While mobile advertising accounted for 57.7 percent of all digital ad impressions served by digital advertising firm MaxPoint during the holiday season (from November 26 through December 25, 2015), there was a new wrinkle.
The new reality? Location targeting, according to the company, whose clients dropped 85 percent of their mobile ad spend on location-targeted advertising to phones and tablets.
“Among MaxPoint’s customer base, mobile advertising is quickly becoming a key way to drive significant offline actions, such as visiting a retail store to purchase a new product or a dealership to test-drive a vehicle,” a report summary shared with MAW reads. “Of the mobile programs MaxPoint ran on behalf of brands during the 2015 holiday season, ads drove shoppers to complete offline activities at a variety of national retail destinations, including grocery, fashion, specialty, and big-box stores, as well as auto dealerships.”
It makes sense. According to BIA/Kelsey, mobile phone and tablet ads that drive consumers to take offline action (i.e., location-targeted ads) accounted for 40 percent of all mobile advertising dollars in 2015 compared to the 60 percent spent on non-location-targeted ads.
BIA/Kelsey has forecast that by 2020, location-targeted advertising will surge as non-location mobile experiences a decrease.
“The shift in mobile ad spend toward location-targeted campaigns is driven by new technologies, deep data expertise, and an understanding of neighborhoods and the stores they surround,” said Joe Epperson, CEO of MaxPoint. “We’re connecting the dots for top brands and retailers with proprietary location-based intelligence that allows them to execute multi-channel and multi-device marketing programs.”
MaxPoint’s data points to predictions from eMarketer that “consumers 18 years of age and older will use their phones and tablets for non-voice activities an average of 198 minutes per day by 2017, an increase of 13 percent from daily usage in 2015.”
