Selling National Accounts for Local Targeting

Travis Arthur, VP of Partner and Strategic Accounts, ReachLocal
Rick Hanna, CEO, Mspark
Corey O’Donnell, VP Marketing, Brand Networks, Yodle

Yodle’s O’Donnell said, “The big challenge for network businesses is to get rock stars to act like choir boys.” O’Donnell was referring to the challenge of getting individual dealer or franchise locations to cooperate with national marketing efforts.

Reach Local’s Arthur positions the company as a variation on SaaS. It’s Software with a service, he says, with a heavy emphasis on the service part: “A platform is table stakes. Consistency is a key point of difference.”

Mspark’s Hanna: “Some players have brands strictly controlled at corporate. Others give more leeway to franchisees.”

Arthur: “ReachLocal is launching in-app mobile advertising for our customers. I think there is a play for the services space to serve up coupons, etc.”

Hanna: “When you are calling on your customers, don’t be surprised they are not anywhere near where they should be.”

O’Donnell: “The term mobile is a misnomer. The print to digital shift is a large formula. It’s like a meal, you need an entree, appetizer and drinks. Mobile is just part of part of that formula… “I also have a distaste for the word ‘national.’ There is a 100:1 ration between searches for small discreet hearing aid v searches for miracle ear. Most spend happens locally.”

The post At BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL: Selling Locally Targeted Ads appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

To kick-off BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL, the analyst team sits down to review 2015 – 2019 local advertising across 12 different channels and 94 industries, summarizing key issues for marketers over the next half decade.

Michael Boland, Chief Analyst and Vice President of Content, BIA/Kelsey
Peter Krasilovsky, Vice President, BIA/Kelsey
Steve Marshall, Research Director, BIA/Kelsey
Stacey Sedbrook, Vice President of Strategic Sales Consulting

Steve Marshall opens with our Local Commerce Monitor results on franchisees. They send $87K-plus, the highest level of marketing spend among the SMBs BIA/Kelsey tracks. They are highly engaged in digital — 42.9 percent of 2015 spending will be on digital; again, far ahead of the average SMB.

Franchises also spend at least 10 hours a week on social networks. About 85 percent maintain customer lists (compared to only about half of SMBs have customer lists in digital form). Seventy-one percent of franchises will have a loyalty program this year. This is a vindication of loyalty programs. Hand in hand with these loyalty programs, franchises are driving huge investments in discounting — 50.7 percent of revenue will be due to discount sales tied to loyalty programs.

This is the wave — loyalty and discounting — that will sweep the local space. There will be a much deeper, more committed relationship between the franchises and customers.

Franchises tend to favor buying through on-premise sales reps (feet on the street), even though many have national agency relationships. The franchises buy most through agencies and are extremely satisfied. Sixty-three percent are extremely satisfied with their agency relationships, though they prefer making individual purchases with assistance (expertise) from the agency. “They like a partner for these activities versus doing it themselves.”

Co-op advertising represents about $50 billion in U.S. spend annually and franchisees are the most prevalent users of co-op (more than 50 percent of all co-op monies flow through franchises). As a result, they want more analytics and analysis for their planning and assessment of campaigns.

Next up, Mike Boland discusses technology, particularly mobile.

Mobile ad revenues will grow from $13.25 billion in 2014 to $41.63 percent in 2019. In mobile, brands are the majority early adopters. YP, Yelp and other directories participate, but more than half is brand spending.

There are many flavors of ad targeting in mobile. It is no longer a matter of simply being geo-targeted, but must include contextually relevant information on the mobile devices. Using local area codes perform better than 800# listings, because they are perceived as actually local.

Bringing local inventory to bear on these opportunities, bringing POS inventory online as Google is doing, will be critical to market growth.

The static display ad is dying as live targeting takes on the role of providing context to mobile users.

Location-based programmatic ads are making headway. Weather, for example, can be used to address a customer with a topical offer. For example, a gym can send a coupon to a runner when it is raining: “Come in and run out of the rain.” These ads are starting to perform well.

Competitive conquesting works in retail, but struggles in restaurants. “There are so many different shades to these new opportunities, and it requires a lot of testing,” Boland said. Think of location as an audience profiling tool — where are consumers going and what does it say about the consumer that brands can use to create resonant messaging for consumers.

Contextual location targeting, such as a consumer at Wrigley Field, is a rich starting point for engagement. Drawing in other activities around that location and demographics.

“Everything I just mentioned can only happen when the location is accurate,” Boland concluded. “But the dirty little secret is that many location tags are wrong.” That’s a critical area for the market development and we have a session about this later this week.

Now Stacey Sedbrook: Are companies really learning use national and local brand targeting. Brand is centric, the location is subservient to the brand. And it is all over the board (for the same reasons that Gregg Stewart identified earlier). Talent development is going to be essential.

Stacey suggests it is important to “super-serve” the brand behind franchises, so we still need to be near the national brands, such as locating near Detroit for auto. The relationships matter more, and sales will continue to thrive.

Programmatic ads do not replace the human relationships that media companies have built with brands. Steve Marshall adds that he sees a tremendous need for integrators who do consultative selling with brands. Stacey: Make the local franchise group happy. So, send out a “hunter” to bring in brand deals, but hand fulfillment and account management to the local staff. Relationships matter.

Programmatic feels like “a buying method” to talk about targeting demographic, location with the “humble display ad.” Mike Boland: “This is bringing the tenants of search to the local display ads.”

That’s the session.

The post At BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL: Location Services Will Kill Traditional Display Advertising appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

In all the excitement around mobile local advertising, most location based ad impressions are way off their intended target. This is according Thinknear, whose new Location Score Index, is the topic of our latest podcast interview with founder and GM Eli Portnoy (embedded below).

This is a message we’ve been hearing for a while (see “10% problem”), but is quantified further in Thinknear’s report through testing user-reported locations versus ad-network reported locations. The difference between the two — scaled to a sample of 53 million impressions — was revealed.

— The overall mobile industry scored 49 out of 100 total points for location accuracy

— 67 percent of industry ad requests included latitude and longitude data

— 34 percent of ad requests with location data were accurate to within 100 meters of the user’s true location

— 45 percent lift in mobile time-on-site metrics for campaigns leveraging top tier location data

— 30 percent to 51 percent lift in store visitation rates fore campaigns leveraging top tier location data

Excluding some of the leaders in location based ad targeting (see our post yesterday about xAd), these faulty location impressions are mostly coming from larger ad networks that are latching on to the excitement around location targeted ad relevance.

This is a double edged sword as we discuss in the podcast: The interest in location targeting is growing among advertisers… a good thing. But many publishers and ad networks are opportunistically filling that demand by “inferring” lat longs from less reliable means like reverse IP lookups.

This is a big deal, as it hampers the true performance of location based ad targeting. As we’ve been saying for years, genuine location targeted ad strategies can boost performance and return on ad spend. It’s also great for mobile publishers who can see higher premiums on their ad inventory.

But the disingenuous practices being uncovered by Thinknear’s study degrade the value of this ad inventory over time, and give location targeting a bad name. We covered this closely in our mobile ad attribution white paper and the conversation continues this week with Eli.

The post BIA/Kelsey Podcast: A Conversation with Thinknear appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Last week we covered xAd’s new Footprints data visualization play. It paints a better picture (literally) of location ad targeting capabilities. This was a key topic at BIA/Kelsey’s Atlanta conference earlier this month, where xAd’s Therran Oliphant updated us on the company’s latest tools.

In a follow up discussion with xAd’s VP of Marketing Monica Ho late last week, she explained that Footprints is an educational tool for the marketplace to better understand what’s possible. It will first be available to a handful of agency partners who can best benefit from (and disseminate) its learnings.

Meanwhile, we got a sneak peek and I was able to get a copy Footprints’ demo video which is embedded below. It illustrates some of the data visualization elements, such as seeing if an (anonymized) mobile user is on a car lot, or just driving by — a key distinction for auto advertisers.

This can also include affinity data for different audience profiles, an area where xAd continues to shine. With this added dimension, geo-conquesting (advertising to certain affinity groups in and around competetors’ physical locations) is boosted. Lots of these types of possibilities come to light in the video.

For the sake of context the video is shown from the hypothetical perspective of Ford as an advertiser. Brand affinity is shown by color-coded nodes on the map, while data overlays on the interface can be tabbed to show things like category-specific ad impressions (i.e. Auto) in a location-relevant context.

We expect to see a lot more of Footprints especially as xAd rolls it out to a broader audience over time. Meanwhile, see the video embedded below. Expand to full screen for a better view of the data and graphical detail.

The post xAd’s Data Visualization Tool, Visualized appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Last week we covered xAd’s new Footprints data visualization play. It paints a better picture (literally) of location ad targeting capabilities. This was a key topic at BIA/Kelsey’s Atlanta conference earlier this month, where xAd’s Therran Oliphant updated us on the company’s latest tools.

In a follow up discussion with xAd’s VP of Marketing Monica Ho late last week, she explained that Footprints is an educational tool for the marketplace to better understand what’s possible. It will first be available to a handful of agency partners who can best benefit from (and disseminate) its learnings.

Meanwhile, we got a sneak peek and I was able to get a copy Footprints’ demo video which is embedded below. It illustrates some of the data visualization elements, such as seeing if an (anonymized) mobile user is on a car lot, or just driving by — a key distinction for auto advertisers.

This can also include affinity data for different audience profiles, an area where xAd continues to shine. With this added dimension, geo-conquesting (advertising to certain affinity groups in and around competetors’ physical locations) is boosted. Lots of these types of possibilities come to light in the video.

For the sake of context the video is shown from the hypothetical perspective of Ford as an advertiser. Brand affinity is shown by color-coded nodes on the map, while data overlays on the interface can be tabbed to show things like category-specific ad impressions (i.e. Auto) in a location-relevant context.

We expect to see a lot more of Footprints especially as xAd rolls it out to a broader audience over time. Meanwhile, see the video embedded below. Expand to full screen for a better view of the data and graphical detail.

The post xAd's Data Visualization Tool, Visualized appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the themes that emerged from BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference in Atlanta earlier this month was the importance of location targeted ad strategies for national brands. That theme culminated in a mega session on Day 2 of the conference on location targeting strategies.

We set it up as a series of case studies that took the stage one by one. There was lots of diversity in the companies, campaign objectives and takeaways. This was emblematic of another key theme of the conference: there’s a great deal of variability in ad tactics from one brand to the next.

That’s always been the case in local, given the fragmentation of SMBs, all those categories and “headings”. Each has different needs. We learned in Atlanta that while it’s not as pronounced for national “multi-location” businesses, they are still quite diverse in their marketing dynamics.

We’ll be mining and posting short videos on these themes in the days and weeks to come. To kick off the series, here’s my intro to the mobile & location forum. It covers a few key trends to set the stage for the next speakers; or in this case the next videos to come.  Stay tuned for that.

The post Leading in Local Video: Mobile & Location Based Ad Targeting Trends appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

One of the themes that emerged from BIA/Kelsey’s Leading in Local conference in Atlanta earlier this month was the importance of location targeted ad strategies for national brands. That theme culminated in a mega session on Day 2 of the conference on location targeting strategies.

We set it up as a series of case studies that took the stage one by one. There was lots of diversity in the companies, campaign objectives and takeaways. This was emblematic of another key theme of the conference: there’s a great deal of variability in ad tactics from one brand to the next.

That’s always been the case in local, given the fragmentation of SMBs, all those categories and “headings”. Each has different needs. We learned in Atlanta that while it’s not as pronounced for national “multi-location” businesses, they are still quite diverse in their marketing dynamics.

We’ll be mining and posting short videos on these themes in the days and weeks to come. To kick off the series, here’s my intro to the mobile & location forum. It covers a few key trends to set the stage for the next speakers; or in this case the next videos to come.  Stay tuned for that.

The post Leading in Local Video: Mobile & Location Based Ad Targeting Trends appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

— US mobile search ad spending will grow 40.1% in 2014, contributing to an overall gain of 122.0% for all mobile ads.

— Overall desktop ad spending increased just 2.3% last year.

— Desktop search ad spending will drop $1.4 billion this year, a decrease of 9.4% from 2013.

— In 2013, 76.4% of Google’s search ad revenues came from desktop. However, that share is expected to fall to 66.3% in 2014 due to a $770 million decrease in desktop search ad.

— Google’s mobile search revenues will increase $1.76 billion, totaling approximately one-third of Google’s total search revenues.

So this cross-device targeting is a important initiative at Google because people are shifting between their mobile phones, tablets, and desktops, and the primary means of tracking web browsing, the cookie, has limited functionality on mobile.

According to our Consumer Commerce Monitor Survey (CCM), 40.3% of consumers use their smartphone daily for local shopping activities compared to 28% of consumers who use a desktop daily for local shopping activities.

Advertisers are responding to consumers’ rapidly increasing time spent with mobile phones and tablets and the usage shift to mobile. Search inside mobile platforms don’t leverage cookies as effectively so something new like this is needed. This will help better monetize mobile app ad inventory.

The post Google Tests Desktop-to-Mobile Retargeting Ad Product appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.