• by Michael McLaren , Op-Ed Contributor, February 11, 2022

Location, location, location. This week’s trending intent-data topics are all about -- you guessed it -- location-based marketing. It also happens to be the intent topic with the biggest gap in interest among brands and agencies, as measured by Bombora Company Surge. 

Brands are researching “digital place-based advertising” with greater velocity in recent weeks.

Encompassing a wide variety of formats that are specifically located where particular groups congregate for a variety of purposes, digital place-based advertising enables marketers to offer up contextually relevant content based on the specific location. Whether they are walking into a store, browsing through an aisle or proceeding to check out, knowing the precise location of shoppers enables marketers to fine-tune content in a way that creates a useful experience for the customer. 

Similarly, “location-based marketing” uses geotargeting made possible by GPS technology and smartphones to enable advertisers to get pinpoint accuracy. This is useful for advertisers when crafting their campaigns to meet the needs, wants, and concerns of their consumers based on specific geographic areas. 

This kind of precision targeting ability may seem like foreign territory for some advertisers, but more and more marketers are waking up to the post-pandemic value of out-of-home advertising.

If you consider how difficult it can be to accurately predict the wants and needs of someone visiting a website or watching TV versus the needs of consumers visiting a shopping mall, gym or airport, suddenly a location-based strategy that is opt-in and privacy compliant, seems approachable.