Ad network, “xAd”, recently released its first quarter insights report which included quite a few surprising results. The report included information from surveys performed as well as actual performance information about their advertising network, along with information from other sources. While it will come as no surprise that advertisers are using more location based information to display their ads, the actual numbers are quite surprising.
One interesting piece of information is that of the survey respondents, 46 reported that they rely on their mobile devices (Smart Phones or Tablets) exclusively to conduct online research. This is for a wide range of different products and services. What does this mean? That people are using PCs even less than most people expected, and that the drop in PC usage for product research appears to be plummeting. Of course, everyone knows that PC usage is on the decline but this is quite a bit more significant than expected.
The report also finds that there was a huge jump in clients who are using geo-precise ad targeting. This type of advertising often uses the GPS device within the smart phone or tablet to get an exact location of the user to display ads tailored to where they are. This is a significant improvement over traditional geo location targeted searches which use the city or zip code typed into the search. Geo-Precise ads went from 27% of the xAd network’s ads up to 58%. Traditional advertising on their network which uses no location based information at all dropped from 9% to 2% from Q1 2012 to Q1 2013.
With this much momentum occurring in just one year it is obvious that geo-precise ad targeting is going to be huge over the coming years. While xAd is one of the smaller mobile advertising networks, it seems likely that the bigger players will see these numbers and start pushing for more geo-precise advertising as well.
Personally I see geo-precise advertising becoming a game changer in the mobile ads market. Companies are most likely going to be willing to pay a premium for being able to display their advertisements to customers who they know are only minutes from their place of business. When the ads are created and displayed properly it should lead to sales being made within a very short period of time after seeing the advertisement so companies will not have to worry about the effect of the ad losing impact or bringing the customer to a competitor.
What do you think? Will the growth of this precise type of advertising continue through 2013? How will companies begin taking advantage of this exciting advertising method?
