Previously in our blog, we defined what unstructured data is and discussed how it’s superior to audience segments for programmatic advertising. Ultimately, for the goal of programmatic (serving the right ad to the right person at the right time) to be achieved, advertisers need the following: transparency, optimization, recency, the ability to personalize campaigns to localized audiences, and to drive higher ROI. An unstructured data approach to programmatic addresses all of these needs, and this is why unstructured data should matter to advertisers. But what does all this mean for mobile?
Today, we’re diving into the ways that unstructured data can help advertisers win in their mobile advertising efforts. While it may seem like “mobile” has been on the tip of everyone’s tongue for a while now, it’s not going away anytime soon. In fact, mobile is predicted to account for 71% of digital ad spend in 2019. The fact is, people are obsessed with their mobile devices and that won’t change anytime soon. This will continue to be a channel that advertisers must excel in.
So, how do you do more than just compete in the location-based mobile advertising space? How do you actually win? The difference lies in leveraging unstructured data.
Precise Targeting for the Win
When it comes to targeting, the first thing you probably think of is precision. Unfortunately, far too many advertisers today may not know that audience segments are being used in their location-based marketing. As we’ve discussed before, advertisers get little to no visibility into the relevancy and recency of the data when using audience segments, and most importantly have no idea what justified putting the data points into the segment in the first place. This lack of visibility into the data is problematic. Most mobile ad networks’ access to data is limited to a relatively smaller subset of mobile users compared to what Simpli.fi sees using unstructured data. And in the spirit of scale, the granularity of the data often gets pooled together into a larger than desired targeting area when using audience segments. Hardly precise.
With Simpli.fi’s unstructured data at the core of our mobile offering, advertisers have access to actual (not derived) GPS data points verified by GPS satellites, beacons, and/or Wi-Fi points from trusted third parties, and more. We see more than 240 billion daily bid requests via top programmatic exchanges, and apply strict data science to filter and scrub the data. This results in over 3 billion lat/long requests and roughly 500 million unique lat/long coordinates each day, allowing you to reach the right consumer at the right time
What’s more, we don’t store our location data in grids or rely on radius or fixed-shape targeting like segmented-based data does. This allows us to utilize the actual lat/long coordinates to Geo-Fence custom shapes that are specific to the unique area you desire to target regardless of size, resulting in far less wasted impressions and maximum targeting precision of mobile users.
Location-Based Marketing and the Advantages of Recency
When it comes to location-based marketing, the when can sometimes be almost as important as the where. There is a big difference between a prospect who was at a location a few hours ago and one who was there 24 days ago. In other words, recency is relevant in the world of programmatic!
Rather that utilizing audience segments where data is lumped into the same black box that treats data that is three minutes old the same as data that is 60 days old, Simpli.fi retain the date and time stamp associated with every piece of data we target, bid, optimize, and report on, allowing us to offer variable recency from instant up to 30 days.
This means that not only do you know the date and time relating to the location data—you also get to strategically choose a range of recency for when to target with ads. This is an essential component to the overall effectiveness of a location-based marketing campaign. All thanks to unstructured data.
The Cross-Device Promise
The benefits of unstructured data don’t stop there. When users are on a browser, behavioral data is collected allowing advertisers to form a robust understanding of how consumers are spending their time online. And through cross-device matching, Simpli.fi can map the behavioral data from browsers to the appropriate mobile device. This allows for even more unstructured data signals to be applied to your location-based marketing campaigns.
Optimize on the Fly
Optimizing at the segment-level is just not, well, optimal. Advertisers need to know during as opposed to after a campaign which geo-fences are performing well and which ones aren’t, and be able to make changes instantly. Our use of unstructured data lets advertisers optimize Geo-Fencing on the fly throughout the course of a campaign. For instance, advertisers could optimize their campaigns midflight by shifting spend to the highest performing geo-fences, resulting in to less wasted impressions and a significantly higher ROI. It’s a win-win!
If we were to sum up this blog post in one sentence, it would be this: unstructured data allows Simpli.fi to do location-based marketing differently. It lets us do things no one else can do.
Contact us at hi@simpli.fi to learn how you too can begin winning in mobile with unstructured data.