Selecting location-based advertising providers

Daryl van Arkel

“It is a fast growing, highly innovative field within the wider marketing industry, but ad networks and ad tech companies are misleading marketers and agencies,” says Daryl van Arkel, CEO of Vicinity Media.

“Many ad networks and ad technology companies will simply rely on third party datasets (a popular buzzword) such as GEOIP location look ups, outdated and inaccurate store location data from third party maps, and publisher location look ups, which can be very unreliable.”

“Using home grown data and true location based technology that has been analysed to within an inch of its life is the only way that advertisers will get true location based advertising. This analysis cannot always be by way of buzzwords like ‘algorithmically’, or ‘at scale’ and requires huge attention to the small details.”

Learning from early efforts

“Vicinity knows the pitfalls of digital location more than most; the founding partners began their involvement with digital location back in 2007, with humble personal GPS navigation devices (such as those made by Garmin and TomTom that one stick on the windscreen).

“Its history is closely weaved into that of sister company, Business Positioning Systems (BPS), a location based search specialist and much of the knowledge and pedigree stems from many years pioneering the location space and discovering the intricacies and difficulties that come with it.

“As far back as 2011, we began our mobile journey by bringing to market one of the world’s first location based ad platforms in the form of Navteq’s Location Point Advertising. This was early days of mobile and the platform was ahead of its time. We took many of its shortfalls such as lack of reach and many of its positives, such as publishing the distance in banner and improved upon them, bringing it into the new age.”

“In 2013, we monetised the Telmap navigation app but found the ad serving was not truly location based, the reporting was clunky and the lack of trafficking control was extremely frustrating. This led to us developing our own ad serving technology… and what would eventually become Vicinity Media was born.

“Before we even think of serving an ad, we employ BPS’ four-tier process to clean location data and ensure a consumer is never sent to the wrong place. Doing location right is no Mickey Mouse task. You have to be in this 110% and commit to doing the hard work, otherwise advertisers and their consumers lose out.”

Focused business model

“We are all about location, this is not a side venture for us, or a nice to have, as our name suggests, proximity marketing, location based mobile or whatever you like to call it, is our forte and it always will be and we are serious about being the best at it.

“We believe that we have the pedigree and consider ourselves advocates of true location based advertising that offers deeper analytics, improved accuracy and greater optimisation than other providers. We do not believe that by just using third party technology one can purport to be location based experts, one has to know what is actually happening both on the ground and behind the scenes of the technology. A good example is IP location. IP location look ups can be a hit and miss means of acquiring location but unfortunately many marketers have been encouraged to think it is enough.”

“I am not saying that we do not use IP based location but it should be a backup along with other techniques when all other lookups have failed. We as consumers are not static, we are constantly on the move and therefore our location changes with us and technology needs to keep up and provide our advertisers with real data not almost-accurate-data.”

“Many people in the industry throw around the term ‘scale’ or ‘at scale’ – the buzzwords again. It is almost as if they are trying to prove that mobile actually reaches people but that is old news, not everything should be about scale. It’s never been about mass reach for us, in fact, we’ve always been ‘anti-scale’ in many respects in that we eliminate as much irrelevant inventory as possible.

“We believe it is about providing the marketer with the right consumer and engaging with that consumer at the right time and at the right place. Reach or scale for the sake of it is of very little use to a brand; I would rather not spend the budget than waste it on the wrong consumers. I think this is another aspect that separates us from our competitors,” concludes van Arkel.