According to the Office of National Statistics, in 2019, 79% of UK adults owned a smartphone and on average, Brits spend 2 hours and 34 minutes online on their smartphones every day.

The media landscape has evolved significantly in the last 15 years, with the biggest shifts in behaviour seen in the 16-34 year age group, who now spend 39% of their media day on social platforms. However, smartphone use has also seen growth with the much more consistent over 55s, increasing from 6% to 10% of media time spent and now commanding more time than print (9%) for the first time in 2019*.

This proliferation in mobile data is essentially a marketer’s dream and goes far beyond traditional demographic information to provide advanced behavioural and location powered audience profiles. This allows brands to serve customers, or potential customers, with personalised time and location sensitive information, which in turn helps to change their advertising from being a distraction from what their audience is looking at, to a relevant part of their browsing experience.

Geo-location providers can create what is called a geofence, which is essentially drawing virtual barriers around a location of any size or shape. Any devices entering this area will be captured and if they are relevant to the campaign, the device can have media served to it, either at the location, or later at a different time or place.

This is referred to as ‘Targeting’ (serving media to the user whilst they are still within the geofence) and ‘Retargeting’ (which is targeting once they’ve left the geofence). This could be when the user is at home for example and may have more time to be receptive to the content than when they are out and about.

Location data is just one part of the audience profile, which consists of hundreds of data points including socio-economic data such as age, gender, social grade, household income, occupation and education, behavioural data based on where they’ve visited and how often and layering additional data, such as shopper insights, installed apps and web browsing habits.

This enables advertisers to connect with highly relevant audiences at scale, based on who they are, their current and previous locations, behaviours, interests and even factors such as the weather or current activity.

If your existing media plans don’t include mobile then we think you are overlooking a real opportunity for highly effective consumer targeting. To speak to us about mobile investment as part of your next campaign, email mediaintelligencebureau@gmail.com.

*Source: IPA Touchpoints