3 Takeaways From Simpli.fi’s Local Programmatic Summit

We recently had the opportunity to participate in Simpli.fi’s Local Programmatic Summit. This event was focused on the local programmatic industry (opening keynote by LSA’s Greg Sterling) and covered some of Simpli.fi’s latest product features and client use cases. There were 3 key takeaways from the event:

1. Location data is a powerful signal

The ubiquity of mobile phones has created a lot of opportunities, but location data signals might be the biggest. The ability to unlock significant improvements in measurement and targeting have come from access to location data. A few years ago, targeting a location radius was the best you could do. Today, you can quickly, and at scale, set-up geo-fences around specific locations and property lines. This creates an ability akin to direct mail with digital to target 7 out of 10 houses on a street that meet multiple criteria, bringing with it the potential to use location data to measure in-store foot traffic.

Since, according to Google, more than 90% of purchases still happen in a physical location, businesses want to understand the impact (both online and offline) advertising has on driving consumers into their stores. Location data makes this possible and will only continue to get better as data is refined, 5G comes to market and these attributes start to get included in measurement and targeting.

2. Television is the next big traditional medium to be digitized

One of the most rapidly intensifying areas of interest among advertisers is television inventory from Over the Top (OTT) and Connected TV (CTV) offerings. Consumers are dropping traditional television services at an alarming rate (an estimated 33 million people in 2018 alone, says eMarketer). This creates a whole new opportunity for programmatic advertisers. This inventory comes with targeting tactics that weren’t available with traditional TV advertising.

The ability to target not just markets, but rather specific users who have unique buying and viewing habits. The ability to target ads so granularly makes this medium much more attractive for both national and local advertisers alike.