Knowing what the future holds doesn’t guarantee that marketers know how to prepare for the changes. We’ve heard from customers and colleagues alike that many teams have more question marks than answers. 

While these changes can lead to warranted reservations, we see more reasons to be optimistic about what’s coming. Not only do solutions already exist to fill in the gaps left by the disappearing cookies, this shift also provides opportunities for companies to be more selective about the audiences they engage with and the targeting they do for their ad campaigns. Let us explain. 

What’s Happening with Cookies in 2024? 

Before we dive into how you should prepare, let’s first discuss what’s happening. Cookies, the snippet of code that enables websites to remember user information and preferences, are used by the digital advertising industry to identify a user’s device, serve curated ads based on online behavior and retarget them with relevant ads. The digital advertising industry is currently worth over $600B, so removing a key piece of the equation is a big deal. 

So, why is it going away? In short, users want more privacy. In general, people want more control over how their data is used. Regulators also see the security risks posed by third party data collectors and want to protect the public by cracking down on their practices. It will ultimately be a positive change as long as you have a plan for adjusting.

What Is the Impact of Cookies Disappearing for Marketers? 

The most immediate adjustment to prepare for will be to your audience segments. Removing cookies will make it harder for advertisers to track users’ online interests and behaviors and therefore harder to serve users targeted ads. Publishers may also find it harder to monetize their websites due to the loss of targeting. Your audience sizes could shrink or change. 

Additionally, there will likely be changes to your attribution capabilities. Without data on users’ behavior, marketers and advertisers may find it difficult to measure the efficiency of their campaigns with the same accuracy initially. 

However, ad blockers and privacy reform have already rendered some cookies useless in the past few years. For many, the changes won’t be as drastic as some might assume. What’s more, alternatives already exist to help cushion the blow when it does happen. 

How Does GroundTruth Help Customers Fill In the Gaps? 

Now, it’s time for even better news. For GroundTruth clients and partners, the accuracy and precision with which we target audiences is done without cookies already. We build audiences from real-world behaviors, including real-time location signals, past visitation patterns, and additional data points (like past purchases).

The ultimate safeguard against cookies, and in support of consumer privacy, is a solid identity graph that creates anonymized customer profiles based on their interactions across the web and other devices; those audiences can then be served personalized and precise targeting while prioritizing their privacy. GroundTruth’s product and technology teams have woven identity graphs into the foundation of our tech stack, ensuring that we can power the efficacy of your marketing campaigns.

In short, your GroundTruth campaigns will continue to run without interruption in the face of the deprecation of cookies.

Rethinking the Role of ROAS and Other Performance Metrics

Whether you’re a current or future GroundTruth customer, the loss of cookies does bring up the conversation around performance metrics and how companies measure the impact of their campaigns. Particularly with attribution models changing, your ROAS strategy becomes extremely important. It becomes a constant, north star metric that can show you how much revenue you’re earning per channel, per campaign, or per audience type. 

If you don’t make any other changes, solidify your ROAS calculations and communicate the goals to your entire marketing team. Getting everyone on the same page and measuring their efforts in a consistent way will ensure that all your campaigns stay on track and you continue to reach your goals all of 2024. 

And if you need more help making that happen, we’re always here to help! Contact us today and we can show you exactly how GroundTruth helps deliver real business results.

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GroundTruth’s media platform allows brands to harness real-world behaviors like visitation to generate real business results, such as measured foot traffic through CTV, mobile, and other digital mediums. With its on-screen interactivity and built-in call-to-action, GroundTruth ads give marketers a way to immediately interact with consumers and measure the effectiveness that it has on driving online and offline visits.

Powering GroundTruth’s media platform is its proprietary mapping technology, Blueprints, designed specifically for location-based advertising. Blueprints make it possible for marketers to create and execute ad campaigns that precisely target relevant audiences and generate real business results like in-store visitation. With a database of over four million Blueprints, marketers have the confidence that their campaigns are capturing in-store visitation accurately.

The mission of the MarTech Breakthrough Awards is to honor excellence and recognize the innovation, hard work, and success in a range of marketing, sales, and advertising technology-related categories, including marketing automation, customer experience, performance marketing AdTech, SalesTech, marketing analytics, content and social marketing, mobile marketing and many more. This year’s program attracted more than 3,500 nominations from over 19 different countries throughout the world.

About GroundTruth

GroundTruth is a media company that turns real-world behavior into marketing that delivers real business results. Using observed real-world consumer behavior, like location and purchase data, it creates targeted advertising campaigns across all screens for advertisers. GroundTruth then measures how consumers respond to the campaigns – including if they physically show up to a location or website – to understand the real business results generated by a brand’s advertising. GroundTruth’s proprietary Location, Place, and Visitation data sets are accredited by the Media Ratings Council and trusted by thousands of brands and their agencies. Learn more at GroundTruth.com.

About MarTech Breakthrough

Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the MarTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence in marketing, ad and sales technology companies, products and people. The MarTech Breakthrough Awards provide a platform for public recognition around the achievements of breakthrough marketing technology companies and products in categories including marketing automation, AdTech, SalesTech, marketing analytics, performance marketing, CRM, content and social marketing, website, SEM, mobile marketing and more. For more information, visit MarTechBreakthrough.com.

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This guide will explain what geotargeting is and how to geotarget to get more attention from your audience. It shares information on the effectiveness of geotargeting, as well as geotargeting marketing examples you can use for inspiration.

Ready for your next advertising campaign to hone in on your target market? Let’s start with the definition of geotargeting.

What is Geotargeting?

Geotargeting (also called geotargeted advertising) is a type of advertising that uses location data to reach consumers with messaging appropriate to their locality and behavior. This technology displays content based on an automated or assumed knowledge of consumers’ location.

Let’s say you run a quick service restaurant. When consumers opt-in to location services for your QSR app on their phones, geotargeting advertising lets you show ads based on their actual location. So, the next time your target consumers are close to the restaurant, you can show digital ads to them and encourage them to visit.

Here’s another example. A car repair shop or auto dealership might run a geotargeting advertising campaign to show a certain ad to people who are within 10 miles of the shop’s location. Geotargeting advertising is even more specific. When consumers opt-in to location services for apps on their phones (such as a retail or restaurant app), geotargeting advertising lets you show ads based on their actual location. For example, if you run a quick service restaurant or clothing store, you can show ads to target consumers who are close to the premises and encourage them to visit.

In a nutshell, geotargeting helps advertisers create more relevant, targeted promotions for consumers, resulting in increased engagement.

How Does Geotargeting Work?

Wondering how geotargeting software works? First, it detects users’ locations. This is either specific, using GPS, or slightly broader, using cell towers. Second, the software or app uses this information to decide what information to show those users. There are two main ways to geotarget consumers:

Audience Targeting

GroundTruth’s audience targeting technology helps you to:

• Target ads to people who have visited a category, brand, or location within a certain time period.
• Use behavioral targeting by including data on both demographics and visitation.
• Create custom audiences by including data on consumer shopping habits and other behaviors.

Location Targeting

Geotargeting advertising also relies on location targeting. This gives additional insight into how customers behave in particular localities. Here’s what’s included in GroundTruth’s location targeting service:

• On-premise mobile location targeting: A geomarketing tool that lets you know where your customers are. This tool can adapt your geotargeting advertising campaigns depending on whether your audience is nearby, in the parking lot, or in your store.
• Proximity targeting: A geofencing technology where you show promotions to people near your target location.
• Neighborhood targeting: Ad technology that relies on demographic and visitation behavior within an area to show the right promotions.

Weather Targeting

Weather affects customer behavior – you don’t buy umbrellas when it’s sunny out, do you? This insight is exactly how weather targeting can enhance your next ad campaign! Use GroundTruth’s weather targeting to show promotions that match the audience, the location, AND the prevailing conditions. You can use audience targeting, location targeting, and weather targeting to run many types of geotargeting advertising promotions. GroundTruth’s data shows that in-app ads are particularly effective, but you can also use mobile push notifications, SMS messages, and display ads on digital billboards.

Geofencing Vs Geotargeting

We get it – it’s pretty easy to mix up geofencing and geotargeting. Both are location-based marketing techniques that deliver ads to customers, but there is a fundamental difference between the two. Geofencing creates a virtual boundary around a specific location, allowing marketers to target consumer devices within that set boundary with ads, offers, and so on. Geotargeting, on the other hand, delivers ads based on their target market’s geographic location, identifying their specific locations through IP addresses, GPS coordinates, and proximity marketing.

Is Geotargeting Marketing Effective?

There are several reasons why incorporating geotargeting into your marketing strategy makes sense. First, the potential audience is huge. In the US alone, 81% of people own a smartphone, and the percentage is even higher for young consumers. Among millennials, nearly all (94%) possess a smartphone and allocate more of their leisure time to using these devices instead of watching TV. Research from MarTech Series reveals that 83% of marketers find their campaigns are more successful when they use location data. In addition:

• Geotargeting technology can help marketers win more business and improve customer relationships. Because it’s based on customer behavior, marketers can understand and meet their customers’ needs, resulting in greater campaign engagement.
• Geotargeting is particularly effective for increasing online traffic and foot traffic.
• Using location data is proven to make marketing campaigns 80% more effective. If you know where potential customers hang out, it’s easy to show them the right promotions at the right time.

Geotargeting Examples

Wondering how to use geotargeting in your upcoming strategy? Check out a few successful client examples of geotargeting taking marketing campaigns to the next level:

• Ulta Beauty used geotargeting to boost the effectiveness of new store openings. The beauty retailer leveraged location and behavioral insights to reach potential customers who were near competitor shops and would be most interested in learning about new stores. Stores supported with GroundTruth’s location insights outperformed the others, reaching their weekly visitation targets 43% faster than other stores.
• Toyota leveraged GroundTruth’s neighborhood and location data to identify audiences most likely to shop for a new car and to encourage them to visit nearby auto dealerships. The campaign resulted in 1,200 visits to specific dealerships and additional visits to smaller dealerships not targeted in the geotargeting advertising efforts.
• Warrior Sports used visit optimization and behavioral audience targeting to allocate its media budget to tactics that drove visitation rates. Through reaching and engaging an untapped audience of fitness enthusiasts, the month-long campaign earned 33% more visits to specific retail locations than the previous campaign approach.

Conclusion

As our 101 guide shows, geotargeting can be an absolute game-changer in an advertising campaign. Through leveraging location-based ad technology, you can reach the right audience at the perfect location, earning your business higher awareness and profits. Now that you know what geotargeting advertising is, the benefits of geotargeting, and the technology behind it, it’s time to set your sights on how to incorporate it into your marketing plans! Aim for the stars, marketers!

Think geotargeting is right for your campaign? Learn more about how GroundTruth’s self-serve advertising platform can help you build your geotargeting strategy.

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This is where the world’s biggest brands do business and meet new partners, and the sharpest innovators hit the stage. Owned and produced by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA)®, CES features every aspect of the tech sector.

We look forward to informative dialog with the pioneers transforming advertising and exploring the innovative tech trends revolutionizing consumer behavior.

Will you be in Las Vegas? We look forward to discussing how GroundTruth’s omnichannel solutions can drive results for your business.

Let’s Connect

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GroundTruth attended NAB Show from October 17-19 at the Javits Center.

NAB Show returns to New York City, with a reimagined experience that focuses on connecting people to the technology and the tactical and actionable insight, strategies and skills they need now to navigate the fast-changing media and entertainment industry.  Produced by the National Association of Broadcasters, NAB Show New York is a more intimate opportunity for the broadcast, media and entertainment industry to present and discover product updates, new applications and workflow efficiencies to deliver superior audio and video experiences.

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