Location. Location. Location.

Location-based advertising (also known as hyper-local advertising) is a new form of advertising that integrates mobile advertising with location-based services. The technology is used to pinpoint consumer’s location and provide location-specific advertisements on their devices. Location-based display advertising is integrated with publisher content or search advertising in response to user queries.

Types of Hyper Local Ads-
1) Mobile (app/wap) Ads

Marketers can entertain, inform, build brand awareness, create loyalty, and drive purchase decision among their target consumers through Location Based Ads. By using cell phone tower triangulation, it acquires a consumer’s location within seconds, and not minutes as is the case when using GPS radio signals alone. Traditionally you would get a Location Based Ad served to you as soon as you cross a predefined area on a map. Outside the predefined radius, no ad, inside the radius, ads are served.

Well, let’s say that someone is on their smartphone and standing in front of a coffee shop. If this person is using a mobile app that incorporates Location Based Advertising, it becomes possible for an advertiser to know that this person is actually standing in front of a coffee shop, and send them a relevant ad (or coupon, or an offer update) instantly. Perhaps this ad from the competition is so compelling that it entices the consumer to travel a bit farther up the street, and avail the discount from the ad they just got.

2)Search Engine Marketing- Local Awareness ADs
• Search
• Display

Location based advertising is based on IP addresses. We have a provision to target a radius around a particular lat-long co-ordinate. Every time a search/browsing happens in the particular zone, an ad is served.

3) Facebook

FB gets information about you from your Facebook account (ex: your age, your gender, your location, the devices you use to access Facebook). Your ad preferences are based on information you’ve shared with Facebook, the pages you like or engage with, ads you click on, apps and websites you use, and information from our data providers. Advertisers reach customers in key locations by country, state/province, city and post code.

USE CASES-

Location based ads can help you get users near your store; this has worked when there are multiple stores. Any local business that wants to reach an audience in a specific or nearby radius can benefit from hyperlocal targeting in their advertising.

-Time specific shopping

In a particular time-slot, a brand can communicate about its exclusive offers. This can help customers to have quick shopping done. The brands can run offers at the non-peak hours to boost sales. A win -win situation for the consumer and the brand.

-Better targeting

The demographics of the user who needs to be targeted can be decided and a similar group can be targeted.

-Multiple Location

The same brand can run ads targeting users present in the vicinity of all its stores. Hence increasing the reach and in turn the footfalls.

-Targeting customers of your competition.

You can run ads targeting the location of your competition. People around the competitor’s store can be informed about your offerings/offers. Just imagine a Subway customer being shown a McDonald’s ad, with the mouthwatering Mac image.

-Target the Main Locations of the City

When you have a new launch/offer, you need to spread the word to the main locations of the city. All the prospects are targeted together and a buzz can be created.

If done correctly, hyper local marketing is a very powerful tool, but it must be done with a specific goal in mind, and with a tactical approach. Make sure you source a vendor who is able to obtain the proper reach for your brand. It is important to work with a partner who is able to use an aggregate marketing approach and leverage the power of multiple ad networks in order to achieve results. The optimization algorithms will be able to notice how the people of each specific geo-location are behaving throughout the different times of the day and allocate more budget where there is more traffic. Thus the efficiency and effectiveness of the hyperlocal campaign can reach its full potential.

As technology matures, you can safely assume that the volume of information about locations will only increase, especially as we move closer to a quantified world of “smart” devices and wearable computing. And the potential applications for this targeting technology is bound only by your imagination.