Adwords vs Mobile Geofencing

Over the last four years, I have explained to over 1,000 clients the difference between Adwords and Mobile Geofencing.

Adwords is a great tool and now has the ability to geotarget a location and place ads in mobile apps. Adwords has made a strong splash in mobile marketing.

One of the issues Adwords has is that it needs a lot happen in order for the mobile impressions to be delivered to the correct demographic in the right geotarget. A trained Adwords agency can pull all the right levers and make this happen but there’s a small room for error. One error and impressions can be delivered to a location thousands of miles from the target.  The feedback can take days and Adwords doesn’t report in real time.

Google is always changing their algorithms and one day a cost per click may be $1.00 then it is $2.00 then back to $.80. A dedicated Adwords agency can manually track and change the cost per click on at least a daily basis to ensure your total pay-per-click rate is reasonable.

Mobile geofencing is clean. The geofence is set around a location (lat-long). Then tags all the Smartphones in that location. A filter can be put in place to target the desired demographic (age and gender) or behavior.   There is a 1% chance of the wrong demographic seeing your ad. When the tagged user leaves the geofence they will continue to see the ad and their phone IDs will be placed in a retargeting folder for future campaigns.  Mobile campaigns can change locations, creative and goals in 24 hours.

The big differences between Adwords and Mobile Geofencing boil down to that mobile geofencing has:

Robust Retargeting – the ability to capture an ID of a targeted user that clicked on the creative or saw the ad (impression) and then retarget the user after they leave the geofence.

Real-time – You can track a program in real-time and check on the click rate.  If the click has gone dangerously low you can make changes or shut the campaign off and reaccess.

Behavior Overlays – Target by age, gender, hobbies, type of car you own, shopping preferences and many others.  When you download an app you are giving permission for that company to download a tremendous amount of your personal information. So basically your are opting into a mobile program.

The mobile world is running fast.  And (I’m not kidding) new abilities are happening almost weekly.  So if you are big Adwords user you are in good hands.  But you may want to set some money aside and start a few mobile geofencing.

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John Flynn is CEO of Copley Advertising. He has been seen in Forbes, Business Insider, Slate and other publications.  Copley Advertising uses programmatic buying, retargeting and optimization (app click, time of engagement, operating system whitelist). To learn more about geofencing please email: [email protected] or call (617) 651-2249.

Mobile geo-fencing: Advertise in your competitor’s store

So you’re a medium size online pet site offering high-end choices for the pet owner community.  You are using Google Analytics and maybe some digital cookie tagging to draw customers.  SEO and Adwords to keep you on top of search engine keywords. It’s expensive to use traditional advertising to reach your demographic and compiling a “customer persona” can be difficult.  You are using the tools you have access to.

With mobile geo-fencing you can create a “geo-fence” around PETCO and Pet Smart locations. Then tag all the smartphone at the location.  You can drill down further to demographics (age and gender) with behavior overlays (soccer mom, household income). Your ad is placed in mobile apps of the tagged user.  When the user leaves the geo-fence they will see your ad for up to 30 days.

Now you can target the exact demographic you are looking while they are they are in the buying cycle.  You are letting the big box stores do all the work of placing a store in the right area, advertising to draw in customers, staffing, and the huge overhead.  All you have to do is geo-fence their location and tag your demographic’s smartphone.

It is simple and powerful.

 

How does mobile geo-fencing work?

How does mobile geo-fencing work?

Mobile geofencing uses the global positioning system (GPS), internet protocol (IP Address) and longitude/latitude to define geographical boundaries.

When a device enters the virtual geo-fence the phone’s ID is tagged. The mobile identification number (MIN) or mobile subscription identification number (MSIN) refers to the 10-digit unique number that a wireless carrier uses to identify a mobile phone.

We gather information from the tag (gender, age, websites visited, m-commerce and other information).  Copley Advertising places ads in mobile apps the user has downloaded.  When a user downloads an app they have agreed (via the terms of service) to share information with the company that published the app.  When Copley Advertising buys space to place our ad we gather this information.

These tools allow us to drill down to extremely targeted smartphone users in a set location.  When the tagged phone leaves the geofence they will still see the ad for 30 days (unless they “wipe” their phone which is rare).