The range of use cases for location data is expanding well beyond mobile advertising. For example, location data are being used as a tool to measure campaigns for traditional media like Out-of-Home and TV, and in so doing, they’re helping to make those media more vital — and viable going forward.
Earlier today, PlaceIQ and Acxiom’s LiveRamp announced results of “addressable TV” campaigns that measured offline store/dealer visitation. LiveRamp provided the targeting, and PlaceIQ added location data and offline metrics to determine real-world performance.
The campaigns were for brands in several market segments: automotive, retail and tourism. Targeted TV ads were shown to US homes fitting buyer/demographic profiles, and then real-world visits were measured with PlaceIQ’s “Place Visit Rate” methodology.
The offline analytics were able to document incremental visitation lift across the board:
Retail brands saw an average lift in visitation of 70 percent.
Automotive brands saw an average lift in dealership visitation of 50 percent.
Tourist destinations saw an average lift in visitation of 20 percent.
The value of this sort of measurement is obvious. But PlaceIQ added that, as a secondary benefit to the offline measurement, “this collaboration provided valuable anonymous audience analytics capable of informing future addressable TV campaigns.” In other words, marketers can A/B test or optimize campaigns and creative that deliver more site visits or make media buying decisions accordingly — the shows that do a better job of driving offline visits.
In addition to PlaceIQ, NinthDecimal works with TiVo for targeted TV and offline measurement. And Foursquare just announced a new offline attribution product for marketers, which was used to show which Super Bowl ads were effective at driving offline consumer behavior. Others doing various flavors of location-based audience targeting and/or offline attribution include (but are not limited to): Google, Facebook, xAd, ThinkNear, Twitter, YP, Placed, Factual and UberMedia.
While the methodologies differ, offline analytics usually rely on mobile device data in the aggregate and a “control and exposed” approach to show incremental location visits tied to ad exposures. Placed is slightly different and uses an opt-in mobile panel, often surveying participants about attitudes or purchase behavior in addition to passively recording visits.
This release is one in a string of recent announcements that point to a larger picture. That is: location data have an increasingly broad range of use cases for behavioral targeting (“location is the new cookie”) and offline analytics. Once fully understood by brands and marketers, these location data and associated tools will become indispensable and change how digital and traditional media campaigns are evaluated, optimized and planned.
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