Geotargeting: What Is It and How Does It Work?

6 Min Read

If you’re a brand with brick-and-mortar stores, or with an avid following in certain parts of the country, geotargeting is your friend. Your digital media campaigns have been leveraging those targeting options for years, helping drive local business and finding valuable audiences﹣which is great﹣but what about location-based television ads?

TV is the ad format with the most impact on consumers, and if it were able to reach highly-targeted local audiences (instead of guesstimated ones) like your digital campaigns, your ad efforts would see a serious boost. Well good news, you can do exactly that with Connected TV.

With the rise in Connected TV advertising (MNTN Performance TV is our Connected TV ad solution), advertisers can geotarget local audiences on TV with concrete accuracy. Not only that, but they can also layer in tens of thousands of audience segments to ensure they find their ideal target audience.

Let’s dive into how Connected TV geotargeting and Connected TV geofencing can help you target your ideal audience.

What is Geotargeting?

Geotargeting is a digital marketing strategy that uses a user’s geographical location, gathered from their IP address, GPS signals, or other location data, to deliver personalized advertisements or content that are most relevant to their location.

Geofencing vs. Geotargeting

Geofencing and geotargeting are similar in nature, but there is a small distinction. While both of these terms are directly related to location-based marketing, they shouldn’t be used interchangeably.

• Geofencing refers to the drawing of a virtual barrier around a specific location or region, targeting the users who have IP addresses in the predefined area. If you’re within the geofenced area, you’re eligible to receive ads from an advertiser.
• Geotargeting includes geofencing, as well as other criteria to target users. This can include demographics, user behavior, and interests, as well as the defined region or individual’s location. All of these factors are taken into consideration to determine whether someone is qualified to receive an ad.

How Does Geotargeting Work?

To reiterate an earlier point, geotargeting works by collecting location data from users’ devices through various means such as IP addresses, Wi-Fi data, and GPS signals.

When a user accesses an online service or application, their device’s location information is shared (with their permission). Advertising platforms use this data to determine where the user is based geographically. Once the user’s location is determined, the platforms then serve ads that are specifically tailored for that location.

This can be as broad as a country or as specific as a certain radius around a physical store location. The aim is to make the ads users see more relevant to their physical location, enhancing the likelihood of engagement.

Benefits of Geotargeting on Connected TV

Connected TV is at its heart a digital marketing channel, so it makes sense you can target your audience the same way. With Connected TV’s geotargeting abilities, you can reach local audiences based on different levels of geography, including: 

• Cities 
• Zip codes
• States 
• DMAs 

Connected TV geotargeting isn’t the limit to its targeting advantages, either. To focus your audience even further, you can layer on demographic- and interest-based data so that you not only target a geographic audience, but your exact audience at the same time.

MNTN Performance TV is fully integrated with the Oracle Data Cloud, the largest audience data provider in the world, giving you access to tens of thousands of audience segments. This not only includes all geotargeting options listed above, but also tons of online and offline behavior, interests, and demographics you can combine with your location-based targeting. That means you can not only target local audiences, but your exact audience.

Muscle Out Competitors with Conquesting

With Performance TV’s targeting capabilities and Connected TV advertising in general, you can go on the offense against your competitors. MNTN offers full integration with Oracle, you get access to audiences that shop at potential competitors. Want to challenge your rivals for local business by advertising on TV directly to their shoppers? You can. 

For example, if you’re an auto parts store, you can select your geotargeted advertising criteria, then select audiences who shop at your rivals. You’re now in the position to put better deals in front of those viewers, so you’re not only driving more business to your brand, you’re diverting it away from your direct competitors.

When it’s time for them to buy a new battery, wheels, or headlight bulbs, you’re now part of their consideration set. If your offers are enticing and your ad creative is compelling enough, you can take market share from your competitors at the local level.

For Driving Foot Traffic, Target Users Who Frequent Brick-and-Mortar

If you’re trying to drive business to your local brick-and-mortar locations, one option is to target viewers who like to shop at physical stores.

For example, you can target viewers who frequent malls, or even those who have visited your own physical locations (you would be surprised what sort of data Oracle has at their fingertips). Always be on the lookout for ways to match your audience by targeting their interests, especially ones that indicate they’d be a good prospect to visit your stores. 

For online-focused shoppers, you can target them separately with a campaign that prompts them to visit your website. Which leads us to our next point…

Customize Creative at the Local Level

With geotargeted ads on Connected TV, you have the flexibility to create multiple ad creatives to serve different locations. A major outdoor retailer used Performance TV to do just that (download the case study here), creating different ad creative for each city or DMA, with specific calls to action telling viewers to visit their local store. They also launched an online-focused campaign to target users nationwide who would not be able to visit a physical store location.

The campaigns were able to drive significant impact at the local level and delivered an impressive ROAS calculation of roughly 3X across multiple mid-market-sized cities. Site visits were also strong, with targeted cities and areas delivering a 2%+ visit rate. The online-focused campaign produced an even stronger return on ad spend, with over a 13X ROAS.

Needless to say, the ability to localize your creative can pay major dividends. Geotargeted marketing allows you to pinpoint your ideal audience in the right location and customize your ad creative to deliver a local message.

• Learn More: What is OTT Advertising? Here’s All You Need to Know

How Accurate is Geotargeting?

As technology advances, geotargeting is becoming increasingly more reliable. The goal is full GPS precision, however, there are a number of factors that determine the accuracy of geotargeting.

These factors can include an individual’s device, whether or not they opted into location sharing, the quality of the location data partner you’re utilizing, and more. Some services may provide better results than others in this regard.

Geotargeting: Final Thoughts

MNTN Performance TV provides advertisers with all the tools they need to not only reach their audience with geotargeting but also ensure they find exactly who they’re looking for at the local level with our Oracle Data Cloud integration. So if you’re looking for a way to engage your audience at the local level with an innovative streaming TV advertising platform, we have the ad solution for you.

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