Does my mobile location say that I’m in a Target store? Or am I in the parking lot? Or in the Starbucks within the Target? Or am I driving by at 60 mph? These details matter for contextual relevance in ad targeting. But most mobile ad placements fail to differentiate.

xAd is looking to change that with its newest tool, Blueprints. It announced the product late last week, but we had previously gotten a sneak peek during an ad targeting session at BIA/Kelsey NATIONAL. I’ve embedded the highlight reel from that session below.

Blueprints builds from xAd’s “footprints” product, which has been gathering data in the marketplace for months (see our launch coverage). By tracking user spatial behavior, it’s been able to build a robust data set of user location and movement patterns.

Blueprints takes that a step further by overlaying the physical orientation of different businesses, using satellite imagery. For example, many stores (think strip malls) are set back hundreds of yards from the street, where place data usually centers.

This is the kind of thing that makes a lot of sense at, say, a car dealership. Pinpointing someone on a dealer lot has considerably different ad messaging implications than someone driving by, or waiting in the maintenance/service area of the dealership.

“How do I know someone is on a parking lot? How do I fence that?” said xAd platform head Dan Hight. “We created a way of making polygons on the fly, and we’ve hired blueprint editors as we’re calling them, to do this for the top 350 brands and the larger scale of the retail block.”

We previewed this latest announcement (including a visual demo) in an on-stage interview with Hight, along with some of the broader tactical matters of location targeting. The video is below, and stay tuned for lots more conference footage.

The post Mapping Physical Spaces for Ad Targeting: A Conversation with xAd appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

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Localizing ad campaigns via geo targeting and local sales is increasingly important. At BIA/Kelsey, of course, the importance of localization for digital ad sales is an article of faith.

Local Sales are not, however, part of the “A” list of impactful issues for media executives. In a poll of media executives attending Operative‘s Op/Ed 2014 event last week in Palm Desert, Local Sales ranked 7th out of 11 features that impact revenues.

It ranked as less impactful than Effectively Scaling Ad Ops; Changes in buying/RFPs; Consultative Selling; Mobile Monetization; Ineffective Technology; and Cross-platform Selling. Video Monetization; Third-party Data; Buy/Sell Automation; and Real-Time Bidding ranked lower than local.

The post Media Execs: ‘Local’ Sales Are 7th Most Impactful Revenue Issue appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Localizing ad campaigns via geo targeting and local sales is increasingly important. At BIA/Kelsey, of course, the importance of localization for digital ad sales is an article of faith.

Local Sales are not, however, part of the “A” list of impactful issues for media executives. In a poll of media executives attending Operative‘s Op/Ed 2014 event last week in Palm Desert, Local Sales ranked 7th out of 11 features that impact revenues.

It ranked as less impactful than Effectively Scaling Ad Ops; Changes in buying/RFPs; Consultative Selling; Mobile Monetization; Ineffective Technology; and Cross-platform Selling. Video Monetization; Third-party Data; Buy/Sell Automation; and Real-Time Bidding ranked lower than local.

The post Media Execs: 'Local' Sales Are 7th Most Impactful Revenue Issue appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

Today, BIA/Kelsey released its U.S. Local Media Forecast (2012-2017), showing local ad revenues of $133B (2012) growing to $152B (2017). This includes advertising targeted to geographically specific audiences, such as Newspapers, Radio, TV, Interactive, etc..

One important slice of this forecast is the location targeted ad revenues attributed to mobile. That’s of course a small but quickly growing segment. In addition to these location targeted mobile revs, we panned back to look at the overall U.S. mobile ad revenue picture.

Interestingly, location targeted mobile ad revenues will grow to 54 percent of overall mobile revenues by 2017. This is driven by many market forces we examine in great detail and from discussions with industry players. We also break down revenue by format such as search and display.

The forecasting process is a doozy but we get bulletproof results and valuable findings. We’re looking to continue our streak of accurate numbers — affirmed in retrospect — for the past 5 years of looking closely at the mobile ad opportunity, not to mention decades covering local media.

The mobile exec summary is below, and BIA/Kelsey clients can log in to download the full report. Anyone else interested in finding out more can email me at mbolandATbiakelsey.com. We’ll also discuss these findings in greater depth next month at our Leading in Local conference.

Executive Summary

— Location targeted mobile advertising — the centerpiece of this forecast — is inclusive of total U.S. mobile advertising (see slide 19 for this breakdown).

— To understand the localized portion requires first panning back to the total mobile ad revenue picture. Here, BIA/Kelsey projects revenue to grow from $3.65B in 2012 to $20.68B in 2017. This projection has increased from our previous forecast (March 2013).

— Increased projections result from guidance from mobile ad networks and ad share leaders such as Google (33% of paid clicks now come from mobile devices); and Facebook (49% of ad revenues attributed to mobile, up from 23% in March).

— Google’s Enhanced Campaigns*, launched in July, will compound these factors by forcing mobile ads on search advertisers (default campaign inclusion). This will accelerate a mobile advertising learning curve and adoption cycle for all search advertisers, including SMBs.

— Enhanced Campaigns will also notably close the current gap between mobile ad rates and desktop equivalents (rates are demand-driven).

— This will play out as an influx of advertisers in Google’s bid marketplace for mobile keywords will naturally boost bid pressure and thus CPCs. There is shift is already underway, evidenced by data shared with us by search marketing agencies.

— The share of the overall mobile ad revenue pie attributed to location based campaigns will grow from 37% ($1.4B) in 2012 to 52% ($10.8B) in 2017.

— This share shift remained fairly consistent from our previous forecast, as the factors driving
localized mobile ad adoption have remained steady.

— These factors include advertiser demand, higher ad performance from location targeted ad campaigns, and resulting increases in mobile ad rates (CPMs, CPCs).

— Other important factors driving this localized share include the adoption of mobile local advertising tactics (i.e. geo-fencing, click-to-call, click to map) by national advertisers, who account for most U.S. mobile ad spending.

— SMB adoption — a slow but growing share of localized mobile advertising — will likewise impact its growth.

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