When to Hit the Ball INSIDE the Fence – Geofence Basics

The fact that it is rare for anyone to travel without their mobile phone in their pockets or purses these days means great things for marketers. The identifier for a mobile device is called a device ID (DID) and the presence of that DID in stores, at sporting events, at work, at a home and garden show, at your competitor’s store or anywhere in the United States, means you can target them and serve them your impressions.

DID doesn’t differentiate if that individual would be considered a consumer or a business customer. It also doesn’t matter. What matters is where that mobile device is and if that device is in a place where you would want to reach individuals in that place with an ad impression. That’s where a geofence comes into play.

What is a geofence?

A geofence is basically a polygon shape that you draw/overlay over a digital map to isolate an area where you want to collect DIDs of all mobile phones that pass inside that polygon. Then, using our identity graph, can match the DID back to identities and then detect the presence of other identifiers and make use of marketing apps/channels like email, display, social, native, programmatic audio, over the top (OTT) and connected TVs (CTV).

A geofence is all about building an audience of identified individuals who were/are inside a specific area. The geofence can be any size really, but a couple of common examples would be a large geofence that could target a city or a small geofence that could target a building. Geofences are also time travelers. You can go back in time to capture DIDs that were in a specified area. Or you can create a geofence and target individuals with ads as soon as they cross the boundary of the geofence and continue to target them when they step out of the geofence.

There are so many use cases where a geofence can be used, and it’s not all about business to consumer (B2C) targets. It can also have business to business (B2B) applications. Let’s outline a few examples.

B2C Programs

Target home and garden show attendees at an event center and:

1. Serve display ads during the event to motivate attendees to visit your booth
2. Serve follow-up display, social and programmatic audio ads to attendees for days following the event
3. Pixel your site to see if the ads served resulted in a visit to your website
4. Geofence your store to see if ads served resulted in foot traffic to your store

Target visitors to your competitors stores and:

1. Serve display, programmatic audio and OTT/CTV ads with your store’s best offer
2. Serve follow-up ads after their visit
3. Pixel your site to see if the ads served resulted in a visit to your website
4. Geofence your store to see if ads served resulted in foot traffic to your store

Target attendees of a past outdoor music festival in your genre and:

1. Serve display and programmatic audio ads that drive attendees to download your new album
2. Pixel your download confirmation page to see if ads served resulted in a download conversion
3. Retarget site visitors who don’t convert with an ad in their social feeds

Target visitors to a sporting event center that your organization sponsors and:

1. Serve display and programmatic audio ads that drive traffic to a sponsor landing page to learn more about your services
2. Pixel your site to see if the ads served resulted in a visit to your website
3. Geofence your locations to see if ads served resulted in foot traffic to one of your locations
4. Retarget website visitors with display ads

B2B Programs

Target individuals attending an orthopedic conference at a convention center and:

1. Serve display and native ads during the event to visit your booth to learn more about your product(s)
2. Serve display and native ads post conference that drive click to your landing page to learn more about your offer/product(s)
3. Pixel your landing page, entire site or purchase confirmation page to see if ads served resulted in a purchase/conversion
4. Retarget site visitors with a LinkedIn ad

Target specific financial institution buildings across the United States to bring awareness to your financial product offering and:

1. Serve display and native ads introducing your financial programs driving clickers to your landing page to learn more
2. Pixel your learn more/information request confirmation page to measure conversions
3. Retarget conversions with LinkedIn ads
4. Retarget nonconverters with display and native ads with different creative/messaging

There are many other situations when a geofence could be used to create the audience(s) you want to target for awareness or offer campaigns. If you’re unsure if it’s possible to curate an audience or unsure what channels would make sense once you do curate an audience with a geofence, let’s talk.