Overcoming the hype: the questions marketers should ask about hyperlocal geo targeting
Modern technology allows marketers to know a lot about consumers, right down to their precise location. But how accurate is most of the technology? GroupM’s Timothy Whitfield puts the technology to the test.
Over the past few months I’ve been approached by many adtech vendors who are selling Hyperlocal Geo Targeting for mobile inventory. I’ve been suspicious of the sales people when they say things like: “We can target users with an ad for McDonald’s whilst they are standing outside of KFC.”
This all sounded a bit too good to be true so I decided to look ‘under the hood’ and put them to the test.
The purpose of the test was to check the accuracy of the location-based services that each of these adtech vendors can offer. Most of these companies claim that they can determine the location of an individual user to a resolution of circa five meters from their actual location.
I have totally geeked out on this article. What a great insight and introduction. Thanks!
There are plenty of fantastic insights and advice for brands and agencies here. ‘Hyperlocal Geo Targeting’ is such a hot topic right now but very few digital media professionals truly take the time to separate the ‘Marketing Hype’ from true and accurate capabilities. It’s great to see this piece of work from Tim Whitfield picked up by Mumbrella
‘Hyperlocal Geo Targeting’ is such a hot topic right now but very few digital media professionals truly take the time to separate the ‘Marketing Hype’ from true and accurate capabilities. There are plenty of fantastic insights and advice for brands and agencies here. It’s great to see this piece of work from Tim Whitfield picked up by Mumbrella
An excellent article from Tim Whitfield. I couldn’t agree more that the location space is filled with a lot of ‘smoke and mirrors’ around the exact ‘hows’ of the technology. Lifting the hood of location data companies is essential when comparing different specialists – to make sure you are not being taken advantage of. Combining this level of data accuracy with audience profiling and cross-device targeting makes for a very exciting future…. Amy Fox, Global Product Manager, BlisMedia
This is a little something I had whipped up last month. Its not difficult to get the location correct.
Sort of relevant to this article. I think I might need to enhance this app and get into the Hyperlocal Geo Targeting game.
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/athena-find-me/id1075743107?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.interactiveidea.athena
would love to hear more about Vendor 5!
Great article thanks for the insight.
Can’t beat road testing – literally in his case.
This is an excellent article Tim, thanks for contributing.
However can I ask why you failed to name the vendors? In the context of this article it doesn’t seem to make sense. Obviously you are not saying that they are terrible per se and cannot deliver on their proposition. However you are – legitimately – raising the issue that in this particular trial they appeared to not have been able to do what they claim. This then sets in motion discussion that benefits all parties and affords them right of reply which also educates and informs all. Without getting into this most important detail it feels as if this is an opportunity missed to have not just an interesting discussion around this but actually a meaningful one that might result in improvement.
Timothy Whitfield – Congratulations. Very thorough and professiona
hello…. is it me you’re looking for?
Great article.
Great Surname!
When I look at most of the ads I am served it easy too see this industry/technology has a long way to go before meeting its promise.
Interestingly, the Australian TV industry, both Pay and FTA, had the opportunity to provide targeted services since early 2002 but, for entirely political reasons, a channel Seven led lobby vetoed the idea. Not only could TV ads be targeted to individual addresses but to drivers of specific cars, users of particular credit cards, supermarkets, clothing brands and so on, but they were also totally, incorruptibly, secure in that no one, including the actual advertisers, could access the target’s personal data. Foxtel ran with the concept for a minute but, since they were investing huge amounts chasing the game on the web, Australian agencies choose to follow their less aware international partners and ignored what could so easily have been the saviour for FTA television and (almost) conventional mass (as in multiple of niches) advertising. Mobile is now using similar technology but without the same guarantees of user /behavioural privacy.
This is how you claw your way out of an annus horribilis… With smart, useful and enlightening data insights. Great work Tim and GroupM
No mention of beacons by the (alleged) ad-tech firms – nor the author. Nothing beats cross-referencing a physical location. Is it any wonder that mobile advertising has such a bad reputation. That being said, a well researched and written piece Tim.
Every new development in digital has teething issues. The next one will too.
Congrats Vendor 5! Cant wait to meet with you tomorrow!!
This is the slightly strange thing with unsolicited geo-located ads. I haven’t actually seen a resounding real-life business case.
If I am “wanting to target a McDonald’s message to a user standing outside a KFC” I would take an entirely different approach…
Of note, there is also a third concept, which is driven by the mobile network owners who will “collaborate” to deliver geo-located information about their users for a fee.
Hang on. Since when did a sample size of 1 constitute a thorough testing of anything! Sure it’s not perfect… What is! At scale the technology works and asking the system to find 1 person once in one spot over a week as opposed to thousands of people over the course of a month across hundreds of thousands of sites / apps is a completely different proposition. This is a well composed and informative piece albeit a shallow beat up
@Critical Mass. This is not a beat up, it’s a very well prepared opinion piece. Note that Tim does not name the vendors, clearly he is not treating his research as definitive but his case study is quite revealing. If one person (with a lot of help) cannot be hyper-located, what difference does 1000 make? What is the margin of error and is this being accounted for when these services are being sold onto agencies/clients?
Nor is he dismissive of the potential.
If this excellent piece has done anything, it has shed more light on a channel which I as a creative would have assumed had a much greater level of accuracy.
Don’t forget Bluetooth (BLE), they can also serve up relevant and contextual messaging based on an App that is installed on the phone from a few centimetres out to about 70m range.
Hi Tim,
we’ve been doing this stuff since 2012 (not in Adtech but App re-targeting) and as @Cam says its about the resolution “fit for purpose”.
Any App/Site that is going to detect location is (rightly) dependent upon the settings the user opts-in to, the approval processes that the App has survived and the resolution of technology method that are using.
I’m not sure the study of proving someones location by having the vendor’s engineers trawl thru the data warehouse is indicative of the product’s real-time capabilities. That’s very different to delivering on a sales person’s statement of real-time ads. (See my comments on “$ supply chain” below)
The Resolution Hierarchy (from Most to Least accurate) is like this:
1. Beacons – An App on your phone could be listening for beacons. This is the KFC/Maccas example. That App could be using the Beacon proximity for themselves or they could be onselling that intelligence via list or API. But they would have had to justify their use of Beacons during the App approval process.
So lets say the App (or an embedded SDK) has been approved, then the infrastructure and “$ supply chain” needs to be mature enough for it to flow thru to an Ad network that:
a) the food vendor is buying ads in
b) could respond in real-time (i.e you will walk away in 30 seconds from the storefront). So I’m skeptical about these open-loop claims.
More credible is if the vendor has their own App on the device and is using beacons to “value-add”. They register their own beacons and sniff for them. Sniffing a competitor’s beacons is theoretically possible and I wrote a number of posts on this a few years ago but I suspect the brand damage of this tactic for a large retailer being discovered of doing this to be a deterrent.
I expect this also to be a diminishing opportunity because with new standards like Google’s BLE Eddystone we will see more rotating Beacon ID’s being emitted (sort of like your RSA 2FA keyfob) – so sniffing will become worthless eventually.
2. UDID/MAC Address – Apple made several changes a few years ago to foil such passive sniffing for privacy. This is a VERY GOOD THING – but it did impact a number of Shopping Center based sniffing router solutions. Effectively the bridge between MAC and UDID was broken but is still somewhat available if the shopping center App joins the IdentityForVendor (the successor to UDID) with MAC. The magic of IdentityForVendor is that is supposed to be unique to the Apps of that one App publisher. Are people mining IdentityForVendor across App? You can assume so but I don’t think many legit Adtech vendors are doing that. They are more likely using IDFA and location is irrelevent.
3. iOS and Geolocation – background and foreground
Any App that has permission from the user and the App approval process can ask the Operating System for variable accuracy Geolocation. But this is a trade-off of accuracy vs battery drain. Any App that seeks to be super accurate will be egregious in battery drain. This is tolerable for your 30-minute jog with RunKeeper but not tolerable for your loyalty App that should (rightly) be valuable and opened 2 times per month.
So resolution to a few 100m is a good solution in a lot of use-cases but can quickly (sort of – long story) tighten resolution when user foregrounds the App.
4. HTML5 Geolocation – well you need to open the browser while standing in front of the store. So it depends on the user active engagement. If the user has opted into HTML5 Geo for SMH whilst they are having a cappucino in the food court then that Geo data belongs to SMH – do they pass that on to an Ad network? I dunno. I suspect that most Ads that offer ASL targeting (everyone) still uses the IP. (See next)
5. IP – still so problematic due to its changeability on mobile, and continuing innacuracy. I’ve done a lot of IP stuff over the years (for fraud detection, not ads) and seen many vendors promise accuracy and it does work for things like using the Shopping Center wifi and fairly static IPs. At this moment I’m on a wifi in San Francisco:
VENDOR 1: detects me 10blocks away
VENDOR 2: detects me in Mountain View (a 1 hour drive)
GOOGLE MAPS: detects me exactly (yes I went incognito and turned off HTML5 Geo)
So in summary, claims of accuracy have to be related to the App/Web context and whether the real-time capability has the financial drivers to support it. Obviously Google and FB have large enough reach to monentize the real-time aspect – whether the other Adtech companies can deliver in a browser scenario or a background scenario I reckon is still a work-in-progress. Of course – does the end user benefit in all this?
regards
David