The Indian advertising industry is flourishing. Figures from earlier this year showed it was the second fastest growing market in Asia after China, with an estimated value of Rs 63,000 crore (10 billion US dollars).
A major contributor to this rapidly expanding sector is digital advertising, which is predicted to cross the Rs 25,500 crore (US$ 3.8 billion) mark by 2020. This has been buoyed by major investment in the region by big industry players such as Google and Amazon, government initiatives to push digitalisation into rural areas, and the growth of programmatic.
With such growth comes technological innovation, and the online advertising market has developed into a complex ecosystem of ad exchanges, data management platforms, and supply and demand side platforms – all of them crunching the data profiles of potential customers and enabling bids to be made and accepted in milliseconds. But the targeting is only as good as the data used and using accurate data is essential, particularly as India has the second highest number of people using ad blockers on the mobile web.
So how can IP geolocation technology ensure digital advertising remains successful?
Using location to optimise targeting
Adding location alongside other audience profiling criteria – for example demographic, intent, and interest data – enables marketers to add an additional layer of relevancy and context to their campaigns. These targeting filters can then help to serve highly relevant ads to consumers – for example, ensuring messaging is appropriate to specific regions or cities. It also enables brands to target promotions, such as localised discounts or special offers. Advertisers can also analyse buying patterns using location to identify areas where campaigns are most likely to be effective.
The highly granular data of geographic ad targeting using IP intelligence can locate users down to postcode sector level without them becoming personally identifiable. This increases the precision of ad campaigns and can increase CTRs while also reducing wasted impressions. Thus delivering a double bonus for advertisers – reduced costs and increased revenue.
Synchronising with real-world events
By aligning advertising with certain real world events such as weather conditions or local events, IP geolocation can help ads remain relevant. For example, if there is a major sports event happening in a particular city, brands can promote items relevant to that event – such as sports kit. IP geolocation can also be used to facilitate time-sensitive campaigns that align with offline promotions – targeting relevant regions at the appropriate time.
The importance of mobile
In India there are over 600 million unique users subscribed to mobile services – making it the second largest mobile market in the world. But often ad networks miss opportunities on mobile devices as users increasingly turn to wifi rather than 3G, 4G, or Long-Term Evolution (LTE) for reasons such as speed, convenience or cost – behaviour that will only continue as the government pledges to rollout free-of-charge wifi hotspots into more of India’s rural villages. IP geolocation can determine the location of the wifi hotspot without the need for opt-in – while still respecting the user’s privacy – once again opening up this crucial channel for advertisers.
Advertisers can reach consumers anywhere at any time – whether shopping, at work, or on the move. The type of wifi hotspot and most suitable ad format can also be identified, so a user with a high-speed connection may be served an immersive video ad while a user on a slower connection may see a static display ad instead.
Keeping consumers happy in a time of fast-paced advertising advances depends on good data. Premium IP data is accurate, refreshed regularly and has global coverage – and this is the data advertisers must use to provide increasingly relevant campaigns and boost both response and revenues.
