Majority of location ad spend wasted

An analysis conducted by the company found that of every $100,000 spent on targeted location-based advertising, $29,000 delivered impressions outside of the targeted area.

Additionally, up to $36,000 was potentially wasted as a result of location signals being insufficient to target ads effectively.

Almost three in 10 ( 29%) of impressions studied missed the target specified by the client, while over a third ( 36%) were not of good enough quality to deliver ads to the specific area needed for location-based campaigns, according to the research.

The study involved 500m digital location-targeted impressions in the UK and US between January and June 2019, using data collected via a tag embedded in digital creative.

Mark Slade, chief executive, Location Sciences, said: “While some location data suppliers are doing an excellent job – in our analysis 40% of suppliers showed nearly 100% accuracy in location and 35% near 100% accuracy in signal quality – there is still a large percentage of suppliers who are significantly underperforming.”