Advertisers are trying to stay increasingly relevant; the rise of mobile has helped them stay alert to trends and consumer habits. Location-based marketing is the latest aspect of
mobile to hit the market in a revolutionary way.
Location is an important building block in shaping consumer context at any moment. Mobile is deeply personal and location data
is a big part of it. From 2012 to 2014 mobile advertising campaigns using mobile location data for grew from $1.2B to an estimated $3.9B help prove this point, notes IAB.
As
the above statistic suggests, location-based mobile advertising has created excitement and chatter among the advertising community. While this noise is positive, marketers need to make sure they
differentiate myths from facts and fully understand the fundamentals before jumping in.
THE PERCEPTIONS
Myth 1: Data is data
Let’s face it - there’s good location data and there’s bad location data. Not all data is worth basing your marketing strategy upon. The next time you want a location
element in your mobile campaign, make sure your vendor has strict quality control checks in place.
For example, if large volumes of location signals are coming from regions
with sparse population as a trend, the data quality becomes questionable as it no longer reflects natural human behavior. Hyperlocality, clusterability, resonance, precision, accuracy and level of
control on location are elements you need to keep in mind.
One does not rank higher than another in terms of importance, rather they work together to help ensure your assessing
all data equally.
Myth 2: Leveraging location signals involves trespassing on user privacy
While there is certainly interest and hype among
marketers to use location data, there are still valid concerns around user privacy. Luckily, there are ecosystem players who only utilize opt-in location signals, putting worries around privacy at
ease.
THE PARADOX
Myth 3: Sometimes the scale of mobile traffic is not in line with actual population scare of the area. How is this possible?
In location-based at tech flawed?
More often than not, we fail to factor in natural human behavior when making a correlation between traffic volume and number of
real-world users. If we take a step back and factor in the natural drop-offs from (a) the number of people at a specific location to (b) the number of people actually being on apps that capture and
send location data (which of course must be user opt-in), and then (c) finally filtering out a significant volume of signals on account of poor data quality, the observation starts making sense.
THE POSSIBILITIES
Myth 4: “Location-based advertising” and “Geo-targeting” are the same thing.
It is a fairly common perception that geo-targeting is the only way digital marketers can leverage location signals. While it is true that geo-targeting is a common application of
location data, this is not the only option. Location-powered audience segments are being used more to leverage users’ footprints to make inferences about their psychographics and general
behavior.
Aside from those obvious applications – creative strategies and offline attributions are also important. Weather, pollution levels – these are the
changing location based applications that allow for creativity and spontaneity in campaigns.
In summary, there is no doubt that mobile advertising has a leg up on the
traditional models. The use of location is becoming increasingly essential to successful campaigns. In order for marketers to create meaningful and impactful results, they need to ensure they
understand the technology and ask the right questions.