New York, NY, August 14, 2013 – As the sophistication of mobile location-based targeting grows, new techniques are becoming increasingly popular including competitive geo-conquesting, according to the xAd Q2 2013 Mobile-Location Insights Report. In Q2 2013, xAd, a leading mobile-location based advertising platform, reported that a third of their geo-precise campaigns included geo-conquesting–a targeting technique used to reach and engage consumers when they are in or around a target competitor location.
Outback Steakhouse partnered with xAd for location targeting solutions and geo-conquesting to increase awareness and drive traffic into restaurant locations from both loyal customers and those considering other casual dining restaurants. Based on the campaigns, Outback’s click through rate (CTR) for geo-conquested ads exceeded the industry benchmark by 80%. In fact, post click activity showed highly engaged users with top conversion activities including accessing a store locator demonstrating an 11% lift compared to standard geo-fenced ads.
“For Outback, it’s always important to have top of mind awareness in the very competitive casual dining restaurant segment,” said Karen Soots, Vice President of Media Services, Bloomin’ Brands Inc. “Through geo-precise targeting techniques, we have the ability to provide mobile users with relevant information, such as offers, easy map and driving directions, to help in their decision-making process in the hopes of ultimately influencing their decision to dine at an Outback.”
Overall geo-precise targeting continued to rise as 90% of xAd’s campaigns employed some form of the technique. While campaigns using geo-precise targeting were more popular in Q4 of 2012 and Q2 of 2013 based on holidays, summer vacation and travel, xAd is reporting a clear overall upward trend (41% increase since Q2 2012) in leveraging geo-precision targeting as advertisers refine their mobile marketing strategies.
“Smartphones give marketers the ability to leverage a consumer’s current, past or even future location behaviors and use external location cues such as time, weather, and state of mind to shape relevant mobile ad content and messaging and achieve higher engagement levels,” said Dipanshu Sharma, CEO at xAd. “Advertisers are embracing the latest targeting technologies like geo-conquesting to drive customers of their competitors to their locations and ultimately creating loyalists.”
The report also revealed the top overall and competitive geo-conquesting mobile ad categories in Q2 2013. While Financial Services/Insurance, Telecommunications and Restaurants remained in the top three overall mobile ad category positions for the second quarter of the year, location-based targeting for Retail and Auto is becoming increasingly more important – replacing Health & Beauty and Travel in the top five positions. Geo-conquesting was most heavily adopted across categories that don’t necessarily require an in-depth purchase consideration including Restaurants (#1), Retail (#2), and Financial Services/Insurance (#3).
Local relevance continued to drive performance in Q2 of 2013 with xAd’s locally targeted campaigns outperforming industry standard CTR benchmarks in both display and search (0.58% and 9.1% respectively). Geo-conquest campaigns achieved significant results as well with an average CTR of 0.57%.
Published quarterly, the xAd Mobile-Location Insights Report provides trends and insights into the current mobile landscape. Metrics and insights provided are based on xAd’s platform and campaign data (April 2013 – June 2013) from over 200 unique national brand advertiser campaigns.
About xAd
Founded in 2009, xAd is one of the largest mobile advertising platforms in the U.S. and the leader in delivering targeted mobile ads based on accurate user location and search context. Across its network, the company aggregates and manages billions of monthly ad impressions from which it derives the largest supply of location-based advertising inventory in the market. xAd delivers targeted mobile location@scale for over a million national and local advertisers, including brands like Pinkberry, Home Depot and Wells Fargo.
xAd is based in New York City with several satellite offices across the U.S. and internationally. For more information, visit http://www.xAd.com.
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