10 Years of Local Excellence: A Decade of True Location Targeting & 1st Party Data

What made you realise there’s a need for a location-based advertising network in SA? 

Charles: Since 2010 our companies, WAND Africa and BPS have been partnering with global players in the location and directory field: Garmin, Tom Tom, Nokia Maps and Telmap International mapping app. Our dependence on third party AdTek, didn’t allow us to deliver targeted campaigns - it was time to build our own ad server.

Daryl: A walk to State 5 coffee shop in Greenside discussing our frustration with selling other people’s technology, led to a life changing comment: “let’s just build our own ad server”. The difficulty involved and belief in ourselves led us to a “Just do it” moment.  

Neil: We initially commercialised Nokia Ovi Maps and Telmap through our other entity Location Bank, the response from brands showed interest in the relevance that comes with location. However, the local market required a bespoke solution. Our initial plan was to build an ad server to power our existing Telmap advertising product and what we thought would be a six-month project started… and still hasn't gotten close to finishing. 

In April 2012 we received a call from Telmap - they’d been acquired by Intel and were being mothballed. We had half a server and no publisher. Finding ourselves at a crossroads we could abandon the location dream and focus on our existing businesses or invest further in the technology and build a publisher network around it at the same time. We rolled the dice in true ‘if you build it they will come’ fashion!

What were the main challenges you were faced with when starting Vicinity Media? 

Daryl:  We had to find a developer and start with scoping the platform out. The initial scoping was quite an undertaking having never attempted such an involved scope before. The next hurdle was to deliver a product, our first developer was working part time, so delivery of a decent product was no mean feat.

Our technical challenges didn't get any easier - some poor choices of tech stack and technical partners almost derailed Vicinity Media. We had spent almost all of the investor funds and didn’t have a decent working solution. We had to make major cuts and changed to a local partner who delivered a working platform in a few months whilst running the existing platform. I liken it to being in a bus without a steering wheel whilst it barrels down Jan Smuts Ave at 100km/hr. 

Neil:  We were on a knife edge financially, had to deliver for our first clients and publishers and keep our team believing they joined a winner. We’re lucky to have great investors who helped us those tough times. 

Charles: These early years were a rollercoaster with too little supply and lots of advertiser demand and vice versa. Vicinity Media has worked proactively with SA's premium publishers making it possible for us to deliver on campaigns. These publishing partners have walked this journey since the beginning.

Looking back at the past decade, what would you say were your biggest achievements? 

Neil: Launching Distance window in 2014/15 was a big deal. Linked to that was our location tag that allows a non-location aware publisher to pull accurate GPS level location with 6-8 decimals of data, allowing targeting down to street level. Those were the foundations for products and tools like DealFeed, our DOOH product and the Near Me search widget. In more recent times, our measurement approach and the analytics we have brought to DOOH which include local search uplift and location-based website traffic analysis have been key solutions for our client and agency partners.

Daryl: Acquiring accurate user location on non-location aware sites was massive. SA had no app take up and local apps with any user base that were location aware. We built the ecosystem to do this and scale it. Building Visitability reporting also positioned us differently from normal display advertising. 

Ranking first against global location tech players in location accuracy was a big achievement and integrating with SA’s biggest publishers and becoming truly pervasive was another major feather in our cap.

Building an omnichannel product by launching DOOH was the culmination of a number of years of planning and execution. Further to this being the first and only African Adtech company to integrate with the world’s largest DOOH SSP, Broadsign, is another testament. 

What is your vision for the future?

Daryl and Neil:  To maintain our 1st party data leadership position and leverage it to help brands find audiences as digital transformation continues to evolve. The move to omnichannel will continue to pick up pace and then become a rocketship - with Vicinity Media firmly in the cockpit. Once we are satisfied that we have mastered this approach locally we will look to expand into new markets. 

Vicinity Media is celebrating its 10th birthday by running a Share the Location competition on social media. Participants can win amazing prizes as well as a final grand prize of R 10 000 for finding the location. Don’t miss out - join the journey as they celebrate this momentous occasion.