How location data advertising is positioning businesses to win

• Sunny Kataria, Head Of Commercial Verticals, OLX Advertising India writes a few benefits of using location-based advertising in digital world.
• He shares how geo-located ads convey hyper contextual data that’s meaningful to its target audience. Smartphones are now ubiquitous; therefore, increasing ad spend is now directed at the digital media.

With the growing popularity of smartphones and digital devices, location-based advertising is coming into its own as a way to reach target customers. The pandemic resulted in an exponential growth of internet users, as the world got digitised at a speed not seen before. The total active internet population is likely to touch 900 million by 2025, from 622 million last year, as per a report by the Internet and Mobile Association of India. People are buying online, booking appointments online, and doing a host of commercial activities online. The buyer’s journey is also becoming more digitised, and so digitisation of physical location presents a big zone of opportunity. Retailers and sellers can target huge segments of population that are nearby at a given time, leading to significant store visits.

More and more customers have learnt to swipe-search their shopping due to the pandemic. The purchase journey for a huge number of netizens now starts digitally. This has caused retailers to rethink how they can drive traffic to their stores, exciting the customer with interesting offers, in safe, healthy and convenient ways. Location is one of the biggest conveniences that can be offered. Location-based advertising targets consumers who may reach the store immediately to check out the advertised product so that they may buy their products conveniently, or as part of their routine outing for work or home tasks. This route of engagement is now part of an omni-channel strategy, to create more sales conversions.

Geo-located ads convey hyper contextual data that’s meaningful to its target audience. Smartphones are now ubiquitous; therefore, increasing ad spend is now directed at the digital media. The Asia Pacific Advertising Trends 2021 report, by market advisory Media Partners Asia (MPA), says that ad spend on digital media will overtake that on television by 2024. The same report says that the internet, which was a major beneficiary of the lockdown, will continue to grow steadily and expand its share of advertising from 36.6 per cent in 2021 to 40.1 per cent in 2025.

Many retailers have already taken the path of geotagging their marketing pitches, and are able to trigger sales when customers are nearby. Google, Facebook and Instagram have been leveraging location-based services, syncing it brilliantly towards brand and consumer advantage. For instance, Facebook provides users with the advantage of searching nearby locations and places that friends have visited, along with letting others know when they check-in to a place; Instagram has a useful geotagging feature that collates content and elevates brand experiences. The Foursquare app provides personalised recommendations of places to go near a user’s current location based on the user’s browsing and check-in history.

AI is trained to use location data to reach out to geotagged customers. Accurate data, better understanding of customer behaviour and compelling creatives all combine to improve outcomes. Many people will likely visit a store, just a block away, that has an attractive offer. It’s so convenient and the information is useful.

Since location-based advertising involves knowledge of location data and customer behaviour, advertisers are able to tap into customer habits and shopping patterns more effectively. Such data helps to attract more repeat customers and to reach out to new customers. It has proved effective through the retail journey, from discovery to the purchase. Customer experience can be improved by offering deals that increase value. Location based services offer huge convenience to the customer too. For instance, if I am looking for an overcoat in the sweltering heat of summer, I can just geosearch a retail outlet selling winter clothes in summer instead of expending energy hopping around from one retail outlet to the other.

Brands can avail the advantages of geofencing target consumers based on their real-time location, to reach consumers who may be attending a particular event, with geolocation advertising. Such geofencing may be leveraged by retailers, restaurants or automobile dealers to drive footfalls into their stores. Similarly, geo-conquesting targets customers who are physically in or around the competitor’s place. This is used to pull away the competitor’s traffic by offering more attractive deals. Such information helps to build agile capabilities.

Given that it’s the era of hyper-personalisation, brands, across hospitality, clothing, financial services and auto industries, will use more and more of such data ecosystems to improve customer journeys, positioning businesses to play the winning game.