Fully 84% of mobile marketers currently use location data in their marketing and ad campaigns, with that percentage expected to increase to 94% in the future. Mobile is easily the leading channel for location data use – and 5G technology will present even more opportunities for advancement in the channel. But marketers aren’t only looking to mobile to leverage location data; in fact, they expect to increase their use of location data in various emerging channels within the next 12 months, per a new report from Factual.
In a survey of 700 US mobile marketers, Factual found that half (49%) of the respondents are currently using location data in Advanced TV (includes CTV, OTT, Addressable TV). While the percentage of marketers using location data in Advanced TV is only expected to rise marginally in the next 12 months, there is potential for more growth as data-enabled TV advertising is expected to grow in the near future.
The use of location data in digital out-of-home and voice/connected speakers are expected to see some growth in the coming year, with location data use in voice increasing from 45% currently using to 53% expecting to in 12 month’s time. However, automotive is the channel that is expected to see the biggest increase. While about 3 in 10 marketers (28%) are currently leveraging location data in automotive, the number of respondents who plan to use location data in the next 12 months in this channel rises to 36%.
Quality of Data Is The Key Factor
As marketers expand their use of location data into these emerging channels, data quality remains one of their top concerns. Indeed, data quality was ranked as the most important feature when purchasing data by a leading 31% share of respondents, more than double the share who ranked ease of use (14%) as the most important feature.
When evaluating the quality of the data, about one-third of respondents (32%) said that accuracy is the most important factor, followed by precision (18%). Privacy-safe methods of collection and sourcing practices was considered the most important factor for evaluating the quality of location data by 13% of respondents.
With the misuse of personal data being a concern for consumers, leading some to take steps such as disabling location services to decrease their digital footprint, it is encouraging to see that almost two-thirds (62%) of respondents said that they are very or extremely invested in auditing how location data is collected.
Marketers Plan to Up Their Use of Location Data to Achieve Goals
Two-thirds (67%) of respondents currently use or are planning to use location data for targeting in their campaigns. Marketers are also currently using location data for audience engagement (53%), customer experience or personalization (52%), campaign strategy (52%), audience insights (46%), audience segmentation (40%) and offline measurement or attribution (24%).
In the next 12 months, most respondents expect to increase their use of location data in each of these various initiatives. In fact, 7 in 10 respondents say they plan on increasing their use of location data for audience engagement while two-thirds (67%) expect to increase their use of this data for customer experience. While only one-quarter of marketers are using location data for offline measurement, 51% of respondents said they plan on increasing their use of location data for this purpose in the next year.
To read more, download the report here.
About the Data: The report analyzed the responses of a survey of 700 mobile marketers in the United States, including 536 from consumer brand companies and 164 from advertising and marketing agencies.
