In the first part of this blog, we explored consumers’ voracious appetite for their smartphones and tablets. Adoption is skyrocketing, and the mobile addiction is showing no sign of slowing down. The average American spends over 4 hours each day on his/her mobile device engaged in non-voice activities, reports eMarketer. That usage accounts for 69 percent of an average consumer’s digital media time, according to comScore.
All this activity, in turn, is generating mass amounts of location-based data. At Simpli.fi, we see about a million signals of geo-data per second. Whereas in the past, the gold standard data has been search data, website data and behavioral data, now location-based data is taking center stage, and the spend is shifting to mobile. What’s amazing about this trend is not just the volume of advertising inventory that is moving to mobile, it’s the velocity at which it is happening.
MEETING MOBILE’S MOMENTUM
On Simpli.fi’s platform, mobile advertising spend now makes up 71% of total advertising impressions. Compare that to January of 2016 when the percentage of mobile delivery on our platform was only 36%.
We are truly an industry in the middle of a transformation, and we, for one, are loving it. The challenge and the opportunity of the location-based mobile advertising model lies in managing extremely high volumes of data. This is precisely our strength and our passion, allowing us to stay ahead of the curve in the mobile movement.
THE DEVIL IS IN THE DETAILS
The most advanced location-based mobile advertising targeting tactics like geo-fencing and conversion zones are rooted in targeting users based on precise geographic areas.
Because a geo-fencing campaign is only as good as the accuracy of its data, we capture and target based upon actual latitude and longitude coordinates and not derived latitude and longitude, a key differentiator.
Also, unlike other solutions that have a grid-based data retrieval system that may pull users outside of a desired area, we draw custom shapes to allow advertisers to precisely target their audiences.
And our platform can scale. Just one benefit of leveraging unstructured data is that it allows for extremely fast campaign scaling without needing to adjust the parameters of the geo-fenced locations. For one client, as described in this case study, we set up 2,000+ geo-fences and conversion zones in addition to hundreds of custom keywords. Each region had unique keyword lists due to local nomenclatures, preferences and buying habits. The Simpli.fi team and our advanced multivariate algorithms then closely monitored and optimized the campaign in real-time throughout its duration to ensure proper spending and maximize performance.
OUR LATEST ADVANCEMENT
We’ve invested heavily in building our mobile infrastructure for quite some time in order to deliver on the promise of mobile advertising solutions. We combine accurate targeting with the scale required to deliver on hyper-local campaigns and the analytics needed to offer a deeper understanding of campaign effectiveness.
Recently, we launched Geo-Conversion Lift, an exciting upgrade to our Geo-Fencing with Conversion Zones solution. This new dashboard in our Reporting and Analytics center, allows advertisers to measure the increase in foot traffic to a desired location by users who have been served ads versus a baseline of users who have not been served ads.
Historically, these lift metrics have only been available to advertisers with significant budgets and leveraged panel-based attribution—not for localized campaigns. We are proud to be able to offer these valuable insights to advertisers of all sizes who want to understand offline behavior as it relates to online behavior.
BRINGING IT ALL TOGETHER
As we talk about the possibilities of mobile, we also need to remember this: Customers still want a seamless experience. In the programmatic world, we’ve seen that the rapid growth of point startup solutions—in mobile, in native, in video, and so on—has driven a great deal of innovation. But advertisers are now saying, “This is great, I’ve got all these wonderful capabilities that these point solutions have created, but I really don’t want to have to deal with five different platforms to run a campaign.”
This dynamic plays out on our own platform. As advertisers look to consolidate around fewer platforms, we see more campaigns per advertiser. About two years ago, we’d see two campaigns/tactics per advertiser on our platform. Now advertisers are running an average of 3.4 campaigns, and the mix of tactics are becoming more diverse.
Omni-channel done right requires a centralized decisioning engine to determine which impressions, on which devices, on what media type, with what creatives, in what locations are the most effective at various times of the day/week/month.
Even with all the enthusiasm around mobile, as advertisers continue to work toward better ROI and deeper insights into what is driving the success of their campaigns, point solutions are in danger of being left behind. Omni-channel strategies that take advantage of a centralized decisioning engine like Simpli.fi’s platform, on the other hand, provide the agility and robust data collection/analysis advertisers need to create truly effective programmatic programs.