TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The Location Based Marketing Association (LBMA) has today released its second annual Global Location Trends Report. Launched at SXSW during RetailLoco, the largest annual gathering of brands and LBMA members, the report reveals major trends in usage and investments in location-based marketing as well as projections for implementing this technology in 2017.
The LBMA’s report shows how over 500 business leaders and marketing executives from across the globe are currently using location based marketing, what investment they’re making in it and what their future plans are for implementing this technology. The online study was conducted in the five most important and innovative global markets for location based marketing – US, Canada, Germany, UK and Singapore and offers a detailed market by market analysis. Key overall findings from the report include:
- Location-based ad targeting is valuable actionable and accurate according to some of the world’s top executives. Over 50% of companies are currently using location-based data to target their customers.
- 25% of marketing budgets are allocated to location-based marketing (LBM). The ability to target consumers and driving POS sales are cited as the top benefits of LBM.
- Countries are shifting more marketing dollars to LBM.
“This report proves that location data is of huge value to the world’s biggest advertisers. We are seeing a major increase in our deterministic proximity data being used for enhanced attribution and targeting,” said Thomas Walle, CEO and co-founder of Unacast, the world’s largest network of proximity data. “The issue to date has been the fragmentation of the proximity industry. Unacast has cracked the code on how to effectively mirror the accuracy of online data collection in the real world. Deterministic proximity data provides not only a pervasive connection with the consumer, but also the conditions for a much deeper and more personal relationship with them. With our Real World Graph, marketers can understand their customers’ real world behavior and how they are contextually connected to physical locations with accuracy and relevancy.”
Additional findings:
- Company usage of location-based marketing is on the rise in most countries — 5% increase in the US from 2016 to 2017, 6% in Canada, 7% in the UK, and 3% in Singapore. Only Germany saw a 3% decrease in location-based marketing usage.
- Executives agree LBM is an important business issue and its importance will increase in 2017.
- WIFI and GPS are the most heavily deployed LBM technology — Germany and Singapore show more GPS technology deployment than other countries.
- Countries plan to deploy more Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in 2017.
- Social Location Services and Location Based Advertising were the top areas of interest in 2016 and will continue to be so in 2017.
- Location-Based technology will increasingly be used for customer service and other non-marketing initiatives.
Asif Khan, Founder & President of LBMA said: “Our report validates the importance and increased adoption of LBM. The future is bright as we see an overall increase in LBM usage globally. We are so glad to share such valuable insights into the industry with our members, the community at SxSW and beyond.”
The full report will be launched today at RetailLoco, a one day event held at the RetailLoco during SXSW in Austin, Texas on Sunday 12th March hosted by the Location Based Marketing Association. It is the largest annual gathering of brands and LBMA members and delivers insights and trends on the latest in mobile and location-based tools and techniques for retailers. The event features keynote speakers, panels on indoor location, proximity-based payments, in-store digital signage, push notifications, metrics / analytics, augmented and virtual reality, and more.
About LBMA
The Location Based Marketing Association is an international not-for-profit group dedicated to fostering research, education and collaborative innovation at the intersection of people, places, and media. Our goal is simple: To educate, share best practices, establish guidelines for growth, and to promote the services of member companies to brands and other content-related providers. The more than 700 members of the LBMA include retailers, restaurant chains, agencies, advertisers, media buyers, software and services providers, and wireless companies. For more information, visit www.thelbma.com
