Sometimes buyers have a split personality regarding mobile. On one hand, they see the possibilities of geotargeting smartphones, running video ads, downloading IDs of tagged users that received an impression and a retargeting folder for devices that engaged with the creative. It is exciting and makes billboard, TV, and radio advertising look inefficient-which is true, they are.

On the other hand, buyers have an issue with perceived waste. They want to build a geofence around a store with no leeway, but there are a couple of problems with this. First, people enter and exit the store to go their cars, bus or walk to their next destination. This is an overflow that should be captured. Second, when we drill down to lat/long we are hitting a small target on the planet earth; rather, we would be more comfortable to drill down to .2 miles out. This gives the system room to breathe.

We can set up a campaign for each location and monitor to see if the click rate is within goal projections. If the ID pool was polluted, this would be the first line of defense to indicate there is a problem. As we use our optimization the program (app placement, operating system, etc.), we’re making the campaign efficient; this acts as a filter to weed out any underperforming impressions.

We capture impression IDs and the IDs that have engaged with the creative. The impression ideas will then be filtered by additional mobile campaigns: retargeting IDs will come in between 2x and 16x and have already passed the first test by engaging with the creative.

When Copley Advertising reviews the program, clients ask how many locations they can geofence. One… three? 40. I like to start with 40 because I need data. The more data we have, the quicker we can optimize and build ID folders. This way, when during the first week, we find four or five locations getting lower than a .2%, we pull those locations and stop delivering impressions and ask for five more locations to take their place. Over time, we like to get down to about 15 locations that are doing very well, fully optimized, with a large impression ID pool and a retargeting campaign ready-to-go.  Now that is fun.

“Copley Advertising is first and foremost a resource. I want every company or agency to know that they can call Copley Advertising and we will break down exactly how we create and implement a mobile marketing program. If they become a client, that is secondary.” says John Flynn, CEO of Copley Advertising.

So, remember what I said: go with a geofence with a radius of .2 miles and rest assured that when it comes to data, less is more because its geofencing, not geo-strangulation!

No mere human can guess the thinking of Google but it seems that Google wants more competition for the space on the top of the search page.  This will dramatically increase prices and cause medium and small Adwords users to be squeezed out of the market.

Companies that have invested in Adwords are going to have to rethink their strategy.

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.