Guides . Advertising

Geofencing: ads that follow a place, not a person

Geofencing draws an invisible line around a real place. Phones that cross it start seeing your ad later.

It uses where a phone went, not anyone's name.

The one-line version

You fence a place. The place picks your audience.

Point at a real place on a map. That place picks who sees your ad for you.

You draw a fence around a spot where the people you want already gather. A busy competitor, an event, a campground, a new neighborhood. Any phone that crosses in joins a group.

Later, that person opens the news or weather apps they already use, and your ad shows up there. So geofencing answers who, not where. It picks who sees the ad, based on where they stood.

Geofencing decides who sees the ad, not where the ad appears.

The flow at a glance

A place, a phone, an ad, a result

Read it left to right. That is the whole path, from the fence to the report.

Draw the fence around a real place
Phone crosses in joins the group
Ad shows up later in apps they use
Read the results impressions and clicks

How it works

From a place on a map to an ad on a phone

Four plain steps, start to finish.

  1. 1

    We pick and draw the fence

    You bring the market and the goal. We pick the real places worth fencing and draw a tight fence around each one. Picking the right spots is where the campaign is won or lost, and that is the work we handle for you.

  2. 2

    A phone crosses the line

    When a phone enters a fence, it quietly joins the group that can start seeing your ad. No name, no address. Just the fact that a phone was in that place.

  3. 3

    The ad shows up later

    The person sees your ad later, on their own phone, inside the news and weather apps they already open. The visit is still fresh, and you are not bugging them on the spot.

  4. 4

    We read the results

    We report how many times the ad was shown, and how often people tapped it. We compare that against a published industry number, so you can see whether the campaign is really working.

The part that trips people up

Where the phone went vs. where the ad shows up

These are two different places, and mixing them up is the most common mistake. The fence uses places, not names.

The fenced place

where the phone went

  • A real spot on a map you draw a fence around
  • It decides who joins the group, using no names or home addresses
  • Your ad does not appear here
The ad's screen

where the ad appears

  • Shows up later, somewhere else
  • Inside the news and weather apps they already use
  • On that person's own phone

Plain-English glossary

The words people throw around, defined

A few words come up every time geofencing gets discussed. Here is what each one means, in normal language.

Geofence
A fence drawn around a real place on a map. It is invisible to everyone. It just marks the area whose visitors you want to reach.
Conquesting
Fencing a place a bigger competitor already draws crowds to, so you can reach those people with your own message. You never name the competitor in the ad. You do not have to.
Impressions
How many times your ad was shown to phones. They tell you how much reach you got and prove your money went out into the market. They do not prove anyone acted.
Click rate
The share of the times your ad was shown that turned into a tap. You read it as a small percent. On these ads a single tap is often an accident, so the rate matters more than any one click.
Display benchmark
An outside, published number for how often people tap a normal web banner ad. It sits near 0.05 to 0.06 percent. It is a yardstick, not a promise. We hold our results up against it so a number means something.

Where it shines

A few moves this is built for

Geofencing earns its keep in a handful of clear cases. Each one comes down to aim, not budget.

  • Reach a competitor's crowd: Fence a spot a bigger rival already draws crowds to, and reach those people with your local message. You never name the rival. A national chain can outspend you across a whole county, but it cannot speak to your town the way you can.
  • Own an event or a moment: Fence a trade show, a stadium, a campground, or an area during a busy weekend. You reach the people who are right there, deciding where to spend.
  • Split a fence with a neighbor: Two businesses that share a customer can share one campaign, so each budget stretches further. We have run exactly this for neighboring stores that sell to the same shopper.
  • Aim beats budget: You cannot win a spending war against a bigger competitor. You can beat them on precise targeting, and that is what geofencing gives you.

Reading the results

How to tell if a geofence ad worked

Two numbers do most of the talking. Read them in the right order and you will know whether the campaign really worked.

Start with impressions, which is how many times the ad was shown to phones that crossed your fences. They prove the reach happened and the money went where you aimed it. On their own they do not prove anyone acted.

Then look at click rate, compared against the display benchmark near 0.05 to 0.06 percent. When a campaign runs above it, the targeting was sharp and the ad reached the right people. Across the months we can show, our own geofence work has run about twice that range. We always show the number right next to the benchmark.

Here is the honest limit. Geofencing proves aim and reach. By itself it does not prove sales, new accounts, or foot traffic. Those need their own tracking. When you want sales proven too, we set that up from week one, with a tracked landing page, a promo code, or a store-visit study.

Impressions prove the money went where you aimed. Click rate against the benchmark shows whether the aim was sharp.

Keep reading

Where to go from here

If this made sense and you want to see it in action, or fold it into a bigger plan, start here.

Want us to just handle it for you?

If you would rather not manage the details, give us a call. Tell us where your best customers already gather. We will map your version: where to draw the fence, the ad that reaches them, and how we will read the results together.

Get help with this Or call 717-299-1277

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