Why proximity marketing could be the solution to ad blocking

Why mobile proximity marketing could be the solution to the ad blocking problem

The marketing industry is concerned about the rise in ad blocking, and rightly so. But by utilising mobile proximity marketing, it’s possible to provide valuable, contextual content that won’t spook users into blocking your ads. 

Why do people block ads?

To offer a simple solution for ad blocking kind of misses the point. It’s first important to look at why audiences are flocking towards ad blockers in the first place. 

People hate bad adverts. That’s a fact. If an advert is annoying then audiences will try to block it. Now, there will always be bad ads in the world – unfortunately, that’s the way it’ll be. But when we do manage to get our content in front of the end user, it’s important that it’s relevant and provides value.

What do we mean when we say that an advert is relevant? Well, we want our content to achieve something – but often this is too forced, irrelevant or just plain annoying for the end user. Therefore, it’s important to follow three golden rules to ensure that you aren’t personally responsible for the growth of ad blockers.

The rules, as we see them

Make your content relevant – This means that your content or advert should be delivered in the right moment for the intended audience. No more adverts for products you’ve already purchased. It also involves personalising your content where possible. 

Make your content valuable – If you can provide value to your audience then guess what, they won’t block your ads. Using context is key here – if you can understand a person’s situation, then you can provide them with a solution that’s might help them in that specific moment. 

Deliver your content at the right time, in the right place – if you can do the above and make sure that you are delivering this in an appropriate manner, then you are well on the way to becoming a valuable advertiser. You’ll be looking at a personalised advertising strategy that is relevant and provides value to the end customer, and who would want to block that?

Proximity mobile marketing as a solution

This is a new, effective way of mobile advertising – one which uses context to deliver valuable content to the user at the right moment, in the right place. 

Many within the industry are calling for frequency caps as a solution for ad blocking, and we agree with the concept. In fact, we have included them in our proximity campaigns since we began running them. This means that users will only receive a notification once over a predefined length of time. We believe that if a person didn’t interact with your advert the first time, then sending it another ten times won’t help. 

Producing content that is valuable is the key to creating great relationships with audiences. Proximity marketing is a great way to do this as it places context at the centre of message delivery. This means that the end user’s location is taken into consideration and the content is personalised to suit this context. 

Moving towards this kind of one-to-one advertising creates an environment where the end user can trust advertisers and feel less inclined to block all kinds of adverts. Proximity marketing as part of an advertising strategy provides this. You can define very specific locations in which to deliver content – an example would be close by to your store, this means that the customer would already be in the right frame of mind for shopping, and less likely to be annoyed by your ad. 

By thinking in this way we will begin to overcome the problems that many advertisers have created. By personalising content and providing it in a relevant context we can then begin to build up consumer’s trust, and ensure that our content reaches users and provided them with value at the same time. 

James Ewen

James is the head of marketing at Tamoco