Geotargeting & Geolocation Platform For Marketers

Geotargeting Marketing & Advertising Platform

Many marketers are missing out on a key opportunity to drive business and revenue growth. To do so, they need to be able to answer the question: What is geotargeting?

By tapping into geotargeting, marketers can ensure they are delivering more relevant ads to their audiences. However, a recent study revealed that a third of marketers don’t know how to use location data to help deliver relevant messaging.

Below, we’ll explore everything marketers need to understand about geotargeting and how it can be used to boost sales and meet business objectives.

What is geotargeting?

Geotargeting is a type of advertising that serves messaging to consumers based on their geographic locations. Mobile devices play a big role in geotargeting, since smartphones operate with location-tracking services – and when a consumer elects to keep their location services on, ads can be based on their actual location in real time.

By leveraging location data, marketers can use geotargeting to deliver ads relevant to where people are at a specific time, what they’re doing and what might interest them. Thanks to increased relevance, geotargeting can help significantly increase ad engagement.

What are the advantages of geotargeting? 

One of the biggest advantages of geotargeting is that it helps serve personalized ads to people who are more likely to engage with them. By narrowing in on a specific market or like-minded group of individuals marketers can deliver ads with a local angle.

A sporting goods store, for example, could use geotargeting to deliver ads within a surrounding radius, or through location intent to individuals searching for information about that area.

Learn more about Retail Advertising capabilities. 

Geotargeting can also help ads be hidden from competitors through IP exclusion, making it an attractive option for marketers looking to reach select individuals without including competing businesses.

What complications can you run into with geotargeting?

As marketers must realize, there’s always the chance that ads geotargeted to a specific location might not perform well. For this reason, and because audiences may not respond to the same ads if running for an extended period of time, any geotargeting advertising campaigns should be regularly refreshed.

Additionally, since geotargeting pools an audience in a specific area, there is a risk of serving ads to groups of individuals that aren’t right for your product or service. Ensuring other targeting strategies are in place should help minimize this issue.

How do I get started with geotargeting?

Successful geotargeting will take into account cultural differences. To get started with location data, take time to ensure all ads reflect the language, trends and overall unique elements of the areas or individuals your brand is looking to engage.

Applying location-specific keywords, generating local awareness and delivering the right messaging at the right time will also be key to the success of a geotargeting advertising campaign. It’s also important to understand the differences between geotargeting and geofencing, which we covered in Part 2 of this series.

What are Viant’s geotargeting capabilities?

In addition to having integrations with top location data providers, Viant offers a Location Lists feature that allows marketers to geotarget using their own set of latitude and longitude coordinates. This provides an opportunity to reach consumers in proximity to these coordinates in real time.

With Viant’s suite of Planning Tools, marketers can also leverage historical visitation data to help plan future geotargeting strategies or build custom visitation segments.