliable proxy to understand the behavior of the audience of interest and even for estimating footfall.

What sounds pretty obvious was counter-intuitive for me. Personally, I always thought that people when they are working are in the working mindset – they are not (at least on their mobile). Mostly Facebook, gaming and other non-work related content is consumed on the phones during working hours. It makes sense, because we already have a laptop to work on and the mobile is your private space. Thinking about the mindset is crucial and this was the proof. Overall CTR (click trough rate) of 1% and up to peaks of 8.75% with the right combination of format, time of day and location. Does this mean we should invest more into Facebook during the working hours?

It is time to start experimenting more with location based adverting and using location data effectively... In the future, more traditional campaigns can be complemented with location data to improve the ROI (Return on investment). We can already start to select outdoor media based on the performance from geo campaigns, giving us a clear picture of the audience’s reactions and effectiveness of OOH (Out of home). Using location data to feed the DMPs (data management platform) will be the next logical step. This is one more reason for brands to run Always-On location campaigns.

The questions is, how can we complement OOH and DOOH (digital out of home) campaigns with geo location technology? What other implications can we get through this technology that enables us to make better media investment decisions? How can we understand our audience in more detail and improve ROI?

As marketers the goal is to reach the right audience at the right time with the right messaging, with location data we are one step closer to this.

• One of our close partners who can facilitate geo location campaigns is Blis