Wise Startup Blog

When trying to figure out how to make more money from online advertising, many times publishers miss out on one of the easiest tools available to them: location-based targeting.

The key to increasing CTRs and delivering higher overall CPMs is generating compelling, interesting, and targeted advertising for the user.

Location plays a huge role in delivering relevant advertising, so how does it all work and how can publishers take advantage of it?

Why Knowing Where …Is Half The Battle

Tthe implicit assumption of most marketers is that more is always better, particularly when more means more data points about who’s browsing a Web site, what they’re doing there, and have done previously online. Sometimes, however, it can be more relevant to focus not on what consumers are doing — but on where they’re doing it from.

How Does Location-Based Targeting Work?

Basically providers go and map the infrastructure of Web servers set up all over the world and map where IP Addresses have been allocated. We’re talking about over two million addresses in the database. The data is constantly changing, because IP addresses are subject to enormous flux. Up to 10% of them can change every month and even more if a telecom company is acquired.

So, as an example, say a customer is searching for shoes. By using IP geo-location data to situate exactly where they are, a shoe retailer can localize its landing page for each incoming visitor. Another customer example is a newspaper which uses reader location to customize their news and ad content. If you log in from Massachusetts, you’ll get the Red Sox score first — not the Yankees score. And news, weather, and the store locations of advertisers can be localized based on where a particular person is logged in from.

This particular publisher has 60 DMAs they serve, from Boston to San Francisco. Not only can they geo-localize targeted content, but they are able to sell local advertising to national advertisers granularized by metro market.

We have an agency using geo-data to do promotional campaigns for a Lasik Eye Center that has multiple locations. Whenever someone comes to their Web site, they’ll get information relevant to their location. They’ll be referred to the centers nearest them for contact and also only see advertising that complies with the state laws applicable in their geographic location.

What’s In The Future For Location-Based?

Looking forward, another important area of application will be mapping Wi-Fi IP location by routing Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to triangulate precise location. This type of marketing would of course be permission-based. But as you can imagine, the potentials for customizing content based on the Starbucks location someone is connecting from can be enormously valuable not only to marketers but to consumers who get truly relevant information.

Taken from an interview on Mediapost with Kerry Kangstaff.