Dunkin’ Donuts and AirBnB master the art of location-based digital advertising

Until recently, location based advertising  remained a small part of mobile ad budgets, primarily because it's difficult to pinpoint the exact person with the right type of ad on the fly. But if you get Google on board for targeting your ad campaign, you can be the trend-setters in the field. Dunkin’ Donuts and AirBnB took the initiative to monetize the most frequent activities done by tourists from out of town.

Dunkin' worked with Johannes Leonardo  and Trilia Media to build a Google campaign timetocoffee.com, which crunches two sets of data—the walk times to Dunkin' locations in the Times Square area, and current wait times at each—to determine which Dunkin' will get you coffee quickest.Users just need to search for "coffee near me" on Google Maps or in Google Search on their mobile phone and they will see an ad that says, "Find the fastest coffee." Clicking the ad brings up Google Maps, which auto-populates the user's location and points to the right Dunkin' to patronize.

Airbnb, not behind in the race, is launching a campaign called "Hosted Walks". This particular venture helps NYC tourists to see and explore tracks off the beaten path and not just the usual tourist traps. Airbnb also partnered with Johannes Leonardo, to tap into the site's vast hosting community to provide host-led audio tours of Midtown Manhattan via Google Maps. When a user searches for touristy things to do in the Times Square area, or input their tourist destinations into Google Maps, an ad will prompt them to see New York like a local. Clicking on the ad brings up Google Maps, which auto-populates user's location and calculates a route to their location that takes them by hidden gems—which are then narrated by Airbnb hosts in audio as well as speech bubbles.

Both these firms have leveraged the most popular tourist activities and combined it with a convenient simple local service and a digital ad to sell their products. The digital experience which accompanies the ads is quite unique, simple and addictive for new comers to the city. Who thought consumer experience was only limited to physical stores? Transcending the ad experience to a doable action to monetize a service physically within 15-30 minutes of seeing the ad is a stellar achievement in the digital world. Moreover the convenience and simplicity of using the pop- up ad makes it all the more sticky and is the unique selling proposition of these Google campaigns.

Christina Yoo, associate programmatic media director at Essence, states how a new version of the location-based campaign is now using better targeting tactics alongside programmatic buying, improving accuracy."In the beginning, one of our biggest problems was getting accuracy at scale," Yoo said. "We want to have these perfect location-based experiences for the individual, but we also want to make sure that the information that we're getting is accurate."Part of the reason why advertisers are struggling with place-based mobile advertising is because marketers aren't looking for data outside of apps, which have built-in location metrics for brands to measure against.When locations are brought together and people are targeted in real-time based on where they are, brands have to go beyond that [app] signal!

Source: http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/how-dunkin-donuts-and-airbnb-are-turning-google-searches-experiences-nyc-167216