buzzLBASending advertising to the right person at the right time is easy today thanks to location-based intelligence and the fact that people are increasingly willing to share their location with their apps in their mobile. This explains why location-based advertising (LBA) has gained momentum and popularity amongst marketers in leaps and bounds.

Besides, some of the key advantages of LBA are quite convincing:

  • The fact that personalized messages draw much more attention and engagement as compared to generic advertising is a key differentiator. Knowing the location of the addressee not only brings relevance to the ads but helps in tracking the demand. In other words, an ad will be much more effective if it is designed according to the interest of a customer, and location data enables you utterly to make offers based on where people are.

  • The fact that the perfect timing of the ads is possible, since location data is served in real time, is important. Hence, there is an opportunity for brands to target people at precise moments, such as e.g., using beacons technology to track the movement of people passing by a store and sending them personalized messages to get their attention.

  • The fact that it is an awesome way to reach target customers on mobile, since generic display ads do not work well anymore, and ads are expected to be send to the digital medium, complements the advantages. Of course, the ads must be targeted well to not getting blocked. Localized ads provide a natural opportunity for targeting because people in different geographical locations behave differently - or at least have their own unique quirks.

Certainly, there are few disadvantages which usually the customer must bear:

  • Listed as top disadvantages of LBA is of course the privacy issue. Mobile marketers need to understand and respect the fact that users appreciate their privacy online. So, they should only start promotional activities if they have the user’s permission for it.

  • The second challenge is the small screen size of smartphones and the fact that the small pocket device comes without a mouse. This means that navigation on a mobile phone can be difficult, even if it has a touchscreen. In such a case, most ads may go untouched, as the user might finds it too tedious to look in detail through each one of them.


Besides, mobile platforms vastly differ from each other, using different operation systems and browsers, so that creating one campaign for all of them can become difficult.

By Daniela La Marca