6 min read 
The programmatic industry is at a crossroads. As traditional methods of audience targeting fall under more scrutiny, a fundamental shift is occurring. Marketers are faced with a critical question: how do you truly understand audiences while adhering to evolving privacy regulations?
The answer lies in a powerful, contextual signal that has always been a part of the consumer journey: location. It’s about recognising that where audiences go in the physical world—with explicit consent and robust anonymisation—offers profound insights into what they care about and their authentic intent.
For years, the digital advertising ecosystem relied on third-party cookies and mobile advertising IDs (MAIDs) to track consumers and build profiles. But the privacy zeitgeist has shifted dramatically, with stricter regulations and frameworks like Apple’s App Tracking Transparency (ATT) crippling the use of traditional identifiers.
As the industry grapples with this shift, new identity solutions have emerged, but many still rely on some form of personal identifier, leaving them vulnerable to future regulations. As Adsquare’s CEO Tom Laband notes:
In response, a powerful, privacy-preserving alternative has existed, albeit somewhat overlooked: geospatial data. Unlike user-level data, which identifies individuals, geospatial data describes areas. This aggregated, anonymous data allows advertisers to understand the characteristics of a location without ever identifying a single person.
This approach is not just a privacy-safe alternative—it’s often more effective for connecting the digital and physical worlds. While an audience’s browser history might suggest an interest in a product, their real-world behaviour provides the ultimate contextual relevance. A sports gear ad served to consumers in a stadium isn’t just about interest; it’s about the immediate context of a sporting event.
To fully unlock the potential of location data, the industry must not only embrace its privacy-first nature but also harness technology to make it actionable at scale. This is where AI and machine learning come in.
These technologies can analyse vast amounts of anonymous, aggregated location data to predict foot traffic patterns, identify emerging trends in specific neighbourhoods, and cluster areas with similar behavioural characteristics. This adds a layer of intelligence that goes well beyond simple geofencing and makes location data even more powerful for advertisers.
At the same time, this shift presents a significant opportunity for publishers. By embedding location-based targeting into their offerings, publishers can increase the value of their inventory without relying on personal identifiers. This creates a sustainable, privacy-first monetisation path—ensuring their role in the ecosystem strengthens rather than diminishes in a world where identity is no longer guaranteed.
The potential of location signals as a privacy-safe, scalable targeting tool is immense. Yet to unlock its full power, the industry must address issues surrounding the quality and consistency of location data in the programmatic supply chain.
A clear next step is for the ecosystem to define a collaborative standard for different levels of location data accuracy across channels and technologies. This would allow marketers to match the right geospatial attributes with the right level of precision—ensuring that the insights they derive are both reliable and relevant.
By establishing a shared language for location accuracy, the industry can build a more effective and privacy-preserving programmatic ecosystem for everyone.
The programmatic industry began this decade under pressure: traditional identifiers are fading, and privacy regulations are tightening. Location signals offer not just a workaround but a new foundation—privacy-first, contextual, and scalable across ID-less environments.
When combined with AI, and reinforced through collaborative standards, location becomes far more than a “where.” It evolves into a powerful indicator of “who” and “what”—a signal of real-world intent and behaviour.
In a moment where marketers need to connect digital campaigns to physical outcomes while protecting consumer trust, location stands out as the industry’s most undertapped goldmine. And the time to mine it is now.
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