GUIDE TO LOCATION-BASED PROGRAMMATIC

Asia Pacific is the internet capital of the world with 1.9 billion internet users, making up more than half the world’s digital population. With low desktop ownership across the region, smartphones are increasingly the dominant method to go online, and dominate digital media minutes. 70.1% of the internet users will access through smartphones, forecasted by eMarketer.

AUTHORS

Agnesia Ekayuanita, Programmatic Trading Manager, Asia, BBC

Ganga Chirravuri, Chief Technology Officer and Global Head, Platform Solutions, CtrlShift

James Rogers, Managing Director, APAC, S4M

Kenneth Chow, Group Director, Adobe Advertising Cloud DSP, SEA, Adobe

INTRODUCTION

Source: Internet and Mobile Users in Asia-Pacific: eMarketer's Country-by-Country Forecast for 2017–2021

Thanks to the widespread availability of low-cost GPS technology, nearly all smartphones have the ability to precisely geo-locate themselves. According to comScore, 87% of mobile minutes in Indonesia and 93% in Malaysia are consumed in-app. When users opt-in to make their location information available to applications and network services, they receive an enhanced, location-aware experience that extends to advert i s ing. Locat ion data provides improved precision for audience profiling and targeting of ads and can significantly improve the relevance of advertising that people are exposed.

Utilisation of location data by marketers is set to grow in Asia following Western markets. Location targeted campaigns in the US are forecasted to account for 45% of all mobile ad spend by 2021, according to BIA/Kelsey. This mirrors a recent study by Lawless Research and Factual, where more than 70% of respondents consisting of data buyers across marketers and advertising agencies in the US acknowledging that location-based advertising produced growth in their customer base, provided a deeper knowledge of their customers’ needs and interests and showed an improvement in return on investments (ROI).

SMARTPHONE USERS IN ASIA-PACIFIC, 2016-2021

1.19

1.331.46

1.591.71

1.81

29.5% 32.8% 35.7% 38.5% 41.0% 43.2%

15.3% 11.8% 9.9% 8.6% 7.3% 6.1%

0

0.5

1

1.5

2

2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021

Billion

Smartphone users % change % of population

85%

83%

83%

77%

74%

70%

Growth in customer base

Higher customer engagement

Higher response rates

Deeper knowledge of customers'needs/ interests

Improved return on investment

Increased lift

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

% of respondents

Source: 2018 Location-Based Marketing Report, Factual

Source: eMarketer, based on 2018 Location-Based Marketing Report, Factual

The same study also shows that over 80% of respondents saw a significant increase in campaign effectiveness when location-based data is used to personalise the customer experience. Some benefits seen in location-based personalisation include increased understanding of audiences (91%), positive customer experience (87%) and overall more effective campaigns (84%).

HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED THE FOLLOWING BENEFITS FROM USING LOCATION-BASED MARKETING AND/ OR ADVERTISING?

91%

87%

84%

62%

53%

53%

35%

Increased understanding of audiences

Positive customer experience

More effective campaign

More accurate targeting

Higher convers ion rates

Sales lift

Store visitation lift

0% 25% 50% 75% 100%

% of respondents

With location based advertising becoming more popular amongst digital marketers, it is essential to understand the available data sources, how data is collected and how to execute campaigns well with location data.

BENEFITS OF USING LOCATION-BASED AD PERSONALIZATION

Location data (as with any data) is imperfect and it is crucial for marketers to understand the nuances of using this data in terms of collection, activation and measurement.

It is important to note that it is largely applications that provide rich location data. The reasons are twofold:

• User experience: once an application is given permission to access the users location, this is set and stored at the individual app level. The permission only needs to be set once and the benefits are retained by the app and carried over from session to session. For mobile web on the other hand, permission to access the user's location needs to be granted each and every time the user visits that site. This creates a more clunky user experience on mobile web.

• Unique identifier: Apps utilise device IDs - unique identifiers that remain constant from session to session and is used to build location insights of a user over time. This gives in-app advertisers far greater capabilities for utilising audience profiles, including location history, that are built over time.

Individual telco providers do also have the capability to profile their subscribers’ location patterns over time using rich, always-on methods. The location behaviour can then be made available to advertisers in anonymised and privacy-compliant methods.

LOCATION DATA SOURCES - SCALE & ACCURACY TRADE OFF

WHERE DOES LOCATION DATA COME FROM?

All location data is initially gathered through the inbuilt Location Services system in smartphones that keep track of your location throughout the day. This system will locate the device at any given time using a variety of sources - each of which vary in accuracy and scale. Regardless of the sources used, location is always returned as latitudinal and longitudinal (lat/longs) coordinates. These sources include:

MAKING LOCATION DATA AVAILABLE TO APPS AND ADVERTISERS

Using the sources listed above, your phone will determine your location throughout the day. Your location is then passed from your location settings via an API to individual applications, depending on the permission settings for each app. It’s important to note that only applications get access to accurate location data, not mobile web. For Apple Operating Systems (iOS), there are three options that a user can select from:

• Never: the application in question can never access your location for any reason at all.

• While using the app: the application access your location when it’s open and running.

• Always: the app will always have access to your location whether it’s running or not. This has limited reach of up to 300 geolocation points per day.

MAKING SENSE OF LOCATION DATA

Location data is collected and passed in the bid request as lat/long coordinates. For this raw location data to be meaningful the coordinates need to be mapped to a specific or actual place such as a business or point of interest. For example, coordinates 40.76357, - 73.96359 specifies the location of a coffee shop.

Place data is constantly changing as new businesses open, close or move premises. It is important for advertisers and traders to partner with a place database provider that is regularly updating their data. The quality of location data is heavily dependent on the quality of the underlying place data.

USE CASES & HOW TO PLAN

There are many questions that arise within the world of location based targeting given the various data sources and multiple applications for brands and planners. This section provides an explanation for the type of utilisation and a guide of how to deploy these technologies with best practices.

PROXIMITY TARGETING

Proximity marketing involves delivering ads based on a users immediate location allowing brands to reach target audiences with timely and personalised messaging. Proximity targeting is particularly useful in drive-to-store campaigns or for any brands looking to elicit an immediate action from audiences.

For example, a Coffee Bean or Old Town Coffee can use location targeting to boost sales during traditionally slow periods of the day; targeting all qualifying users within a defined 200 meter radius from a local outlet, a promotional message offering discounts for purchases made between 3 and 6pm can be sent.

LOCATION BASED AUDIENCES

Through analysing and understanding the historical location patterns of the devices people own - the stores people visit, the neighbourhoods where they live and work, and how far they commute - marketers can gain rich insights into consumer preferences and interests. For example, in a long purchase cycle, an automotive brand can look to reach in-market car buyers who are seen at car showrooms multiple times over a 2 month period.

An advantage of location based audiences over proximity targeting is that once developed, the audience segment can be targeted regardless of where the user or device is at the time of the ad impression. This provides a larger window for advertisers to reach users possibly reducing eCPMs and enabling advertisers to reach the end user with multiple messages.

LOCATION DYNAMIC CREATIVE OPTIMIZATION (DCO)

Brands can leverage location data in ad creative to deliver a personalised, location-aware experience for audiences, tailoring the messaging to the context of the user. Examples include displaying journey times or for drive-to-store campaigns, localised flight options for airlines or live local cinema times.

DCO is proven to be highly effective at improving advertising performance and cost efficiencies. Creatives that include contextual based personalisation perform 11% better than standard creatives, revealed in Celtra Creative Insights Report, Q1 2018.

Case Study: IPG & Sony Pictures - The Dark Tower

Sony Pictures and IPG set out to generate mass awareness of their highly anticipated summer blockbuster, The Dark Tower ahead of the launch, with the ultimate goal of boosting box office sales.

Driving cinema attendance is getting more competitive in today's age, especially with growing sources of entertainment such as OTT Streaming sites giving more options to watch the latest releases away from the Silver Screen. On the other hand, Singapore has the highest number of cinema screens per person in all of Asia - meaning a trip to the cinema has never been more accessible.

For the release of The Dark Tower, Sony Pictures and IPG partnered with S4M to utilise location to drive moviegoers into theatres and deliver a simple, hassle-free booking experience.

The objective was to leverage the high density of theatres in Singapore along with the convenience of smartphones to drive mobile audiences directly from the small screen to the big screen. This was achieved in 3 ways:

At the very heart of UM’s approach to campaign planning is finding and targeting the right person, at the right time, in the right moment. Of course the message needs to be completely relevant and highly addressable to what audiences are looking for. What we found really compelling about S4M’s Video End Card format was the ability to seamlessly execute the person, place, moment approach to the Sony Pictures Dark Tower movie release and be able to follow through with a highly relevant call to action to make last-mile conversion a simple user experience. ”David Haddad,

CEO, IPG Mediabrands, Singapore

• Location history was leveraged to create a custom audience segment of Moviegoer users who had been previously seen at cinemas in the past 2 months. This audience set, along with a broader segment of Entertainment Enthusiasts, were targeted during the campaign.

• Leveraging the insight that audiences are increasingly acting on impulse when booking cinema tickets, real-time proximity targeting was used to reach the target audiences when they were within a short walking distance from participating cinemas during key moments of the day.

• Movie fans were shown a trailer of The Dark Tower that allowed them to interact with characters from the movie, increasing awareness and engagement.

• Thanks to a partnership with a local cinema provider, the video unit included DCO functionality that leveraged the users' immediate location to display the next showtime of The Dark Tower along with details of their nearest cinema.

Results:

• More than two-thirds of users (67%) spent more than 12 secs on the format.

• Video completion rates (77%) were significantly above industry benchmarks for mobile web (54%) and in-app (37%).

• The campaign delivered a 1.2% conversion rate of people clicking through to book tickets.

”

ATTRIBUTION: LINKING AD EXPOSURE TO PHYSICAL STORE VISIT

Not only are marketers using location data to improve ad targeting, they’re using it to measure the effectiveness of their marketing efforts, joining the dots between the online and offline world by measuring the impact of advertising on store visitation rates. This is providing a greater view of the customer journey and valuable ROI to marketers. The reality is that one is likely to leave their car keys or wallet at home but unlikely to leave their smartphone behind. Given such user behaviour, mobile can be particularly effective.

When a target consumer is exposed to a creative in-app, the unique advertising device ID of the user is be captured. This device ID can then be matched against device IDs seen in the target stores or used to provide a visitation rate of users exposed to the campaign, from which a cost per visit (CPV) can be calculated. Brands should be mindful that this initial CPV would include organic traffic - customers who would have visited the point of sale irrespective of the ad campaign, or that were influenced by other media such as out-of-home (OOH) or television.

To reliably understand the impact of the campaign, results of exposed users should be compared against that of a non-exposed control group of users who share the same characteristics as the target audience. This will enable brands to measure the number of incremental visits that are a direct result of the campaign, along with calculating the cost per incremental visit (CPIV) which is the true impact of the campaign and ROI.

Mobile location data can also be extended to measure the impact and effectiveness of offline media; let’s say you are currently running OOH media within Orchard Road, utilising attribution allows marketers to measure the store visitation rate of users (via Device IDs) that have been exposed to the OOH Sites prior to visiting the physical store. As with mobile campaigns, this can be compared against a control group of non-exposed users to provide an uplift figure.

EXTENDING TO OOH

Case Study: Vizeum Thailand & IKEA

To coincide with the launch of their new Bedroom and Living Room product ranges, IKEA was looking to increase customer footfall into their Bangkok store. The Home Retail category has become ever more competitive in recent years, with new competition both online and in-store giving customers an ever-expanding number of options to satisfy their needs.

IKEA ran a geo-targeted campaign for a user-base that had visited a competitor store in the previous 2 months. With the aim of driving consumers to the IKEA store, this audience was retargeted with engaging creative during weekends and leisure time when they were likely to be in the right mindset. The store visitation of people that had been exposed to the ad was recorded and benchmarked against a control group to provide an uplift figure.

Results:

• Combining location history with a high impact creative helped IKEA achieve a 222% increase in store traffic.

The opportunity that location data provides for marketers is now too large to ignore. It is an excellent indicator of consumer context and this in turn can be used both tactically and strategically by brands throughout the consumer life cycle.

As we have seen, the adoption of location data has skyrocketed in recent years and as accuracy, verification, and point-of-sale attribution continue to improve, the rate of growth of location data is set to increase in the region.

Planning to harness location data in your campaign? Tick off the boxes on the following checklist to ensure you have the answers you require to set your campaign up for success:

CONCLUSION

CHECKLIST FOR PLANNERS

Data collection methodology: is the partner transparent about the methodology for data collection?

Sources: what is the source of the Place / POI data for mapping raw lat/longs into meaningful and actionable locations?

Coverage: what is the breadth of the Place database used? Does it give comprehensive local coverage?

Accuracy: how accurate is the data? Is there a way to test and benchmark the data?

Recency: how often is the data refreshed for user segments and underlying Place database?

Filtration: which methods are being used to remove bad or fraudulent location data?

Privacy: is the collection and storage of data compliant with privacy protection regulations?

Attribution: are the results of any footfall studies verified by an independent third party provider? Is the media partner also responsible for reporting on the campaign metrics such as in-store visitation rates?

Scalability: what is the addressable audience and impression reach once targeting layers are applied?

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