In targeted advertising, geotargeting is a very important aspect. In marketing, geotargeting is based on a user’s location, unlike behavioral targeting, which is based on a user’s past behavior. If you want to reach users who are physically near the location of a business or an event, advertising using geotargeting can help you.
Traditional methods of advertising and targeting may lead advertisers to believe that focusing on the demographics of their audience is the only way to create successful ad campaigns. However, while targeting based on demographics does have its own benefits, geographic targeting cannot be discounted. Combining demographic and geotargeting can go a long way in helping advertisers reach relevant audiences more effectively.
What is Geotargeting?
Geographic targeting or geotargeting is an advertising methodology where an advertiser selects a particular geographic location where their paid ads will appear. The intention behind geotargeting ads is to target people in locations where they are the most likely to convert, which in turn helps increase the returns on ad spend from campaigns. It can be a location close to a brick-and-mortar outlet of a brand or a region that has exhibited high conversion rates in the past, and so on. One of the prime examples of geotargeting marketing can be of insurance companies that sell travel insurance, targeting the domestic or international airports of cities as locations for geotargeting ads about last-minute, quick-to-buy travel insurance policies.
Importance of Geotargeting in Advertising
There are several benefits of geotargeting, which make it a crucial tool for any advertiser or marketer. Some of these include:
- Helps Capture the Mobile Search Market: People who are on their phones, looking for certain search results, are more often than not on the lookout for local results, and around 61% of such local searches lead to conversions [source]. With geotargeting, advertisers can easily ensure that they can maximize the potential of their display ad campaigns via search ads in terms of conversions and ROI. In fact, advertisers can also harness the advantages offered by rich media ads and add a map component as well to help users find and reach their nearest brick-and-mortar store location with ease.
- More Control of Personalization of Ads: Personalization using dynamic creative optimization for ads can be enhanced using geotargeting, which gives you more control over local language settings, ad scheduling, etc., helping you tap a potential market in a more effective manner.
- Shortlisting Markets for Upcoming/Targeted Campaigns: For advertisers who may be targeting wider regions and markets, using granular geotargeting in their marketing strategies can help shortlist micro-markets with high potential for enhanced ad personalization.
How Geotargeting in Advertising Works
The real-time components that may be involved in finding the location of a user for geotargeting advertising campaigns include:
- Their IP Address
- The User’s Latitude and Longitude
- Bluetooth
- The GPS of Mobile Devices
Advertisers can create ad units with dynamic components/elements that are chosen and displayed in real-time to users, based on various locations. This can also go a long way in helping advertisers find winning combinations of brand communication, offers, creatives, ad scheduling, etc. for different audience segments.
Doing it Right
To effectively add geotargeted ads to their marketing mix, advertisers must put in time and research into finding the right cloud-based advertising software or platform that allows them to utilize dynamic creative optimization to personalize their ads based on geotargeting. Using ad builders like Airtory ensures that advertisers have access to such capabilities and more, including real-time performance tracking and reporting, options to modify live campaigns in real-time, universally compatible ad tags, and so on.
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