Dive Brief:

• The BIA/Kelsey Industry Watch report forecasts that U.S. mobile ad spending overall will grow from $33 billion in 2016 to $72 billion by 2021 per an organization website.
• Breaking that spending down to just location-based mobile ads, spending is expected to increase from $12.4 billion in 2016 to $32.4 billion in 2021. The spend on native social ads is expected to total $10.2 billion in 2016 and to grow to $24.2 billion in 2021, driven by the format's advantages — such as a vertically scrolling feed — and high performance.
• The report points out that one of the key reasons for the growth forecast is native thinking, meaning building content, apps and ad that are specifically designed for mobile form factors, and that smartphones' location tracking abilities make location-targeted content a natural fit.

Dive Insight:

Google is the main player in location marketing, although Facebook is making inroads in the space, and both tech giants are fully focused on mobile advertising. Local search is a powerful tactic for marketing according to Location3’s Nick Neels who told Marketing Dive that local search combines a high degree of purchase intent while being brand agnostic, a combination that offers marketers a lower average cost-per-acquisition.

Marketers looking to get into location-based and local marketing should tap Google’s Google My Business feature and take advantage of Facebook’s “Location” tab on business Pages. And as the BIA/Kelsey report points out, mobile marketing and advertising is optimized when taking advantage of the unique features of smartphones including considering the limited screen real estate for content and creative elements and leveraging the geo-location features built into how people use and carry their devices.