Last May, Blis headlined MediaCom APAC’s inaugural tech event BLINK_live as a main sponsor. Blis Asia MD Regina Goh took the stage at the future-focused forum held at Shangri-La Singapore, repping to an audience of over sixty senior marketers. Her aim was to satiate a craving for fresh strategies with some food for thought by posing this question: “Are your customers telling you what they want through their movement data?”
As the only location tech company at the event, it was apt to talk about location data from a new, more relatable perspective of audiences and movement. We springboarded a pitch centered on our core belief that the value of location data lies in its ability to provide powerful, contextual information about a consumer’s journey. If the positive feedback and nodding heads in the room were any indication of the direction we’re headed, this is one conversation we are chuffed to initiate. In the mix of data play needed for a more effective marketing approach today, brands would be well advantaged to know there is more to location than a fixed dot on a map.
Why Movement?
In Asia, markets across the region are extremely fragmented and with this comes a unique set of challenges we are consequently posed to overcome. To drive market success, the team goes through great lengths to articulate the value of location data, even if this means scaling back on technical conversations reserved for more advanced, location-aware marketers.
This is not to say that marketers in the region are unaware of the power of location data. In fact, our days are spent preparing for the growing wave of brands and marketers who do understand (albeit on a basic level) and signal increasing interest to leverage our Blis data location-aware approach.
Why then is talking about Movement so important?
On the subject of location, its limitations are implied by referencing it as a fixed point. When you talk about the concept of movement, in contrast you think about motion that is dynamic, untethered and unanchored to a fixed point. A real world journey comes to mind, complete with human preferences and habits. Obviously, movement and location are fundamentally different concepts, but knowing that they are intrinsically linked changes perspective. So steering conversations toward movement data reframes the perception of location data, and this has helped us present a more macroscopic view of the relationship of people to places. Blis’ Insights Manager, Alex Wright, wrote about this in an earlier blog post, saying:
“Location and Place are important, but are arbitrary constructs without human interaction to create movement and bring purpose.”
How does Movement Data move marketers?
Simply put, understanding movement cracks the code of gauging consumer intent. Equating movement data to a person’s real world behaviour allows marketers to grasp scale – one of the issues the early days of location advertising has wrestled with. In tandem with ubiquitous smartphone usage and the adoption of programmatic, due time has passed to see kinks and flaws of early technologies iron themselves out. Technology has matured along with a marketer’s sense of sophistication when it comes to planning and deploying campaigns.
Knowing this, brands today don’t need to fixate on a fixed time and place to trigger location-based ads, precisely because our tech is literally built to “move” with the customer and map out audiences. Early iterations of location data usage such as proximity targeting, while still useful to a degree, no longer defines the full scope of what movement data offers when used to its full potential today.
Movement is powered by location data signals, and Blis understands this very well. Going back to the basics may seem counterintuitive for a future-looking tech company like ours, however, as indicated by the calibre of marketers who attended the talk – it seems the conversation is not only headed in the right direction, but is also gaining the momentum we’ve envisioned as a pioneer in this space years ago.
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If you’re looking for next level knowledge, Blis’ Head of Product Amy Fox publishes a blog series covering advanced location-based advertising. She creates useful primers on 201 level issues such as differentiating data sources and pre and post-bid verification. Click on here and watch her space.
