Hyperlocal targeting is finally here; why isn’t everyone using it?
This is short a personal story about the evolution of mobile (sometimes ad-) tech, and how I grew with it, apart from it, and eventually, why I found my way back to it.
Let me preface with this: “mobile” is my jam!
I started working in mobile ad-tech, on an enterprise level, back in 2003, and I built my first mobile app for the Blackberry platform (yep, I just mentioned Blackberry) back in 2006, over a year before the iPhone and App Store were introduced, back when we were still sideloading apps.
After over a decade of working in mobile ad tech, I left, primarily because I was bored. I felt like I was in an echo-chamber, and I had enough of it. Virtually every thought leader at every major brand and ad tech company seemed to be saying the exact same thing as they spoke at conferences.
Then, after an amazingly rewarding venture in med-tech, I’ve come back and here’s why: location, location, location.
As a designer, my holy grail is providing users with what they want before they even ask for it, and with today’s specialized hyperlocal targeting solutions (no, I’m not talking about FB targeted advertising), that’s actually possible on a device-agnostic, cross-platform basis — this is massive!
And as an architect of mobile ad solutions, I couldn’t be happier. I finally have something new; a set of tools that lets brands and advertisers learn from people’s habits — aggregating social, locational and demographic data– and coupling that with the power to market to these same people using ninja-like precision, in a way that Facebook & Twitter ads can’t.
Today I stand before you, proud to say that I’m a part of the solution.
Finally, we, as consumers, can see relevant ad content that we actually want to see, because this content enriches our lives, instead of taking us away from the things we’d rather to be doing.
So what does this look like from a data-perspective?
Well, some early hyperlocal targeted campaigns have delivered results that are 40+% better than their traditional location-based search+display ad-unit counterparts, all things equal.
That’s fantastically significant!
Let’s say you’re running a campaign right now that’s yielding a 5.63% conversion rate, which is common for high quality location-based campaigns (check out the image below for a point of reference on Google AdWords results by industry, without location-based targeting to see how much location helps boost conversion rates).
Now imagine someone offers you a tool that boosts your conversion rate by 40%; that changes it from 5.63% to 7.9%, which could make the difference between generating 10,000 new customers, or 14,000 new customers.
Let’s take that example one step further to show what that means at scale. Imagine if a company like Google could boost their conversion rates for Google Ad Words customers by that same margin — that 40% difference would increase their bottom line by more than $40M, every day.
To make things even more exciting, the product I’m primarily focused on right now is in stealth mode. That said, initial testing with this new product increased interact rates by over 80%, and conversion rates by over 50%, which is sure to raise an eyebrow or two, making our future much brighter than it’s ever been before.
Stay tuned…
Like what you read? Want more info? Let me know in the comments below.
