IAB Canada hosted the Business of Digital – Location Based Advertising in Toronto and Montreal this month. Both events were sold out and the conversation was remarkably advanced considering the infancy of this emerging channel.
The event kicked off with results from our Barometer report on Location Based Advertising which showed steady budgets year-over-year and slight increases as product becomes more developed at scale.
The research showed that growth is tied closely to measurement, a subject that was heavily debated on various panels. A major next step for the development of the channel will be to get all stakeholders together to develop standardization on metrics and specifications. This is being worked on by a working group at IAB in the US and we will be establishing a similar approach here in Canada.
Two of the most exciting aspects of Digital Out of Home is the promise that advertisers will be in a position to track DOOH’s extension to Mobile campaign reach as well as attribution to mobile site visits/interactions by DOOH sign proximity. Both of these tremendous benefits depend heavily on establishing compatible metrics.
Delving into the data side of LBA, we discussed the importance of understanding the source of the data as well as its accuracy. Accuracy, PIPEDA/GDPR compliancy, time sensitivity (dwell times) and density were all identified as major considerations when qualifying data. There is obviously some heavy lifting to be done to ensure the industry is operating on a standardized level of data quality.
Looking forward, our speakers in both markets corroborated another point from the Barometer Report which was the absolute requirement for training on this subject. IAB Canada’s Digital Out of Home / Location Based Advertising Committee is currently working on a comprehensive curriculum which we look forward to offering in the coming weeks.