Geolocation Advertising Help Your Customers Find You
Have you ever seen an advertisement that drew you in? And then you click it because you’re interested? And then you land on a page and come to find out, the business of your interest is 100 miles away from you? Can you feel your initial excitement dissipate in the miles and miles of space in between? Really misleading. Disappointing. Frustrating. At the very least, annoying.
If you’re a consumer, chances are whatever it is you are looking for, may that be a business, a service, a product, etc., you are probably wanting to find it within your area. Convenience is important to most consumers; there’s great value in finding what you need/are looking for around where you live or where you plan to go. People love proximity because it means ease.
If you’re an advertiser, your goal is not only to sell your business, but to also make your consumers happy. An easy way to achieve both is by making sure your video ads are being served to potential customers who can actually get to your business. What we mean by this is that you should really only be spending your money on ads that are going to be shown to people who reside, or are visiting, the geographical area your business is located in. In bigger terms, your video advertisements should be using Geolocation Emerging Video Formats to maximize the reach and pull of your ads.
The Geo-Locator EVF is a clickable advertisement that allows the viewer to find the closest location of the product or service they desire to purchase or visit. There are a few ways to implement the Geo-Locator in your ad, such as an overlay, custom skin, or an end card:
OVERLAY
Overlays are banners that play on top of a given pre-roll with the purpose of adding a call to action on the ad in a non disruptive way. They are usually located across the bottom of the frame and provide valuable information throughout the ad such as show times, sales, or updates
CUSTOM SKIN
Custom Skins are dynamic backgrounds which present larger sets of information while running a pre-roll. The pre-roll shrinks into the screen creating a canvas to communicate a message.
END CARD
End Cards are slates that appear at the end of a pre-roll video ad. It provides engagement opportunities for viewers once the ad comes to an end.
For example, one advertisement campaign we worked on for Papa Murphy’s, which we will discuss further later, the Geo-Locator was presented as both an overlay and an end card. Initially, the ad presents the location as an overlay, allowing viewers to intake visual and auditory information about Papa Murphy’s product. Additionally, this overlay presentation was clickable, which makes it easily accessible for viewers to follow the ad to its landing page with more information on its product and whereabouts. Soon after, the end card replaces the overlay, where the viewer has the opportunity to interact further with the ad once it's come to an end. Later, we’ll take a deeper dive into what the geo-locator looks like in practice and companies we’ve worked with who’ve seen the positive results first hand.
It’s important to understand that utilizing geolocation is not just an extra touch of flare to an ad, but that it truly serves a crucial purpose that has the potential to increase the productivity and success of your ad. Geolocation allows the user to find the closest location of the product or business they wish to be a customer of. This tool facilitates the process of having to search for the address of stores and centers and incentivizes the viewer to perform an immediate action and interact with the advertisement. This only breeds positive results, for both consumer and business.
And we promise: we’re not all talk. In all the campaigns we work on, we guarantee our clients the best tools and formatting to maximize their campaign results. One of the ways we do this is by the man of the hour: geolocation EVFs. We’ve put together a few case studies of geolocated ads campaigns we’ve served so you can see the facts of success for yourself. To ensure we were able to quantitatively show an increase in performance, we used A/B testing, which compares the performance of plain pre-roll ads to geolacted EVF pre-roll ads. And when placed, side by side, the results are undeniable.
Papa Murphy's: EVF vs. Pre-Roll
Papa Murphy, a pizza restaurant, came to us for help drawing in more customers in their area. They wanted to maximize the effect of their advertising, as a small company themselves. With their goals in mind, we knew geolocation was a necessary addition to their pre-roll ads. The point of adding geolocation to this ad was to entice customers to come into the store, showing the consumer the nearest Papa Murphy’s Pizza store they could go to. With our overlay in place, when viewers clicked our “get directions” button, it automatically directed them to the nearest pizza store. Not only did we add this feature, but also a button that allows viewers to order online directly from the ad from their nearest Papa Murphy’s.
Our study shows that the click through rate (CTR) of the ad went from 0.08% to 0.30% with the addition of the EVF. A greater CTR means that more users are interacting with the ad which makes them more likely to consume the product that is being sold by the ad. Additionally, this also increases the views and impact of the ad. The view through rate (VTR) increased from 59.68% to 64.88% just by the addition of the EVF. A raise in the VTR means that the scope of the audience watching the ad is becoming larger and reaching more customers. Overall, implementing the EVF in the ad created a greater scope of audience and increased views.
| Campaign | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Completed Views | VTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Papa Murphy’s Pre-Roll Only | 303,714 | 263 | 0.08% | 181,243 | 59.68% |
| Papa Murphy’s EVF | 236,436 | 754 | 0.30% | 153,390 | 64.88% |
| Total | 540,150 | 1,017 | 0.19% | 334,633 | 61.95% |
California Community Colleges (CCC)
Similar to the previous example, California Community Colleges (CCC) was looking for a way to stand out to future students nearby. California has tons of local community colleges state wide, some of which locals may not even know about. So it was important to CCC to put themselves on the map and give local prospective students the chance to attend. Therefore, we added geolocation via Overlay and End Card formats to their pre-roll ads to do just that.
And as we expected, the geolocation tremendously increased the CTR and VTR of the original pre-roll ads, meaning more students were becoming aware of the community colleges near them. The CTR of CCC’s ad went from 0.09% to 0.32% just like that! While the VTR increased from a former 57.89% to a whopping 73.77% !
| Campaign | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Completed Views | VTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CCC Pre-Roll Only | 92,076 | 80 | 0.09% | 53,293 | 57.89% |
| CCC EVF | 90,225 | 287 | 0.32% | 66,563 | 73.77% |
| Total | 182,301 | 367 | 0.20% | 119,856 | 61.95% |
Sac DHS Kids Vaccine Campaign
This pre-roll ad used the geolocation evf to show parents the closest vaccination center to get their kids vaxxed for Covid-19.
| Campaign | Impressions | Clicks | CTR | Completed Views | VTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Kids Vax Pre-Roll Only | 137,795 | 10 | 0.01% | 82,574 | 59.91% |
| Kids Vax EVF | 134,652 | 94 | 0.07% | 94,125 | 69.92% |
| Total | 272,447 | 104 | 0.04% | 176,699 |
