The Indian market is one of the fastest growing, emerging ad markets. As such, marketers need to understand consumer behavior as never before. But the fundamental needs of advertising remain the same: to understand our audiences’ preferences and lifestyles, reach them accurately at the right time and place and measure the ROI of those activities. So, how can location data help us re-imagine advertising to build an effective and consumer-centric industry?

In-app behaviour is the norm

With almost every online user in India owning a mobile phone and just over half of them owning a laptop or desktop, mobile devices account for most of the traffic in the country. As predicted by Statista, over 500 million people will access the internet exclusively from mobile devices by 2023. India also saw a spike in app downloads during the pandemic as the country accounted for 14% of the world’s app installs in the third quarter of last year, only behind China. With that, brands are seeing in-app advertising as a crucial opportunity to reach audiences.

While media planning tools are getting more sophisticated, it’s often difficult to buy what is planned, especially in-app. In this case, location-based insights provide real-world, easy to read insights that can be the most powerful asset to optimise mobile and in-app campaigns. Understanding your target audience's behavior may not be enough, but finding additional clusters with characteristics and behaviors that resemble unique audiences, or better understanding the competitive battlegrounds, can reveal an immense pool of potential buyers.

Something better, something ready to use

It’s easy to forget that the digital advertising industry has been operating at the cutting-edge of innovation for its entire history. Programmatic advertising as we know it today didn’t really exist only a decade ago. For this reason, senior brand marketers and their agencies can be forgiven for being slightly fearful of and overwhelmed by the scope of the changes taking place right now.

As a leading provider of location-powered advertising, we have spent a lot of time thinking through the implications of the industry upheaval that’s happening and formulating our strategy and plan for the future. By combining precise location data with hundreds of rich and anonymised third-party signals, ranging from lifestyle characteristics and affinities to browsing and shopping habits, we provide planners with the most holistic view of customers.

Adopting an identity-resilient strategy for measurement can help marketers to measure more of their activity, while being consumer-privacy friendly without the need for further changes on their strategy to adapt to future regulations or disruptive changes in consumer behavior. The solutions are available and ready to use right now.

So what?

India has seen 12 consecutive months of growth in foot traffic. At the beginning of the pandemic, consumer spending took a hit, but as soon as that initial lockdown lifted, consumers went back to shopping to reverse that temporary shock.

Understanding behaviors based on real-world insights is the best and most effective way to explore customers’ preferences to meet their expectations. The Indian market offers an enticing opportunity for brands to grow their audiences, especially considering the solid share of mobile devices, their interest in apps and the increasing room for growth across the advertising landscape.

Ultimately, one of the many things the pandemic has shown us is that consumers will continue to consume. It’s just a matter of finding them at the right moment and time - and that’s exactly what location data can do for you.