With our latest release, the 2015 Global Location Snapshot, xAd surveyed 574 marketing decision-makers and ad agency leaders from around the world, addressing some important issues affecting the mobile and location technology industry in Europe.
Western Europe has the second largest base of smartphone users worldwide, with 52% of the population owning and accessing smartphones in 2015. Marketers eager to take advantage of this growing consumer audience are shifting ad spend towards mobile by the billions. A recent IAB UK study revealed that 75% of the top 250 UK brands ran mobile display ads in 2014. If industry forecasts ring true, mobile display spending will increase by more than 50% in the UK and Germany this year.
As consumers grow to love the increased convenience and immediacy of the smartphone, location-based services have become a big part of our everyday lives. Statista reports that France, Germany and Italy are forecasting the biggest increase in use of location-based services between now and 2017.
So what does this mean for brand marketers and agency reps in Western Europe? It means that location is fast becoming a driving force in the advertising space and part of consumers’ everyday mobile interactions. If location is not yet part of your marketing mix, it’s only a matter of time before it is, as these stats show:
77% of agencies and marketers in Western Europe are using location targeting
As marketers and agencies have become more familiar with the benefits of location, a variety of strategies and tactics have emerged.
Audience targeting – reaching people based on the places they visit – is in high demand among both agencies (50%) and marketers (35%). While proximity marketing – targeting mobile consumers around businesses or points of interest – remains a popular tactic among agencies (43%) and marketers (30%), it is often used in conjunction with audience targeting. In fact, the use of relevant messaging is a factor with 19% of marketers and agency leads in Western Europe concerned with consumers ignoring mobile ads. One way to combat this “banner blindness”, avoidance and even irritation of mobile ads is by injecting it with location data. This can be a powerful tactic to increase views and engagement.
Western European marketers are most concerned by a lack of standardised metrics and privacy
As with any new technology, privacy concerns related to mobile and location advertising are prevalent in the European community. As our survey revealed, 22% of marketers and agencies feel it is a top challenge for the business. Consumers voice similar concern, with a recent Mobile Marketing Association report claiming that 34% of UK mobile phone users feel that both data security and privacy are concerns when sharing location details.
Attribution and measurement, however, are a bigger challenge. Brands, businesses and marketers are constantly trying to attribute success to their efforts and prove return on investment and other measurable results. xAd’s Global Location Snapshot survey found that 11% of Western European marketers and agency leaders name a lack of standardised metrics as a major challenge. Meanwhile, across Europe, metrics including impressions, click-through rate (CTR) or the loosely standardised “engagement rate” are still widely used to measure both digital and mobile.
Unlike other channels, mobile has the ability to show direct ROI in a much more meaningful way. By incorporating real-time location data, we can now understand the purchase intent driven by mobile advertisements in the form of store visits. This allows marketers to understand the impact of their efforts from the handheld world to the physical world, bridging the gap between online and offline for the first time. As the industry embraces this new and insightful metric, standardisation is on the horizon.
- For an overview of the key trends and use of location-based marketing around the world, download the 2015 Global Location Snapshot
Sabrina Bailey-Navalon is EMEA marketing director at xAd
To find out more about the potential of location marketing, get in touch with the xAd team at contactus@xad.com
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