Meet your customers where they’re at with the latest in geolocation and OOH

This has sparked a new trend for geolocation targeting. A combination of various data sets can now be leveraged to target audiences by geographical area, such as postcode sectors, rather than personal identifiers (PIDs). When done right, geolocation can keep advertisers compliant with strict data privacy regulations while offering a reliable, scalable solution to audience targeting.

Geolocation OOH

While geolocation data and insights can inform planning and activation across most media channels, it’s not a new concept for out-of-home (OOH) advertising. We’ve always been location-centric, and at GroupM OOH we were executing geolocation campaigns and demonstrating their effectiveness way back in 2017 – before it was cool.

Fast forward to 2021, and advancements in smart data and technology-enabled, hyper-local, real-time OOH messaging allowed for adaptive placement and creative messaging that was both relevant and contextual within local communities.

Take Tesco’s COP26 campaign. Using multiple data sources, including YouGov and Clubcard data, GroupM identified hotspot areas for Tesco’s core audiences. We pinpointed the geographical locations of people who were adopting a greener lifestyle, and conversely, those that weren’t.

We then deployed specific messages on individual screens by location. In areas keen on reducing meat consumption, Tesco’s Plant range showed up. In places where food waste was a problem, they displayed leftover recipe ideas. Since then, geolocation in OOH has become even more sophisticated.

Navigating complexities

Planning an effective OOH geolocation campaign has complexities. While OOH is a natural fit for geolocation, it has unique characteristics that must be considered to maximize the effectiveness of a location-based campaign.

Firstly, OOH functions as a one-to-many medium. This means even highly targeted campaigns reach a broader audience than just the people you target. Geolocation approaches effective for other media should be applied with caution to OOH.

A good example is indexing. At its simplest, an index measures the proportion of an advertiser’s audience who saw an ad compared to its total number of viewers. The issue with indexing when planning an OOH geolocation campaign is that a site may index poorly against your target audience, despite a significant number still seeing the ad.

Take Oxford Circus tube station. It’s a location that wouldn’t index highly for young, urban professionals simply because of the diverse groups using the station. However, that doesn’t mean they aren’t viewing advertising there in large numbers.

Follow the Crowd

OOH is primarily consumed by people on the move, such as those commuting to work, shopping, or socializing. The most impactful OOH inventory is concentrated in urban areas and city centers, which guarantees high footfall and visibility, unlike in residential areas where OOH can be limited.

We spend half our waking time outside our homes. Focusing solely on home postcodes in OOH could mean brands are missing out on rich media touch-points. For example, an entertainment client recently came to us with a database of visitors living mainly in the northwest of England. Using a sophisticated layering of data, we produced a heatmap, highlighting hotspots such as Blackpool, Morecambe, and Burnley. While postcode data would have delivered 83 million impacts, our more sophisticated planning delivered 128 million.

The effectiveness of OOH impacts is influenced by various factors, including format, environment, time of day, day of the week, and the audience’s mood and mindset. Someone who isn’t thinking about having an alcoholic drink when they leave home on a rainy Monday may be delighted to be offered one on a sunny Thursday evening. Data helps us effectively reach people in different moods and at different points of the purchase funnel.

Understanding audience mindset is crucial to delivering an effective geotargeted campaign. The catalyst for the recent interest in geolocation may have been an increasing interest in privacy. However, the vast variety of anonymized data available, and the increasingly effective use of technology, is another driver. Done well, geolocation can target audiences while staying compliant with data protection legislation – and without them feeling targeted.

Done brilliantly though, geolocation can make people feel delighted that their purchasing requirements were considered before they even realized them themselves.