Geo-fencing is an important strategy that we at Propellant Media employ to help you achieve your marketing efforts and needs. And even though we believe we can meet all of your geo-fencing needs, we realize this may not always be the case. As a result, we have listed here the top 30 geo-fencing marketing company providers. But first, lets discuss what is geofencing marketing.
What Is Geofencing Marketing?
Geofencing marketing allows companies & advertisers to serve display ads and target people in very precise areas and the places they go such as competitor locations, convention centers, retail locations, malls, event centers, neighborhoods, crosswalks, and as small as 25 square foot locations. Geofencing marketing come in many forms includes being able to reach people utilizing IP Address targeting as well as GPS targeting, utilizing latitude and longitude coordinate (which is the most precise form of geofencing), but overall it’s the chance to utilize one’s physical location to indicate behavioral intent.
In the video above, you will see how we’re able to build virtual fences around individual locations and get as small as the contours of the buildings and locations that people are walking into. Some examples of locations we can geofence include:
- Competitor Locations
- Your Own Location (Customer Loyalty)
- Retail Locations
- Trade Shows/Events
- Individual Buildings & Hospitals
- Streets and Cross Sections
- Households (Addressable Geofencing)
- Sporting Events
How Does Geofencing Marketing Work?
- A virtual geofence is traced around an event location where the advertiser wants to build an audience based on their visit to that particular location during a set, scheduled timeframe.
- When people enter the geo-fenced location during the set timeframe, they will then become a part of an audience that can later be targeted following the event.
- As the user visits various apps downloaded on their phone (Angry Bird, Weather Channel, Emoji Keyword, Words With Friends) or browses the internet on the mobile browsers, they begin to see ads from said advertiser.
- User can see those Ads for 1 day and up to 30 days after he/she has entered the geo fence.
Below is a great graphic on the process of geofencing and how it is laid out for companies and organizations:
What Do Your Geofencing Advertising Ads Look Like?
Your ads typically are display on mobile apps and websites and traditionally look like display ads that can range in many different sizes. Below are the most popular sizes:
- 300 x 250
- 320 x 50
- 300 x 50
- 728 x 90
- 160 x 600
- 300 x 600
- 970 x 90
Also, geofencing marketing allows companies to utilize video content that are 6 second, 15 second, 30 second, and 60 second clips and they can also be utilizing in Over The Top (OTT Advertising) campaigns as well.
Geo fencing marketing is the perfect solution for people that want to target a group of people attending a specific event and get more reach out of their ad spend rather than simply zip code targeting or city-wide targeting beit New York, Chicago, Washington DC, Los Angeles, Miami FL, or even Atlanta, GA. Now lets go through the list of companies doing and leveraging geofencing marketing for companies.
Propellant Media – A Geofencing Marketing Company
Propellant Media is one of the premier geo-fence digital agencies offering geo-fencing and programmatic display to small and midsize companies that are looking to bring hyper local targeting solutions to local and national brands with multiple locations. Propellant Media was founded to bring enterprise level solutions to small – midsize companies and emerging brands. Watch the video below to better understand our geo fencing solutions:
Many geo-fencing companies claim they utilize geo fencing to target people, but other geo-fencing solutions are typically referred to as beacon technology. These geo-fencing company solutions only allow advertisers to drill down to a 1 mile radius, which can still be too broad for many advertisers.
Propellant Media’s geo fencing company solutions allows companies to drill down to individual buildings, malls, retail stores, parking lots, events, and even convention centers. Many of the proximity marketing platforms on the market charge a minimum of $10,000 – $20,000/month in media, whereas Propellant Media allows companies to spend $1,000/month in media when working directly with the agency. For white label partners, that monthly media spend drops to $500/month in media per client they bring to the platform.
In addition to geo-fencing, Propellant Media offers a number of other programmatic solutions including:
- Addressable Geofencing (Households & Businesses)
- Behavioral Targeting
- CRM Retargeting
- IP Targeting
- Search Retargeting
- Dynamic Site Retargeting
- Keyword Contextual Targeting
- Programmatic Video
- OTT/Connected TV Advertising
Propellant Media also provides a white label solution to other digital agencies and marketing companies that want a turnkey solution that includes reporting, analytics, and full execution of geo fencing and programmatic display campaigns.
Simpli.fi – A Geofence Marketing Software DSP
Simpli.fi is one of the original founders of geo fencing. Simpli.fi utilizes what’s known as unstructured data to pinpoint the individual users and specific nuances of those consumers on app or websites consuming content or visiting particular places. This makes them a great company to advertise with.
Simpli.fi in our opinion is the best geofence platform on the market, however if you want to utilize their platform, you need to be spending a minimum $10,000 – $20,000/month in media to work directly with them. Otherwise, you can go to a company like Propellant Media who utilizes the Simpli.fi solution but has a significantly reduced minimum fee.
ThinkNear
ThinkNear is a location based advertiser that also offers geofence solutions to companies. They have several offices around the United States. Their proximity-based targeting focuses on identifying mobile users near specific locations, such as businesses, events, and other points of interest. Scored GeoFences are a great tool for real-time targeting of users within a specific distance of a retail location.
So they may not provide the specific geo fencing solution where you can target the actual people that walk inside a specific building, but showcase the ability to get close to the people who do walk near your targeted area.
Agility.Marketing
Agility.Marketing is another big time player of programmatic display advertising. On their website, they mention that Agility allows you to reach your target audience, regardless of where they are, with highly targeted, real-time dynamic ads and the best account management in ad tech. They seem to provide a similar geo fencing solution as Propellant Media. The big benefit from them is they offer free Ad Creative Development if you choose to utilize their programmatic digital solution set. Having a partner who can develop the ads at no additional charge is in fact a nice benefit and why we like these guys.
We are uncertain of their cost structure and minimum spend requirement, so that would be an important question to ask if you are considering their services.
Cidewalk – Geo Fencing Company
Cidewalk specializes in mobile marketing solutions for small and mid-sized business owners. They allow their clients to target a specific city or town. Once their clients create their own custom mobile ads, the company then launches the client-made ads through thousands of popular apps, where people receive the ads while using the apps. Cidewalk has three pricing options: $100, $250, and $500 per month. You can pick any town / city in the US to promote your business. As soon as you launch, your ad will start appearing on thousands of smartphone apps ranging from news to weather to games. No. Unlike many other advertising companies, we don’t require any long-term commitment. You can cancel anytime and not be billed going forward.
Local Page Pop
Local Page Pop allows their clients to target audiences based on location-based targeting and add demographic filters to these geo-fences. Their ads are launched on mobile, desktop, video, and more. They offer more advertising options than geo-fencing. So if you want a holistic advertising campaign that is flexible and can target your needs, you may want to consider them. We do not know their pricing options, so their solutions may be costly.
Local Page Pop seems to do a lot of work with Political campaigns as well as real estate firms.
Medialize Marketing
Medialyze offers a three-step process to better help you connect with your audience. The firm first analyzes your site to ensure that the site is designed to maximize results from an increase in user leads brought in by their marketing efforts.
Next, the team behind Medialyze optimizes your online presence through technical and creative techniques to increase web performance, visibility, and drive traffic. Finally, the company utilizes their geo-fencing techniques along with their other advertising methods to bring you the best marketing solutions possible.
Salesforce
Companies using Salesforce Marketing Cloud can transform the customer journey using their real-time location. Salesforce offers geo-targeting, geo-fencing, and beaconing to its platform users. If you already use Salesforce, then unlocking their geo-fencing capabilities to target your customers is a great strategy. Their geo-fencing capabilities are different from our standard use of geo-fencing and targeting people that visit specific buildings. But worth looking into their solution to see if it’s a good fit for you organization.
Enradius
Enradius’s geo-targeting solutions allows you to target users based on zip codes, DMAs (Designated Market Areas), or via a 1 to 500 mile radius of a specified point. The Enradius team promises to work close with you in order to create the most optimal campaigns so that your ads reach the right people.
Proximi.io
Proximi.io leverages their SDK (Software Development Kit) to provide unique advertising solutions. Like the other companies mentioned in this post, they offer geo-fencing for their client’s advertising needs. However, they also provide advertisers with a customizable analytics page to gather performance insights and an events editor that triggers actions based on specific events within geo-fenced locations. Proximi.io also uses beaconing technology to target people that pass specific locations called beacons. These beacons are designated by the advertisers and they capture users within a specific range of the beacon. Proximi.io offers 5 different pricing points, ranging from a 30 day free trail to €570 per month. The company also offers negotiable prices for clients that want more customization options within their platforms.
Factual
Works and outsources it geo-fencing solutions to a number of large DSP platforms including the Trade Desk, Choozle and other platforms. Provider of various digital solutions to assist marketers, advertisers, and agencies throughout a complete marketing campaign lifecycle. Those include location-based data collection and management to target consumers based on their behavior; geo-fencing to custom-target specifically pinpointed geographic areas, and ads powered by CRM data across multiple channels. The company offers retargeting, as well as negative retargeting, and geofencing that is intended to capture potential customers when they visit competitor locations. Factual supports ad campaigns across multiple digital devices and platforms, and in-depth demographic and consumer behavior analysis.
Kickadzmedia.com
Kick Adz Media offers geo-fencing solutions to advertisers who want to target anyone who enters their competitor’s store or retarget customers who have already entered their store. They can even track in-store conversions for someone who has seen your ad walks into your store. These guys are similar to the solution set we provide as an agency. We’re uncertain as to their pricing, but are worth reaching out to if you are truly looking for another geo-fencing option.
Braze
Braze helps marketing teams build customer loyalty through mobile, omni channel customer experiences. Braze offers a service called Braze Location Marketing Suite, which takes customer data and uses it to reach your audience effectively with highly targeted, contextually relevant outreach. The full suite offers location targeting, geofencing, location data enrichment, location data detection, and beacon support solutions for your marketing efforts.
OutFront Media
A major player in the marketing and advertising category that spe cializes in out-of-home mediums like digital billboards and other platforms that engage consumers when they are in public places. The company boasts close to half a million displays, both static and digital, and most of those are located in highly-desirable and much-trafficked locations. The company’s footprint extends to the 25 largest American markets to reach commuters, pedestrians, and others through ads that integrate cloud-based and app-driven technology. Features of their network of displays include flexible messaging, synchronized content, and real-time dynamic triggers – as well a geo fencing targeting and retargeting.
Reachlocal
Reach Local is a big player with many locations and a large army of sale people who provide ppc, seo, and programmatic display solutions to small business owners. There’s a lot of churn and burn at this company, but they do provide a large solution set to company. They offer a software they developed called Reach Edge that allows you to track leads and turn them into customers. Reach Edge provides the standard geo-fencing solutions that many of the other companies listed here has to offer; however, what makes Reach Local’s Reach Edge software unique is that the software broadens your exposure in search engines by putting accurate and consistent information about your business on over 50 directories, including Google and Yelp. This feature helps you drive traffic from local search queries.
Ontarget – Geo-Fencing Marketing
A leading digital marketing agency in the Midwestern United States, and it offers full-service mobile marketing and geo-fencing capability across multiple platforms. Among its services are mobile search advertising, app download advertising, SMS text messaging campaigns, geo fencing of specific locations and target areas, and both website and e-commerce development, including responsive website design and ADA compliant websites.
OneAudience
One Audience has developed an SDK for advertisers who want to promote their apps to an array of audiences. One Audience aggregates user data from their network of participating apps and mobile publishers to create audiences and then separates them into segments. With One Audience’s insights, you can target this audience of deterministically identified mobile users.
Spatially
Spatially allows you to build your audience based on business addresses that you select and filters that you add. You choose which ad network you want to work on and design your ads with the Spatially team. Spatially also provides software that lets you manage and track your campaigns. The company provides two pricing options, which are labeled self-serve and managed service. For the self-serve option, you must spend a minimum of $5/day. For the managed service feature, the minimum spend requirement is $500.
Brightsign
Brightsign has a unique position in the geo fencing market because their main product is in selling digital signs for advertisers. Their signs can be seen in shuttles, taxis, public transportation, moving billboards, tour buses, boats, and etc. Using GPS tracking software, they are able to play content based on the location of their signs. This means that as one of these signs passes through a geo-fence, the image or video displayed on the signs can change. This is powerful for advertisers who want to use digital sign technology to advertise.
Bluedot Innovation
Blue Dot Innovation provides geo-lines, which are virtual tripwires that trigger any action in a mobile device once customers cross over the line. For example, a retail store can set a geo-line at their competitor’s store entrance. Once a customer walks across the geo-line, they trigger an action designed by the advertiser. In this example, the retail have an ad sent to the mobile devices of the customers walking into their competitor’s store.
Swirl – Geo fencing Marketing
Swirl uses their platform to map geo-fences around relevant locations. They offer an unlimited number of geofences and allow the fences to be of any size and shape. They also provide software for analyzing and optimizing the performance of any mobile campaigns. This way you can document business objectives and configure measurement settings on their platform. Marketers can also define different audiences with a large variety of options and analyze campaign performance through Swirl.
xtremepush – Geofence Company
For advertisers looking to launch campaigns that target geo-fenced and beaconed locations, Xtreme Push is the answer. Xtreme Push has both geo-fencing and iBeacon technologies, which enable users to instantly engage consumers in key locations, resulting in increased foot traffic and completion of key performance indicators.
They are a UK based company that utilizes more proximity based targeting than actual geo fencing where you’re building geo fencing around the contours of buildings. But could be a viable choice if you’re looking for a beacon type advertising solution.
Choozle
Choozle is a pretty cool demand side programmatic display platform that taps into several different networks include The Trade Desk. They are built for those companies who can’t get to $15,000/month in ad spend and still want to do some level of programmatic display advertising. Now in order to leverage their geo fencing technology, you still need spend over $5,000/month, however it’s a great data and analytics platform with robust information for users.
The Trade Desk
The Trade Desk is one of the largest DSP platforms on the market. Close to a billion dollars in revenues, they have been around for a long time and provide many of the standard programmatic features most DSP platforms provide. The only challenge is you need to be spending over $20,000/month in order to work directly with them.
Here is their own explanation of who they are.
The Trade Desk powers the most sophisticated buyers in advertising technology. Founded by the pioneers of real-time bidding, The Trade Desk has become the fastest growing demand-side platform in the industry by offering agencies, aggregators, and their advertisers best-in-class technology to manage display, social, mobile, and video advertising campaigns.
Semcasting
Semcasting is a pretty powerful platform. In addition to providing some IP Address targeting capabilities, they can answer the WHO….meaning who is in fact clicking and seeing your Ads. They can provide an entire data file that connects to public data records back to the address the IP Address of the user went.
Ground Truth
Groundtruth is all about data and location. They supply location data to agencies and brands and also have a DSP functionality to their platform as well. In their own words, “Data Quality is the result of 3 key areas of data purification: 1) The accuracy of mobile location signals, which we call Location Determination; 2) The precision of place mapping, which we call Place Determination; 3) The ability to distinguish and verify real visits, which we call Visit Determination.”
DataXu
We know of many other data platforms that tap into DataXu’s DSP platform to location based and programmatic targeting.
In 2009, dataxu® was founded on the premise that data science could help make marketing better. Not just more efficient for agencies and their advertiser clients, but also more personalized and more engaging for consumers.
In 2018, dataxu remains a software company whose products help successful marketing professionals like you use data to improve advertising.
In their own words, “here at dataxu, we may be powered by data, but the truth is that we’re inspired by you. Your business challenges are what get us up every morning and keeps us going. Your wins are our wins. And your successes feel like our successes. We always strive to be even better, to help you and your business get even better, too.
We believe that data, when analyzed, reported and applied with transparency and ingenuity, holds the power to take you and your clients further than ever before. We exist to help you use the power of data to create insights into your clients’ most important audiences, to connect with them more personally and with greater impact. In a world of walled gardens and opaque business practices, we offer unobstructed visibility into your markets, audiences and performance. And we’re laser-focused on helping you and your team solve tough business challenges by providing the data-backed confidence you need to demonstrate your achievements.”
UpSnap
Specializes in data-driven mobile marketing and advertising through a combination of real-time analytical data analysis and use of proprietary data to filter and find qualified customers. Each of its marketing campaigns is custom-tailored to fit the needs and goals of each particular business it serves, and to deliver their ideal consumers and successfully convert them with measurable outcomes.
UpSnap uses a variety of mobile ad formats including banner ads, text messages, coupons, mobile video, in-game functionality, form fills, and click to call and click for directions technology. The company achieves more than a billion impressions per month on its own publisher network, while also serving ads on other networks that represent more than 100 billion impressions per month.
Verve Mobile
Verve Mobile offers beacon technology to retail owners. Their beacons measure how customers move within indoor and outdoor spaces. Moreover, they also offer the ability to engage with these customers via their mobile devices. Using wireless devices, Verve Mobile is able to track customer movement and create journey maps detailing the movement of the customers through the space. You can also send ads to these customers either during their visit or after they have left the store.
Element 502
Advertisers can also use Element 502’s geo fencing technology to target specified locations and send ads to mobile users at these locations. Element 502 does not just offer geo-fencing solutions, however, they also provide website design assistance. The quality of your landing page is important when marketing. As a result, if you need help with website design as well as marketing needs, Element 502 offers a one-stop shop for these needs.
Geofencing Marketing – Additional Questions To Ask These Geo fencing Providers…Including Propellant Media
Our agency, Propellant Media often gets swarmed with questions from organizations and company who inquire about geo-fencing marketing. All questions are important but some are more important than others.
In order to ensure you’re choosing the right geo fencing marketing provider that fits your needs and extracting the most valuable information you need to make a decision, we’ve compiled a list of 20 questions with added context from our team members and partners at Propellant Media to help guide you through your journey in choose a geo fencing provider.
How precise can you get with your geo fencing? How small can the geofences be built?
Many people mention they have geo-fencing capabilities, but may not necessarily provide geo fencing as precise as others. For example, simpli.fi is able to build their geofences as small as the contours of buildings (25 square feet in many cases), while others tap into the wifi networks of particular buildings and locations, and reach mobile devices that ping off of such networks.
We know of several that can only build their geofences around a block, but not a building. The more precise you can get, the more targeted your advertising will be. That is the crux behind geo-fencing…targeting people based on their intent and knowing someone’s physical presence in a location can indicate intent buyers. So this is a critical question worth asking.
Up to how many buildings or locations can you geofence in a given geo-fencing marketing campaign?
Some geo-fencing providers charge based on the number of buildings and locations you want to target. For example, some will require you to spend $1,500 on just 1 building, which if you think about it doesn’t make sense and fully benefit your marketing needs. What happens if you cannot exhaust your budget on just that 1 location? Also, you are limiting your reach and potential to target more people who can be ideal customers when you are only given 1 location you are allowed to geofence.
The better geo fencing companies will not limit your geo fencing targets, and they’ll also provide you with proper strategy and recommendations on the budget you should allot over various geo fencing locations. For example, at Propellant Media we suggest $1,500 for every 20 locations you intend to target. It’s not an exact science, but it allows you spread your marketing risk a bit more and also target more buildings so you can then determine the ones that are not highly engaging or driving proper foot traffic and then hone your marketing dollars on the locations that are driving sales and engagement.