Overcoming the hype: the questions marketers should ask about hyperlocal geo targeting
Modern technology allows marketers to know a lot about consumers, right down to their precise location. But how accurate is most of the technology? GroupM’s Timothy Whitfield puts the technology to the test.
Over the past few months I’ve been approached by many adtech vendors who are selling Hyperlocal Geo Targeting for mobile inventory. I’ve been suspicious of the sales people when they say things like: “We can target users with an ad for McDonald’s whilst they are standing outside of KFC.”
This all sounded a bit too good to be true so I decided to look ‘under the hood’ and put them to the test.
The purpose of the test was to check the accuracy of the location-based services that each of these adtech vendors can offer. Most of these companies claim that they can determine the location of an individual user to a resolution of circa five meters from their actual location.
It was important to me that the test be fair so I asked each adtech vendor what information they needed from me. Some companies required my IP address, some wanted me to download specific apps and others wanted me to activate Location Services and then my IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers) and even my UDID (Unique Device ID).
I created a ‘digital information pack’ about myself. I collected my UDID, IDFA, IP Address whilst at home and work and whilst on 4G versus wi-fi. I downloaded a number of apps like TuneIn Radio, Relax Melodies, Words with Friends etc… I ensured that Location Services was enabled on my phone and that I was sharing my location with each of these apps. I used these apps at regular times during the day as well as keeping the apps open in the background.
I sent all this information equally to each adtech vendor.
After one week of regular app usage I asked each of the adtech vendors what information they had about me. I don’t want to name the vendors by name but I can happily share the results:
- Vendor 1 – Couldn’t find me
- Vendor 2 – Nothing
- Vendor 3 – I downloaded five mobile apps that this vendor had interaction via Software Development Kit (SDK). I used the apps multiple times perday for almost a week. They were able to find my home address whilst my phone was turned on and I was asleep but there were not able to find mewhilst I was at work or “out and about”.
- Vendor 4 – Nada
- Vendor 5 – Tracked my geo-location accurately to where I was standing (circa five meters). Also identified my home IP (but was 10 kilometres off from where I really was) but could track my online habits and that of other users in my household.
This was certainly a ‘sub-optimal’ situation. These adtech vendors pride themselves on accurate location targeting and only one of the five could find me.
The other four had no idea where I was even after I had shared with them my ‘digital information pack’. This felt like I was standing on sidewalk waiting for a friend to meet me with a huge flashing neon sign above my head saying ‘here I am’ and my friend walking right by me without seeing me.
As a media brand you need to understand more about how mobile location based targeting works. So let’s have a quick overview of the methodologies used in hyperlocal geo targeting.
Concept 1 – Location Based Services
This is where the Mobile Phone receives a ‘ping’ from multiple satellites that are orbiting the earth. Each satellite sends out a very basic signal at regular intervals. Specifically, each satellite broadcasts a continuous signal containing the time-stamp and unique satellite ID.
The exact position of these satellites are known as they are in a geostationary orbit. Remember from high school maths that speed equals distance over time.
The speed is constant at the speed of light. The time is calculated by the difference in microseconds between when the ‘ping’ is sent from the satellite and when it’s received by the phone. The only variable to solve for is the distance.
If you can get a ‘ping’ from three (or more) satellites then you can use trilateration (not triangulation, boy it bugs me when sales people get that wrong) to calculate the location of the phone.
All these numbers are very accurate. The speed of light is known to 10 significant figures. The location of the satellites to the nearest meter. The time-stamp in the satellite ‘ping’ is to the nearest microsecond.
Generally speaking the current resolution is about five meters. It’s technically possible to be more accurate but I’ve heard that most governments feel that it’s a security risk to give any more targeting granularity to civilians. However, I’ve heard that the US military uses its own satellite system which is accurate to about 20cm.
Media brands should be thinking about how this data is used by adtech vendors for mobile campaigns. When the user activates Location Services the operating system calculates the location and stores it in memory as a Latitude and Longitude. If the user shares Location Services with a specific app then the developers of that app can pick up the Lat/Long and pass it to the ad call.
However, the ad-call needs to be designed to accept Lat/Long information. The most common standard to accept mobile Lat/Long information is called OpenRTB. To pass the data to OpenRTB the web developer needs to call a supply side platform (SSP) via a software development kit (SDK).
Phew! That was a long description but I hope you see how difficult it is to get valid location based information. It requires the following…
Mobile App Inventory – It doesn’t work for Mobile Web Inventory! Mobile Web inventory doesn’t communicate with the Operating System of the phone.
- Location Based Services On – It only works if the user has enabled location based services. This is ON by default but many people often turn this off.
- Location Based Services Shared – It only works if the Location information is shared with the App. This is OFF by default and the user would need to opt-in to turn it on
- Open RTB – The inventory would need to have valid Lat / Long information passed into the bid request.
I’m seeing only about 25% of the total number of ad-requests coming into the network having the combination above. That means that 75% of the mobile impressions you are seeing either DON’T have factual data or they have used some algorithm to extrapolate and guess what the location may be.
The second concept to get your head around is the wi-fi mapping. When you sit down at a coffee shop you may notice that they have a free wi-fi service.
Whilst you order your morning coffee you may decide to switch from 4G to wi-fi to get free internet access. When you switch this will create two records in the wi-fi mapping tables at Google & Apple.
The first record is based on your satellite-based address as per the method above. The second record is your wi-fi address which you switch to only moments after arriving. The phone manufacturers can de-duplicate these two data points together and accurately determine the geo location of that Coffee Shop’s free wi-fi router. They only need a few data points in order to accurately identify the Lat/Long of that wi-fi router.
When new users log-on to that same wi-fi router then the Operating System can automatically determine your Lat/Long without needing to use the satellite data.
This method is just as accurate as Concept 1 – Location Based Services, however, it requires the same services to be enabled on your phone in order for it to be used.
Concept 3 – IP Address
The only time you will ever see someone talking about the IP address from the cell tower and telling you that it’s a valid signal for marketing is in a sales deck.
From an engineering point of view the IP address from cell towers is not a valid signal. IP addresses are centrally governed by organisations like APNIC. These companies give out groups of IP addresses into classes.
A typical range for an organisation to buy may be a class C range, which will have 254 usable addresses.
Have you ever been at a concert or an event and struggled to make a call or get online? That’s because each cell tower can only support a certain number of connected devices and a maximum bandwidth.
This relates, in part, to the number active IP addresses assigned to any tower.
When you drive to work on the 3G/4G network you will no doubt drive/travel past many different cell towers. Each time you do then you will be given a different IP address. If the cell towers are around 10km apart in a city then the minimum resolution that IP Address data could determine would be 10km.
This map shows where I really am versus where Mobile Location would put me based on IP Address. It thinks that I’m about 2.5km away from where I really am.
In summary: As a client, if you are thinking of using hyperlocal geo make sure that you understand the accuracy of the data.
Here’s my top three must-dos:
- Make sure that you’re selecting a vendor that can get you access to accurate satellite or wi-fi location-based service data;
- Check where the ads are being served (in-app vs. mobile web), as in-app supports passing a unique device ID for re-targeting, but mobile web doesn’t.
- Ask if the targeting that you are receiving is deterministic (25% of the data) or just probabilistic (75% of the data).
Hyperlocal Geo Targeting is a relatively new and exciting addition to a marketer’s toolkit, and can produce fantastic campaign results.
Make sure you’re getting the best product in market and you’ll make the most of your mobile advertising budget!
Timothy Whitfield is the director of technical operations at GroupM.
I have totally geeked out on this article. What a great insight and introduction. Thanks!
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There are plenty of fantastic insights and advice for brands and agencies here. ‘Hyperlocal Geo Targeting’ is such a hot topic right now but very few digital media professionals truly take the time to separate the ‘Marketing Hype’ from true and accurate capabilities. It’s great to see this piece of work from Tim Whitfield picked up by Mumbrella
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‘Hyperlocal Geo Targeting’ is such a hot topic right now but very few digital media professionals truly take the time to separate the ‘Marketing Hype’ from true and accurate capabilities. There are plenty of fantastic insights and advice for brands and agencies here. It’s great to see this piece of work from Tim Whitfield picked up by Mumbrella
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An excellent article from Tim Whitfield. I couldn’t agree more that the location space is filled with a lot of ‘smoke and mirrors’ around the exact ‘hows’ of the technology. Lifting the hood of location data companies is essential when comparing different specialists – to make sure you are not being taken advantage of. Combining this level of data accuracy with audience profiling and cross-device targeting makes for a very exciting future…. Amy Fox, Global Product Manager, BlisMedia
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This is a little something I had whipped up last month. Its not difficult to get the location correct.
Sort of relevant to this article. I think I might need to enhance this app and get into the Hyperlocal Geo Targeting game.
https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/athena-find-me/id1075743107?mt=8
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.interactiveidea.athena
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would love to hear more about Vendor 5!
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Great article thanks for the insight.
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Can’t beat road testing – literally in his case.
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This is an excellent article Tim, thanks for contributing.
However can I ask why you failed to name the vendors? In the context of this article it doesn’t seem to make sense. Obviously you are not saying that they are terrible per se and cannot deliver on their proposition. However you are – legitimately – raising the issue that in this particular trial they appeared to not have been able to do what they claim. This then sets in motion discussion that benefits all parties and affords them right of reply which also educates and informs all. Without getting into this most important detail it feels as if this is an opportunity missed to have not just an interesting discussion around this but actually a meaningful one that might result in improvement.
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Timothy Whitfield – Congratulations. Very thorough and professiona
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hello…. is it me you’re looking for?
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Great article.
Great Surname!
When I look at most of the ads I am served it easy too see this industry/technology has a long way to go before meeting its promise.
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Interestingly, the Australian TV industry, both Pay and FTA, had the opportunity to provide targeted services since early 2002 but, for entirely political reasons, a channel Seven led lobby vetoed the idea. Not only could TV ads be targeted to individual addresses but to drivers of specific cars, users of particular credit cards, supermarkets, clothing brands and so on, but they were also totally, incorruptibly, secure in that no one, including the actual advertisers, could access the target’s personal data. Foxtel ran with the concept for a minute but, since they were investing huge amounts chasing the game on the web, Australian agencies choose to follow their less aware international partners and ignored what could so easily have been the saviour for FTA television and (almost) conventional mass (as in multiple of niches) advertising. Mobile is now using similar technology but without the same guarantees of user /behavioural privacy.
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This is how you claw your way out of an annus horribilis… With smart, useful and enlightening data insights. Great work Tim and GroupM
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No mention of beacons by the (alleged) ad-tech firms – nor the author. Nothing beats cross-referencing a physical location. Is it any wonder that mobile advertising has such a bad reputation. That being said, a well researched and written piece Tim.
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Every new development in digital has teething issues. The next one will too.
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Congrats Vendor 5! Cant wait to meet with you tomorrow!!
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This is the slightly strange thing with unsolicited geo-located ads. I haven’t actually seen a resounding real-life business case.
If I am “wanting to target a McDonald’s message to a user standing outside a KFC” I would take an entirely different approach…
Of note, there is also a third concept, which is driven by the mobile network owners who will “collaborate” to deliver geo-located information about their users for a fee.
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Hang on. Since when did a sample size of 1 constitute a thorough testing of anything! Sure it’s not perfect… What is! At scale the technology works and asking the system to find 1 person once in one spot over a week as opposed to thousands of people over the course of a month across hundreds of thousands of sites / apps is a completely different proposition. This is a well composed and informative piece albeit a shallow beat up
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@Critical Mass. This is not a beat up, it’s a very well prepared opinion piece. Note that Tim does not name the vendors, clearly he is not treating his research as definitive but his case study is quite revealing. If one person (with a lot of help) cannot be hyper-located, what difference does 1000 make? What is the margin of error and is this being accounted for when these services are being sold onto agencies/clients?
Nor is he dismissive of the potential.
If this excellent piece has done anything, it has shed more light on a channel which I as a creative would have assumed had a much greater level of accuracy.
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Don’t forget Bluetooth (BLE), they can also serve up relevant and contextual messaging based on an App that is installed on the phone from a few centimetres out to about 70m range.
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Hi Tim,
we’ve been doing this stuff since 2012 (not in Adtech but App re-targeting) and as @Cam says its about the resolution “fit for purpose”.
Any App/Site that is going to detect location is (rightly) dependent upon the settings the user opts-in to, the approval processes that the App has survived and the resolution of technology method that are using.
I’m not sure the study of proving someones location by having the vendor’s engineers trawl thru the data warehouse is indicative of the product’s real-time capabilities. That’s very different to delivering on a sales person’s statement of real-time ads. (See my comments on “$ supply chain” below)
The Resolution Hierarchy (from Most to Least accurate) is like this:
1. Beacons – An App on your phone could be listening for beacons. This is the KFC/Maccas example. That App could be using the Beacon proximity for themselves or they could be onselling that intelligence via list or API. But they would have had to justify their use of Beacons during the App approval process.
So lets say the App (or an embedded SDK) has been approved, then the infrastructure and “$ supply chain” needs to be mature enough for it to flow thru to an Ad network that:
a) the food vendor is buying ads in
b) could respond in real-time (i.e you will walk away in 30 seconds from the storefront). So I’m skeptical about these open-loop claims.
More credible is if the vendor has their own App on the device and is using beacons to “value-add”. They register their own beacons and sniff for them. Sniffing a competitor’s beacons is theoretically possible and I wrote a number of posts on this a few years ago but I suspect the brand damage of this tactic for a large retailer being discovered of doing this to be a deterrent.
I expect this also to be a diminishing opportunity because with new standards like Google’s BLE Eddystone we will see more rotating Beacon ID’s being emitted (sort of like your RSA 2FA keyfob) – so sniffing will become worthless eventually.
2. UDID/MAC Address – Apple made several changes a few years ago to foil such passive sniffing for privacy. This is a VERY GOOD THING – but it did impact a number of Shopping Center based sniffing router solutions. Effectively the bridge between MAC and UDID was broken but is still somewhat available if the shopping center App joins the IdentityForVendor (the successor to UDID) with MAC. The magic of IdentityForVendor is that is supposed to be unique to the Apps of that one App publisher. Are people mining IdentityForVendor across App? You can assume so but I don’t think many legit Adtech vendors are doing that. They are more likely using IDFA and location is irrelevent.
3. iOS and Geolocation – background and foreground
Any App that has permission from the user and the App approval process can ask the Operating System for variable accuracy Geolocation. But this is a trade-off of accuracy vs battery drain. Any App that seeks to be super accurate will be egregious in battery drain. This is tolerable for your 30-minute jog with RunKeeper but not tolerable for your loyalty App that should (rightly) be valuable and opened 2 times per month.
So resolution to a few 100m is a good solution in a lot of use-cases but can quickly (sort of – long story) tighten resolution when user foregrounds the App.
4. HTML5 Geolocation – well you need to open the browser while standing in front of the store. So it depends on the user active engagement. If the user has opted into HTML5 Geo for SMH whilst they are having a cappucino in the food court then that Geo data belongs to SMH – do they pass that on to an Ad network? I dunno. I suspect that most Ads that offer ASL targeting (everyone) still uses the IP. (See next)
5. IP – still so problematic due to its changeability on mobile, and continuing innacuracy. I’ve done a lot of IP stuff over the years (for fraud detection, not ads) and seen many vendors promise accuracy and it does work for things like using the Shopping Center wifi and fairly static IPs. At this moment I’m on a wifi in San Francisco:
VENDOR 1: detects me 10blocks away
VENDOR 2: detects me in Mountain View (a 1 hour drive)
GOOGLE MAPS: detects me exactly (yes I went incognito and turned off HTML5 Geo)
So in summary, claims of accuracy have to be related to the App/Web context and whether the real-time capability has the financial drivers to support it. Obviously Google and FB have large enough reach to monentize the real-time aspect – whether the other Adtech companies can deliver in a browser scenario or a background scenario I reckon is still a work-in-progress. Of course – does the end user benefit in all this?
regards
David
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