In the mid-'90s, the global communications industry was abuzz with a Jetsonian space age idea about a constellation of satellites connecting anyone to anyone via one universal mobile phone system
which operated anywhere on the globe. Inherent in the concept was a direct connective line of sight for the ad community. The pitch line of the defunct entity with the Star Wars vision was "Geography
is History."
A friend and I were ruminating about this historical concept. Marketers rely on geo-location to correlate demographic data (income, psychographic, profession) by community or
neighborhood. After all, don't "birds of a feather flock together"? "You are where you live" has driven direct marketing for decades. Marketers have spent decades building elaborate data processers
and analytical systems to track, understand and target users based on brick and mortar purchase behavior, demographics, census data and hundreds of other data points.
In the TV realm the
promise of one-to-one household addressability (interactive TV apps inclusive) delivered by front running technologists Invidi, Navic and Visible World, privacy protecting dataminers Acxiom, Claritas,
Allant and Experian coupled with predictive TV viewing modelers Admira, Adsvantage, Google TV Ads, and Invidi Media, measured by set top boxers Nielsen Rentrak, TNS, and TiVo/ Quantcast, and
supported by infrastructuralist cablers, satcasters and telcos has again excited the imaginative telescopic product targeting of the ad industry.
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But I digress. My shy ruminating friend wanted
to discuss: Is geography history on the Web. So how do marketers get to know where a person's location is on the Internet?
It is, of course, possible to get location by simply asking the
consumer where they live. Retail sites like Costco, Lowe's and Sears and consumer sites like Weather.com or Autotrader require the user's Zip for service, but I am told that this approach simply
doesn't scale for marketing purposes. Many Web sites, including Yahoo, Google and MSN, rely on registration data for geo-location but they requires the user be logged in and most marketers question
the accuracy of user-supplied registration data. Technologies like WiFi, GPS or cellular networks can provide fairly accurate location of a mobile consumer. The many new and cool
applications for the iPhone are testament to the utility of GPS geo-location for mobile devices and useful for some marketers. Reverse IP Mapping is a technology that infers a user's
locality by matching the Internet Protocol address that is assigned to an Internet user by an ISP to a database of locations. However, the leaders in this area, Digital Envoy and Quova, claim that the
location accuracy is about 25 to 50 miles, which translates into a lower than one in five probability of hitting the right Zip Code. Some traditional data providers are attempting to
correlate their massive offline databases to users online through many tools like email addresses and IP addresses -- but if the underlying location is inaccurate, the accuracy of the targeting data
cannot be applied effectively. Also, IP addresses themselves are not personally identifiable but there are questions not only about performance but privacy. They define a specific ISP Internet
connection and can be misused and compromise a consumer's privacy. Several European countries already consider IP addresses as personal data. Many privacy groups, and even some legislators on the
Hill, are pushing for IP addresses to be off limits for tracking or targeting purposes, particularly by ISPs or their partners who could turn the IP address into information that could be traced back
to an individual Internet user. The Federal Trade Commission's recent Behavioral Targeting Guidelines also warned about the misuse of IP addresses. Historically, addressability and
geo-location go hand-in-hand, but the use of certain location technologies can infringe on consumer privacy. As the media community grapples with addressability, privacy protection, the collection of
data (set top box viewing coupled with datamining) in the TV realm, it seems, based upon my conversation with my shy friend, that the online community continues the grapple with much the same issues,
though certainly on a larger technological scale: accurate location and demographics targeting without impacting consumer privacy. So at this juncture I would have to say that geography will not be
history on the Internet.
This discussion goes to my premise that as content providers move from Ad based support to direct charging of content users location will be less important for TV/Cable/Internet when to them aggregate consumption is what will be important.
For Brands location will remain important for those that are not national in scope and are location based. For example seeing Jack in the Box commercials in NY is amusing. I always loved the humorous spots when I am living in LA, but what a waste for JB to pay for eyeballs in NY where they have no restaurants.
Media/Content consumption will eventually contract when it becomes pay for consumption. At a rate of $5+ per hour of viewing (based on what we spend on a movie in the theaters) one can easily see bills of a few hundred dollars at the current rate of media consumption. This will lead to competition among content creators to provide the best stuff, vs just filler like we get today. And if all goes well with fewer commercials maybe more will be watched vs the low number today.
For Businesses where location is important (like car dealers, some regional chains etc) they will have to figure out new ways to reach consumers, and possibly old ways dying now might comeback (like local print/online sources such as news and local 'what is happening' outlets..think LA Weekly/Village Voice)
Thanks for the mention in the article.
Just to clarify, traditionally, IP geotargeting has only been accurate at a 30 mile radius (based on infrastructure targeting techniques, that's the best you can do).
However, recently, my company announced NetAcuity Edge, which delivers far more accuracy at a small town or zip code level. Edge is highly accurate at a 4 digit, and up to a 5 digit, zip code. See: http://www.digital-element.com/our_technology/edge.html
The statement in the article about zip code targeting based on IP address WAS true, prior to Edge. But, due to demand for better and more granular targeting from our customers, we went back to the drawing board to deliver a new paradigm.
For more information, see this discussion: http://www.adexchanger.com/online-advertising/digital-element-rob-friedman-ip-targeting/