Moasis: Location Is The Key To Mobile Ad Relevance And Personalization

Mobile advertising platform Moasis believes that location is the key to delivering more personalized and relevant advertising — not simply a way to capture the attention of nearby smartphone owners. However, the company argues, location-targeted advertising is still very crude, with many marketers bringing a “desktop mentality” to mobile.

Against this backdrop, Moasis is announcing a new “unified platform.” By comparison to others, Moasis argues that its platform can deliver better performing ads using a multi-dimensional approach to location. The company’s platform and approach combines what Moasis calls the “five pillars of location technology”:

• Standardization of a system for associating a wide range of data with location in real time
• Predictive analytics and machine learning that anticipates the movement/patterns of audiences and reacts in real time
• Programmatic communications delivery engine that enables both precision and scale in real time
• Measurement and attribution specific to the message and its core objectives
• A closed-loop platform that operates in real time and eliminates leakage from current processes built on multiple-point solutions

Moasis has nine patents and 200 advertisers, which it cites as evidence of both the sophistication and success of its technology. Moasis CMO Eric Nielsen (a former Googler), in a pre-announcement briefing, presented a slide that claimed campaign results up to 15X better than the “industry average” (presumably general mobile display advertising).

Mobile ad platform xAd recently published the results of an advertiser survey in which roughly 80 percent of its brand and agency respondents said they were using mobile-location to identify and reach specific audiences. Using location to identify and target audiences represents a “2.0” approach vs. geo-fencing, which has been the most common form of mobile-location targeting to date. Indeed, mobile-location data provider Factual questioned how representative the xAd findings were, based on its own experiences with marketers.

The two location use cases above (audience targeting/segmentation and geo-fencing) are what might be described as the twin poles of location targeting. In some ways, the distinction is about time: Where is my target audience vs. where is my target audience right now? These two approaches can be combined, though most marketers aren’t doing that today.

Moasis argues that location is still mostly treated “as a feature as opposed to a holistic solution.” That’s what the company says it brings to mobile advertising — a more holistic and sophisticated solution with location at its core, combining audience and real-time location targeting:

The technology organizes all location-related information in a structured manner, and then applies predictive tools with real-time decision and delivery systems to serve exactly the right communication at the ideal time and location to mobile devices.

Moasis says that it uses “multi-dimensional location intelligence” and predictive analytics to assess audience behavior patterns and deliver ads where and when they’re most likely to have optimal impact. Moasis claims that its platform overcomes the “point solutions” limitations that characterize its competitors and most of the rest of the mobile advertising industry.

Moasis’ competitors will undoubtedly balk at the notion that Moasis has built the ultimate mobile-location advertising platform. Regardless of what’s true “under the hood,” the company clearly has a compelling vision for the central role that location can and should play in mobile marketing and advertising.

Moasis hopes to extend its platform capabilities beyond brands to local businesses, developers, government agencies or “any organization where location context is key to delivering a more engaging experience.”

About The Author

Greg Sterling

Greg Sterling is a Contributing Editor at Search Engine Land. He writes a personal blog, Screenwerk, about connecting the dots between digital media and real-world consumer behavior. He is also VP of Strategy and Insights for the Local Search Association. Follow him on Twitter or find him at Google+.