Tag: Location-based

Proximity Sensors Now In Most Airports, Spell New Advertising Potential

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
According to a new report from Unacast, a marketing firm that specializes in proximity networks,  84% of the world’s airports have or are testing deployment of proximity sensors. In the US, 35% of the top 20 airports have officially deployed beacons. The report also found that 49% of the world’s airports plan to “directly contact passengers via their mobile phone over the next three years,” which will most likely include location-based brand messages. San Diego International Airport, for instance, has already deployed approximately 300 beacons, allowing concessioners based in the airport to advertise their shops to travelers nearby via their own apps or the airport’s app.

What Brands Should Do
This report points to a significant growth of proximity sensors at airports and, to a lesser degree, other transit hubs, which spells massive potential for advertisers to better understand their audience and deliver their brand messages in a granular, contextually relevant manner. For brands looking to connect with travelers at key moments in their journeys, it is time to consider working with airport beacon operators to explore the location-based advertising opportunities they offer.

 

Source: AdAge

GM Launches IBM Watson-Powered Ads In OnStar Go

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Wednesday General Motors announced a partnership with IBM that leverages Watson’s cognitive computing capabilities to deliver personalized brand messages to drivers via its OnStar service. The program, named OnStar Go, aims to dispense real-time, location-based information covering topics such as fuel, hospitality, entertainment, and restaurants. OnStar Go is expected to roll out early next year. ExxonMobil, Glympse, iHeartRadio, and Mastercard are also among the first batch of brands to join this program.

What Brands Should Do
This Watson-powered program offers brands a new channel to reach consumers on the go in a smarter, targeted way. For example, ExxonMobil plans to use it to help drivers quickly locate nearby gas stations, and Mastercard will enable drivers and passengers to conveniently authorize payment from inside the vehicle. As connected cars continue to gain momentum in the auto market, brands should seize the opportunity to reach in-car consumers with personalized content through the dashboard and digital channels supported by the OnStar Go ecosystem.

 

Source: AdAge

Header image is a promotional image courtesy of General Motors

How Home Depot And The Fragrance Outlet Drive In-Store Sales With Mobile Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Both Home Depot and The Fragrance Outlet are seeing positive results using mobile ads to drive in-store purchases, but their specific approaches differ. Home Depot leverages Google’s location-based search ads to target online shoppers that are interested in gardening tools. The ads suggest the nearest Home Depot locations based on where customers are. Home Depot reported that 36% of their in-store revenue during peak hours was driven by mobile, resulting in an eight-times increase in ROI from mobile display ads in the past year.

The Fragrance Outlet, on the other hand, is using in-store beacons to attract customers to try perfume samples and drive sales. Working with Shopkick, the retail chain is installing beacons at some of its 100 locations to push its rewards program by offering free samples to Shopkick users.

What Retailers Should Do
Despite their different approaches, both retailers are leveraging mobile technologies to successfully target shoppers on a hyperlocal level. A recent survey by SessionM revealed that 90% of retail shoppers today are using their smartphones in stores. Therefore, it would be a huge missed opportunity if retailers are not using location-based ads or proximity-triggered offers to reach shoppers and drive sales.  

 

Sources: Think With Google & GeoMarketing

NYC AdWeek 2016: Waze Launches Native Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Popular navigation app Waze introduced its first native ad product named Favorite Brands on Monday at its NYC AdWeek event. Marketers can now invite Waze users to tap an ad to “favorite” a brand to make their favorite stores and restaurants more accessible in Waze’s mobile map. It will also surface customizable brand messages in some on-the-road features such as Planned Drives, Calendar Sync, and Speed Limit. Dunkin’ Donuts is the first brand to sign on for this ad product, which will be in beta testing for the remainder of the year.

What Brands Should Do
Waze has 65 million monthly drivers worldwide, which presents a sizable audience for brands with physical stores to make a play for. By integrating brand messaging into its app, Waze manages to deliver location-based native ads in the form of utility with minimal disruption to its user experience. Brands that are looking to drive store traffic and engage their customers to build long-term relationships should consider giving this native ad product a try.

Source: AdWeek

 

Facebook Helps Retailers Sync Ads With Local Inventory

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Tuesday, Facebook announced a new ad product called “dynamic ads for retail” that are designed to only appear when the advertised product is actually in stock at local stores. They allow retailers to plug in brick-and-mortar inventory and serve ads for products that are available at a location close to the users seeing them. Retailers such as Abercrombie & Fitch, Argos, Macy’s, Target, and Williams-Sonoma are currently testing this new ad product, which Facebook says will be rolled out to more brands in the coming weeks.

What Retailers Should Do
This ad product offers retailers a great way to sync up their local inventories with their Facebook campaigns, bridging the gap between physical availability and digital promotions. Retailers should take advantage of this location-based, dynamic ad product to reach shoppers in a more effective way.

To learn more about how retailers can make use of the digital tools available to reach shoppers across platforms, check out the Boundless Retail section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: AdWeek

Snapchat Brushes Off Instagram Stories With More NFL Content And New Ad Product

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat is brushing off Instagram’s head-on attack by adding new features and content to its service. For starters, the social messaging app is rolling out Geostickers – think Geofilters meet regular stickers – to ten global cities including New York City, San Francisco, London, and Sydney.

The L.A.-based company also announced that it is extending its content partnership with the NFL. As part of the deal, Snapchat will be adding a new Discover channel for the NFL this fall, making it the first sports league to get a dedicated content portal on Snapchat. The NFL will also be creating Live Stories for Snapchat. Sources say Snapchat will be handling most of the ad sales for both NFL content channels.

In addition, Snapchat is reportedly developing a new ad unit which allows users to scan barcodes and other images to unlock sponsored content or special offers in app. The scannable ad product is reportedly aiming for a fall launch this year.

Why Brands Should Care
There is no denying that Snapchat is the buzziest social app at the moment, amassing over 150 million daily active users as of June and surpassing Twitter in daily usage. Only time will tell how much Instagram will undermine Snapchat’s growth by adding a nearly identical Stories feature, and for now Snapchat seems to be soldiering on and focusing on improving its content offering and ad products. As Snapchat continues to grow and make its platform more brand-friendly, brands should get on board early to explore Snapchat’s unique ad products in order to reach mobile consumers.

 

Sources: VentureBeat & WSJ & The Information

 

How Stonyfield Used Location-Based Ads To Target Pokémon Go Players

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Stonyfield Farm becomes the latest brand to jump in on the Pokémon bandwagon as it devised a clever location-based ad campaign to reach Pokémon Go players. Working with Aki Technologies, a San Francisco-based mobile ad firm, the yogurt brand is serving up ads that specifically target Pokémon players at over 10,000 U.S. PokéStops, real-world checkpoints where players travel to in order to receive free in-games supplies. The ad copy reads “time to catch a Stonyfield,” and links to a store-locator on Stonyfield’s website. Aki’s ad network serves the ads via popular apps consumers often use while playing Pokémon Go, such as weather and messaging apps.

What Brands Need To Do
This campaign is an interesting workaround for Stonyfield to leverage Pokémon Go’s exploding popularity to reach mobile consumers without actually sponsoring any in-game features. Since its launch, Pokémon Go has scored 75 million downloads worldwide, making it the most successful mobile game ever. The companies behind the game have been cautious toward opening up the game for sponsorship, but when it launched in Japan last week, McDonald’s appeared as the first sponsor for the “gym” locations in the game.

One notable limitation of this campaign, however, is that Stonyfield’s ads are only guaranteed to appear within five minutes of players visiting a PokéStop, whereas in reality people typically stay at PokéStops for less time. Regardless, this campaign is still an innovative case of location-based mobile ad targeting and should serve as inspiration for brands looking to connect with Pokémon Go players.

 

Source: AdWeek

Pokémon Go To Launch In Japan With McDonald’s As Sponsored Gym Locations

Posted on by Richard Yao

What Happened
Two weeks after its initial release, Pokémon Go is finally set to be released in Japan on Wednesday (Update 7/20: the launch has been delayed due to the leak of the partnership), TechCrunch reports. Sources also claim that this major roll-out will also feature the first Sponsored Locations in the game, with over 3,000 McDonald’s locations in Japan designated as Gyms. Reports about game-maker Niantic opening up the game to allow Sponsored Locations first surfaced last week, and for now it remains to be seen whether the company will roll out this brand opportunity to other markets.

In the past two weeks, Pokémon Go has quickly grown into a global craze, driving considerable real-world traffic to various landmarks, parks, and local businesses. On Sunday, around 5,000 people gathered at Millennium Park in Chicago to play the game. The Dallas Arboretum, home to multiple PokéStops and Gyms, is hosting Pokémon Go events and staying open late to accommodate players, drawing record crowds as a result.

The foot traffic the game drives is also giving various restaurants, cafes, and other stores significant boosts in customers. Picasso’s Pizzeria in Buffalo, NY advertised that they are located in between two PokéStops and claimed that sales doubled in just a few hours. Various restaurants across the country are reported to be attracting Pokémon Go players with extra Pokémons generated by Lures, an in-game purchase, as well as offering discounts and gift cards to people who tweet out photos of themselves with Pokémon in the restaurants.

What Brands Need To Do
With the game scoring a higher engagement rate than Facebook and more daily active users than Twitter, Pokémon Go’s smashing success presents great opportunities for brands to reach a young-skewing audience on mobile and even drive offline traffic to stores. While it remains to be seen when the company behind Pokémon Go will bring sponsorship opportunities to markets outside Japan, there are still plenty of things that brands can do to capitalize on the game’s viral popularity. For starters, brands can take a cue from T-Mobile, which announced a series of Pokémon Go-related promotions to appeal to the vast number of players. For brands with physical locations that are near PokéStops, it would also be important to indicate so on Yelp for the new search option it added.

For more suggestions on how brands can benefit from “Pokémania,” check out our in-depth Fast Forward analysis on the matter here.

 

Sources: Various outlets as linked in the post

How Brands Can Benefit From “Yelp Knowledge” Social Analytics Program

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Yelp is launching a “Yelp Knowledge” program to help brands with multiple store locations get a more comprehensive idea of what their customers are saying online. Brands that join this program will gain access to Yelp’s dataset of “over 100 million reviews and 12 years of historical data for local analytics and insights.” The company is also expanding the group of third-party companies that can directly access its complete reviews data, adding Medallia, Reputology, and Revinate to the list.

What Brands Need To Do
According to a recent study by Google, 74% of local searches result in same-day store visits and 28% of those searchers made a purchase. As an integral part of the local search ecosystem, Yelp reviews have a strong impact on how local businesses are perceived by prospective customers. Therefore, this new program and extended third-party service access should come as welcome news for brands that manage multiple locations, particularly those in the QSR and retail verticals, to tap into Yelp’s vast dataset of customer feedback to identify and act on opportunities for improvements at each store.

Source: Marketing Land

How Twitter’s New Location Tags May Be Useful For Brands

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Twitter is encouraging users to check out aggregated tweets from specific locations and venues by adding Foursquare-powered location tags to tweets in the main timeline and on profiles. Previously, Twitter’s location tags only narrowed down to the neighborhood level and were tucked away with the finer details under the body of tweets, which means users had to expand a tweet and then click on the location tag in order to see the location feeds.

What Brands Need To Do
Now that users are clued in by the conspicuous location tags included at the end of tweets, they will be more likely to explore Twitter in a location-based manner. Although Twitter hasn’t officially announced their plans for monetizing location feeds yet, it is clear to see that this new addition could bring new targeting opportunities for brand advertisers by allowing them to surface their promoted tweets in the appropriate location feeds to reach their desired audiences. The more granular location tags also generate more data to help businesses and event organizers better understand their audiences on Twitter and improve its interest-based, hyperlocal targeting.

 

Source: TechCrunch