Geo-locating The Money
In yesterday’s session, Case Studies in Location-Based Advertising: Innovative Business Models That are Paying Off Today, we were taken through the various ways in which websites & applications can determine the location of the user. The panel was moderated by Josh Goldman, a Partner with Norwest Venture Partners. He started us off by breaking down the various methods used to ‘find a user’ into three categories:
- Solicted : This would be when you’re prompted to enter either your current location or the location of your destination
- Inferred : Locations picked up via the usage of the site or service, for instance doing a search on “cheap tickets from LAX to Las Vegas” would probably mean that the consumer was in Los Angeles but was in dire need to get to Las Vegas….and for cheap.
- Computed - This is the most preferred (when available) method, it involves using the device to tell the service where it is located, using any number of different methods from GPS, IP location lookup to even partnerships with telecommunication carriers.
Included in the panel was Sam Altman, Co-Founder and CEO of Loopt, Scott Dunlap, Founder and CEO of NearbyNow, Gordon Whitten, Founder and CEO of Sojern and Alistair Goodman, CEO of . Each was given a chance to first present a sample case study where they’ve been able to bring a unique angle to geo-targeting consumers and then they all were subject to a Q&A session based on questions sent in via SMS messaging to a specific short-code specific for the event/panel.
One of the strongest takeaways from this panel was that agencies as well as the companies they represent are starting to realize that products (and even store locations) should be linked with a location, both in the big search engines (which is something companies like Google are happy to help accommodate) as well as in their own marketing. Rather than the user first searching for where the product is sold and then being forced to perform a secondary search for where the closest locations are of that store, they should be able to find all that information through their initial product search. Google already does this to an extent with both business listings as well as that initial list of products for sale that you see if you perform a specific product search, but why should it stop there? Consumer sites and applications should be able to do the same.
On a side-note, we were also shown what Josh Goldman (who also was kind enough to provide me with the graphic used in the header) described as “Hollywood’s vision of where we’re eventually headed with geo-locating services.” Shown below are the two clips, a mall scene from the futuristic thriller Minority Report and then a short clip showing him entering a Gap store only to be greeted by name and asked if he liked his recent purchase.
The Mall Scene taken from Minority Report
The Gap of the future, taken from Minority Report
Now onto the case-studies, first up was Scott from NearbyNow who presented their Hallmark OnTheWay campaign which would display a special discount offer to users who were searching for products sold in a store close to a Hallmark location. They were also provided with direction from the store they were searching for products on to the closest Hallmark, for example it might tell the user at the bottom of the ad, “Located just two doors down from J Crew.” Something brought up was that because this kind of campaign was so hyper-targeted, it essentially put a self-imposed limitation on the reach that any single campaign could have because of the lack of opportunities where the ad would be ideally served.
Next up was Gordon from Sojern who showed us an example of how they customize a consumer’s boarding pass based on not only the search and eventual purchase but also based on whether or not it was the online version of their ticket confirmation or the actual printed boarding pass. An example offer would be a discount offer for a vegas show located in or near the hotel that the consumer just booked their reservations for.
Placecast showed an example of how they’ve been able to create dynamically generated web banners that would not only promote one of the current offers from Avis, but would also display the address to the nearest location to the user. This was also translated into mobile searches as well as in banner ads featured on sites like AccuWeather.com.
Sam from Loopt then presented an example map that a user might encounter on their phone with various store or product ads appearing that could be customized by the client to be displayed only under specific conditions. An example might be an ad that would only display when the user is located within four walking blocks of the store from the hours of 1PM-2PM EST and also only appearing when the initial search was for local pizza restaurants. The possibilities available to hit extremely specific demographics, users or even location trends is endless.
Briefly talked about was also a shared horror story regarding the miss-use of push SMS messaging. A campaign that was described would text users who were in a certain distance of a Starbucks with a discount if they were to use it within a short period of time. They quickly learned that this was not only seem as invasive advertising by the user, but that it also resulted in a mass opt-out and general distaste for the tactic.
Overall, we were not only presented with examples where geo-targeted advertising is successful, but were also shown the many possibilities that are available to any company, regardless of size or product, to help connect their consumers with products at a much earlier level than ever imagined.
(header image courtesy of Josh Goldman)
