Location, and especially consumer location data, is becoming increasingly important for the marketing industry to connect with audiences and build brand recognition. Location’s role in marketing planning has been augmented by advances in technology, infrastructure increases and new data sources. Following qualitative and quantitative research into location’s evolving role, Posterscope published this report to share the audience targeting opportunities behavioural insight creates for business.

1. The growing importance of
location for marketers

2. About this report
Location, and especially consumer location
data, is becoming increasingly important
for the marketing industry to connect with
audiences and build brand recognition.
Location’s role in marketing planning has
been augmented by advances in
technology, infrastructure increases and
new data sources.
Following qualitative and quantitative
research into location’s evolving role,
Posterscope published this report to
share the audience targeting opportunities
behavioural insight creates for business.
This whitepaper also highlights research
findings, including that increased
collaboration between marketers, creative
industry and media agencies is required to
make location-based targeting a reality.
Posterscope held a roundtable with
industry leaders – including TfL, Asics, EE,
Camelot, Doddle, JCDecaux, Havas,
Media IQ, VCCP, Zenith Optimedia,
Starcom MediaVest Group and xAd – to
understand the challenges the industry
faces in realising the new potential
of location.
Posterscope also surveyed more than 100
UK marketing leaders to determine
current attitudes towards using location
data in OOH campaigns.
Key findings
• Marketers believe location data holds
significant ROI opportunities for the OOH
sector, and are planning to increase
investment as a result
• The full potential of location data will be
realised in 2019, according to marketers
• Location data improves OOH, marketers
believe, but an inability to consolidate big
data channels is preventing them from
turning it into actionable insight
• Privacy remains top of the agenda
regarding the exploitation of location data
• Better integration and education is
required between planners and creatives
to ensure that the sector fully understands
the capabilities of different data sources.
82%
Believe the biggest challenge for marketers is
the disconnect between creatives and planning
95% Believe location data makes OOH better
93%
Believe it’s crucial to balance
consumer data with providing value
93%
Believe digital inventory increases
will improve location data use
87% Believe mobile data is being underused
60%
Over half believe relevant ads using location
data will increase advertiser ROI by more than
Marketer Insights:

3. The state of play
Location has never been more important
than it is today, and its role is growing.
Where consumers are and how
brands speak to them in the local
environment is increasingly a key
driver of business growth.
New businesses like Uber, Airbnb and
even Tinder have charmed the public by
creating new consumer behaviours, all
based around location.
Now, consumers expect location-related
content, and they’re increasingly happy to
share their location data in return for this
sort of reward. According to the latest
Berg Insight research, worldwide mobile
geo ad spend is worth €1.2 billion already
and that’s expected to grow to almost €11
billion by 2019.
In the US, figures from BIA/Kelsey state
that 32 per cent of current total ad spend
is geo-targeted, which is expected to rise
to around 43 percent by 2019. Google
claims four out of five consumers want
search ads customised to their immediate
surroundings. Geotagged Instagram posts
receive 79 per cent increase in
engagement compared to non-geotagged
posts. IBM recently found that 36 percent
of global consumers are very willing to
share their location data with retailers. In
short, location has found its footing, and
now the outdoor advertising industry
needs to incorporate this target audience
specific data.
In the out-of-home (OOH) advertising
industry, location has always been of
paramount importance. Having a great
poster has never been the whole route to
success, you also need to put it in the
right place.
New location technology has changed the
media landscape, creating a new capability
for OOH that enables advertisers to reach
the right audience, in the right place and at
the right time.
Two key developments have fostered this
new location capability. The first is the
unprecedented growth of digital
infrastructure. 2016 will see media owners
across the board invest more than £100m
into the creation of new digital
infrastructure, in excess of
10 percent of turnover.
Research conducted by Posterscope in
January 2016 found that 95 per cent of
marketers believe this growth in digital
inventory represents a major revenue
opportunity, and certainly the recent
performance of the sector provides many
reasons to be optimistic. Digital revenues
have been growing dramatically, in excess
of 25 per cent in 2015 year, and we
estimate that digital’s share of total OOH
revenue will grow to around 45 per cent
in 2016.
The second is the increasing range of new
sources of geo-location data, which
provide a deeper, more granular analysis
of consumers’ locations and behaviours
than the OOH industry has ever seen.
We’ll explore the ways in which this data
can be matched with outdoor commercial
targeting opportunities in the next section,
and how it can create exciting new
opportunities for location-based marketing
by enabling advertisers to plan with more
accuracy than ever before.
Research conducted by Posterscope in
2016 has found that marketers believe
the full potential of location data will be
achieved in the next three years.
This has highlighted out-of-home's role to
share new location capabilities with
marketers so they can begin to adopt
these highly targeted, impactful
campaigns. By taking a proactive role in
sharing these innovations with marketers,
they will become better positioned to
adopt oncoming changes and this paper
will explore how these changes can
be overcome.

4. Glen Wilson, Managing Director, Posterscope:
“The prolific increase in available data and data sources is helping us to understand
location in a deeper way, and enabling us to better understand patterns of consumer
behaviour. Mobile data empowers us to understand people’s openness to messaging in
specific areas, which might not be immediately obvious from the physical context, while
social sentiment provides an extra dimension to that analysis.
“In combination, these data sources can start to help us understand the emotional
connections people have to particular places and the best times to reach them, for
example in underground stations. People have a connection to their local underground
station in a way that exceeds its practical purpose. For the marketing and communications
industry there’s a clear opportunity, where if you use richer data to plan, you get a better
result.”

5. Context and the
consumer
The proliferation of available data that can
be used in OOH campaigns has been a
revelation to the sector. Robust audience
data and a standard audience currency
are well served by Route in the UK,
arguably the most sophisticated OOH
audience research tool in the world.
New data sources are now enabling
advertisers to better understand who and
where their audiences are, and most
importantly, how to reach them.
By layering different data points,
advertisers can gain far richer insights into
audience behaviour in specific locations.
Often this behaviour is contrary to that
which might be expected in terms of
physical context, revealing the ‘hidden’
relevance for OOH locations.
Data enables advertisers to achieve a new
level of contextual relevance, placing the
consumer at the centre of a campaign and
enabling advertisers to deliver the right
message, at the right time, in the right
location. This in turn drives more efficient
and effective OOH communications.
Three data sources in particular now
provide this greater depth of
understanding and contextual relevance:
• Real-time data:
Live data – such as weather, temperature,
travel, time of day – enables ads to react
to the world around them in realtime,
automatically activating or updating
screens using live data or content. A great
example is the Santander Cycles
campaign, in which live maps across
London showed commuters where the
nearest cycle stations were located and
how many bicycles were currently
available in each.
• Mobile data:
Tracking the apps and sites people use
when they are on their smartphones
provides a powerful insight into their
interests and behaviours, and therefore
what sort of ads might work for them. By
monitoring anonymised and aggregated
data at Surbiton station, for example,
Posterscope was able to determine that a
high proportion of the audience in that
location were visiting fashion websites and
using fashion apps, and thus concluded
that they would be more receptive to
fashion ads.
• Social tracking data:
Social media activity can now be tracked
to identify where people are when they are
engaging in relevant conversations. Once
hotspots for relevant conversations have
been identified, OOH campaigns can be
planned around those key target locations.
An example is a recent campaign
Posterscope worked on for the hit video
game Fallout 4, in which ads were placed
in locations where gamers were engaging
in Twitter conversations.
Using these data sources, ads can be
made far more contextually relevant, but
what’s important about this contextual
revolution in OOH planning is that it’s just
as relevant to classic OOH as it is to
digital. It is universally true that using richer
data delivers better results, and
Posterscope has seen some spectacular
increases of up to 200 per cent for brand
KPIs vs. control areas.
Inevitably, as useful data in the OOH
space proliferates exponentially and
becomes more accessible, the challenge
and opportunity will be the ability to ingest
this data in significant volumes and spot
the interesting patterns and correlations.
Nonetheless , Posterscope’s research
indicates that marketing departments and
agencies are not yet set up to take
advantage of this new level of available
data. Two thirds of marketers (66 per cent)
believe an inability to harness big data is
holding campaigns back from fully
embracing the power of location, and 82
per cent of marketers say there’s a

6. disconnect between creatives and
planning processes. Other challenges
include the scale of digital inventory, which
72 per cent of marketers believe is a key
barrier, while 71 per cent said privacy was
a big challenge, which will be addressed in
the following section.
The industry needs to see greater
consolidation. Presented with a large
scope and quantity of disparate data,
marketers are forced to use multiple
providers for individual, specific tasks. This
pushes up fees and makes the data
difficult to analyse when put alongside
different data from another provider.
Ultimately clients want cost-effective,
simple solutions that connect multiple data
sources and turn them into actionable
insights that can be used to fuel
superior campaigns.
Theo Theodore, General Manager EMEA, xAd:
“Location isn’t just about proximity. It is about understanding people. Once you can start segmenting
audiences, the message changes. It starts to be more about the path to purchase as opposed to
just getting to someone where they are. Understanding that path to purchase and the different
touchpoints, that’s really the power of location.”
Harriet McDonald, Commercial Partnerships Lead, TfL:
“At TfL, our data is open, so people can use it to create apps that they can then use. Citymapper are a
class example of an organisation that now know probably far more about our customers than we do.
They know exactly how they’re moving, and there will be people at Visa and MasterCard who know not
only how they’re moving but also how they’re spending. The opportunity for TfL is actually how we
create our own native apps where we layer on our own added value on top of that, so that people
willingly give up their personal data if the value exchange is in their favour.”
Michael Price, Marketing Director EMEA, Asics:
“‘Big data’ is an overused term which actually doesn’t mean anything. You want the right data, not
big data. As a client, I want the right stuff that helps me be better informed. Eventually, I think there
will be greater consolidation back in agencies over again, because the current model is unsustain-
able for clients. You get lots of different charge fees for different tasks, where actually you want less
fees, greater quality, creativity, and better connection. Marketers need a simple solution that
connects e-commerce, retail and marketing data in a simple way that adds value, and enables them
to get to the right data.”

7. Theo Theodore, General Manager EMEA, xAd:
“Location, particularly in combination with mobile, is an extremely powerful tool that
can be used through what can be called a ‘real-world cookie’. Thinking about the web
how people move through desktop, what advertisers are doing is looking at where
they’ve been, where they are, where they might be going. When you start transferring
that to the real world, and then look at the context of those locations, suddenly that
becomes a very powerful platform that you can actually activate in the real world. In
this context location becomes very, very powerful, and can actually be considered a
category on its own next to social, search and other channels.”
Privacy vs
personalisation
The proliferation of data represents a
tremendous opportunity for the OOH
sector, but it brings inherent risks as well.
Consumers are now constantly connected
through their mobile devices, interacting
with sites, apps and social media that
reveal more information about who they
are, what they like and where they’re going
than advertisers have ever had access
to before.
Using this data, advertisers can start to
understand how people move through the
physical world in almost the same way as
people move through the digital world. It’s
a digital footprint that can be read in a
geographical context – a real world cookie.
However, such power also brings with it
great responsibility. Privacy remains top of
the agenda for consumers, and advertisers
ignore the issue at their peril. The Market
Research Society found that 70 per cent
of people believe the privacy of their
personal data is more important than it
was five or ten years ago. According to the
DMA, concerns over privacy remain high,
at 79 per cent, but this actually represents
a gradual decline, down from 84 per cent
in 2012. The DMA also found that the

8. majority of the population (55 per cent) are
willing to share reasonable amounts of personal
information in exchange for better services.
Encouragingly, research conducted by
Posterscope in 2016 shows that marketers
understand this responsibility; 93 per cent said it
is crucial to get the balance right between using
consumer data and providing something of value.
69 per cent said privacy is a major consideration
when it comes to location data, while 83 per cent
recognise that consumers will only part with
personal data if they receive something of value
in exchange.
The research shows that advertisers recognise
the importance of treating consumer data with
the respect it deserves. Consumers understand
the value of their personal data, with the DMA’s
research indicating that 52 per cent see their
personal information as a way to command
better deals from companies.
There’s a clear value exchange, and advertisers
understand that getting the balance right is
crucial. Meeting this value exchange is a key
creative challenge, which we’ll talk about further
in the following section. Consumers are only
willing to part with their data if they’re going to
get something in exchange which provides them
with value, and advertising campaigns need to
reflect that.
Max Lucas, Media Strategy Manager, Camelot:
“There are clearly challenges and privacy issues that come with data. But there
are ways to avoid the data privacy route, using internal data to be more relevant
by location rather than player data. For example, from our internal data we know
that on average there are about 144 different grants in every postcode that
benefit from lottery funding. That enables us to match relevant good causes in
different locations, and makes our advertising more relevant.
“Likewise, retail data can provide valuable insights. We know that some stores
are much more likely to attract players that come in for the occasional last-min-
ute EuroMillions jackpot versus other retail outlets where people will go week in,
week out to get their Lotto ticket. Using data in that way we’re able to use
location to be more relevant without being too intrusive.”

9. Creative challenges:
Location data and digital infrastructure
present creatives with a challenge to
integrate concept and strategy to
maximise audience cut through.
However, Posterscope’s research reveals
that four in five (82 per cent) marketers
believe that a communication disconnect
between creatives and planners is the
biggest barrier to successfully using
location data in campaigns.
87 per cent of marketers believe better
use of location data could help creative
agencies establish a point of difference,
but a knowledge gap in the creative
community is perceived to prevent
agencies from taking this leap. 85 per cent
of marketers believe creatives need to
better understand how to use location
data in campaigns. The responsibility for
this, however, lies with planners, as 83 per
cent of marketers believe planners need
to teach creatives the power of
location data.
In particular, creatives are exploring new
ways to embrace how ‘programmatic
creativity’ can extend the magic of a
creative in an entirely new, impactful and
relevant way at scale. There is a need to
educate and inspire creative teams in
agencies so they have a better
understanding of the full capabilities of
location data, and how it can be used
at scale.
The systems are now in place to
implement campaigns that make
innovative use of location data at scale, but
creatives need to develop a better
understanding of the power of location
first. Understanding how it can be
deployed will enable creative agencies to
develop work that makes full use of the
data and produce better, more impactful
and more engaging campaigns as a result.
Jim Thornton,
Creative Director, VCCP:
“I think the technological advance we’ve seen
in recent years is just incredible. However, I
think unless we’re careful we’ll find ourselves in
a hideous race to the bottom, which is going to
irritate and annoy the consumer to the point
where they will start to actively reject.
“It’s always been true that a bad ad is not just a
bad ad, it is an incrementally worse ad every
time you’re forced to watch it. Ultimately
consumers start to actively reject brands if they
pollute the consumers’ environment. The value
exchange is where consumers are telling
brands ‘reward me, abuse me, interest me,
intrigue me, but don’t just shout at me and
don’t batter me.’”

10. Michael Price, Marketing Director EMEA, Asics:
“Data will never win over common sense. Data will tell me the more efficient way to buy, which means I get a load of six-sheets at a
good price, yet for brand behaviour one massive poster can actually have a bigger impact.
“People love great communication and great advertising, especially in the UK. I remember 25 years ago people liked the advertising
more than they liked many of the TV programmes. It’s on the client and the agencies to come up with great stuff, because actually, over
the years I think the quality has gone down.
“Ultimately I hope everything doesn’t go digital. But that needs creative people to take action, because I think creativity is probably more
powerful than the data. The data just helps us get that somewhere, but what we need are powerful creative agencies and departments
that are willing to fight back.”
Stewart Easterbrook, Chairman, Media IQ,:
Most clients are focused on running their own businesses. They’re not data businesses. Now, businesses are realising there’s a massive
opportunity to understand more about their customers because of the wealth of data and potential insight their marketing activities are
generating, but they haven’t built themselves to be able to absorb that data, and act on it.
Many businesses are now starting to draw interesting insights, but what’s important is not only how that gets plugged back into the
marketing activity, but also how the business adapts to that better understanding of the customer.”

11. The future for
location in OOH
As with the geolocation industry, which in
mobile ad spend alone is predicted to top
€10 billion in the next five years, our
relationship with mobile’s location
capabilities in OOH continues to improve.
But it’s not just the media industry that has
a closer relationship with location –
consumers do too.
People are sharing their location
information more than ever. Social
check-in services have made us more
aware of location, and CRM platforms are
helping us earn loyalty points and rewards.
In return, consumers expect more
communications to be tailored to their
location, and brands can benefit by
understanding that increasing demand.
Both Google and Instagram have reported
that location has become a much stronger
driver in delivering the right results and
engagement with consumers.
However, as this paper has explored,
consumers increasingly understand the
value of their personal data. As a result,
advertisers need to be careful about the
way in which they use it, to ensure that the
value exchange they’re entering into
meets consumers’ expectations by
delivering something of high quality.
Enhanced targeting powered by location
as well as mobile, social and real-time
data, enables ads to be more relevant,
affecting and impactful than they’ve ever
been before. But the power of location is
only just beginning to be explored. There’s
a tremendous opportunity for the outdoor
advertising industry, not least in terms of
profit. Posterscope’s research reveals that
marketers believe location data can
increase ROI for advertisers by up to 60
per cent, and on average marketers are
planning to increase investment in location
targeted campaigns by 45 per cent.
However, there’s an education job for
agencies and planners to do with clients
first. There’s a huge creative opportunity
that could be taken advantage of, with
adequate buy-in from across the industry.
Investment will increase alongside
advances in infrastructure,
particularly digital.
Posterscope’s research reveals that a
tipping point is coming in 3 years. The
research also finds that marketers
estimate that the out-of-home industry will
be able to maximise location data by
2019. If the challenges detailed within this
paper are overcome, the outdoor industry
will seize the potential of location data, and
start producing campaigns that not only
meet, but exceed consumer expectations.

12. Jodie Stranger, President, Global Network Clients,
Starcom MediaVest Group:
“As we get so caught up in this digital programmatic world, you have to remember that out-of-home
is the one medium that you cannot turn off, switch off, choose not to buy. It’s a powerful thing that
will always be there. How we use technology and data to enhance that experience and open up and
unlock new opportunities, whether that’s couponing, or virtual opportunities, or whatever that may be,
that’s the opportunity.”
Paddy Earnshaw, Chief Marketing Officer, Doddle:
“We’re two-screening constantly now. So walking down the street you’re constantly viewing
information. Proximity though, I’m not sure whether it’s to do with location or actually to do with your
heart. So if the message is closer to your heart then clearly it’s going to work better. Serving something
that touches on sentiment is so key. For clients, data is becoming part of our day-to-day business, but
customers have to be willing not only to share their information, but also what matters to them.”
Glen Wilson, Managing Director, Posterscope:
“There’s a fantastic opportunity to put location to work today, but at the moment the outdoor industry
is missing it. Three years is too long to wait for something that we could do now. It’s already started
happening, but now we need creatives and planners to come together to ensure that campaigns
can use location targeting techniques at scale, to deliver maximum impact, increased ROI and,
ultimately, better campaigns.”