BIA/Kelsey’s latest forecast projects total U.S. advertising targeting local audiences will exceed $146B. Over 40% of this total will be spent by national brands to localize their campaigns. We predict this will grow at a 4.6% CAGR from $61.2B in 2016 to $73.2B by 2020. That’s the marketplace we’ll be addressing at our BIA/Kelsey BRANDS conference in New York on March 22nd. The stakes are rising for those who don’t understand how to localize brands. Local marketing can be challenging for brands but deliver dividends for those who do it well.

• Rex Conklin, one of our program advisers and a Fortune 50 brand marketer, shared his view on brand to local marketing. “Local is a huge opportunity and not well understood by most brand marketers.”
• Conklin is a strong believer in not just adtech but also martech as platforms to scale brands at the local level. Some brands are doing this really well, raising the stakes for those brands who aren’t as active in locally targeted campaigns. At BIA/Kelsey, what we’re seeing is that increasingly effective adtech and martech solutions are providing powerful targeting and content optimization solutions for those who do “get it” when it comes to local.
• Marketers are relying on first, second and third party data to drive campaigns. But this can be problematic. “Without the right data, decisions can often be guesses,” BIA/Kelsey’s executive-in-residence Maribeth Papuga observes in her new complimentary report, “Data-Driven Audience Planning and the Local Market Advantage.” We’ll talk more about data-driven marketing and audience targeting in a special session Papuga will lead.
• In a recent interview with us, Joe Carcano from financial firm Edward Jones’ paid media center spoke to the importance of localizing brands, “Typically, corporate or home-office programs are much more advanced in targeting, media, messaging, optimization and measurement than a local branch’s advertising or marketing efforts.”
• We’ll also get perspectives from major brands and media publishers such as Under Armour, U-Haul International, ESPN, and adtech/martech companies such as Netsertive and IBM Watson.

We’ve taken up challenge brand to local marketing in this event. Here are the kinds of questions that are on the minds of marketers that we’ll be addressing:

1. How does “local” add value to brands?
2. What are the pros and cons of centralized vs decentralized brand-to-local strategies for brands and agencies?
3. What are the challenges and opportunities in data-driven marketing and data science to effectively measure, distinguish and deliver local brand messaging to drive consumer response?
4. What are the most effective ways to use co-op, market development funds and other brand-to-local programs?
5. How are adtech and martech platforms and ad networks creating new successes for brands seeking to drive higher ROI with local investment and activations?
6. Where is programmatic advertising headed and how does it drive targeting, efficiency, ROI?

One final note for this post, at BIA/Kelsey BRANDS, we’ll celebrate the exceptional local marketing strategies by brands with the third edition of the BIA/Kelsey GOLOCAL Awards. This competition will showcase how brands are driving local success as it relates to revenue, innovative uses of technology and digital strategies.

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