“Exploiting the Opportunities in Google Maps for Better Decision Making in OOH Advertising Business” was the theme of the maiden Location Intelligence workshop recently organized by the OOH Academy in collaboration with the Advertising Practitioners Council of Nigeria (APCON) which aims at enlightening industry practitioners on location intelligence concepts and importance of Global Positioning System (GPS) technology in Out- Of- Home advertising operations.
The Location Intelligence Workshop is one of the activities of the OOH Academy, a bespoke platform that provides thought leadership and training in the Out-of-Home sub sector in Africa.
The workshop session which explored the functions available in Google Map, and mining insights from location and audience data in the Maps Platform also featured presentations from seasoned experts and professionals from across the industry to address the subject matter.
Convener of the workshop and Project Coordinator of OOH Academy, Kingsley Onwukaeme while speaking on the subject of data gathering and insights initiative observed that the Location Intelligence Workshop was born out of the need to share knowledge with professionals and to accelerate the growth of the OOH industry in Nigeria.
According to him “Our objectives are to promote education of the OOH subsector by building knowledgeable Practitioners in Nigeria, grow the OOH industry by deepening the credibility of her integrity and recognizing and celebrating excellent performances in the OOH subsector.”
He noted that not only had the industry transformed from Outdoor Advertising to Out of Home advertising, it has as well evolved to Audience Planning, leveraging audience and their location insights which has led to the birth of professionals who are widely known as Location Marketing Experts.
In addition, he noted that Nigeria’s OOH industry is currently experiencing seismic shifts in agency services and media owners’ operational pattern.
By implication, he observed, “without the understanding of our locations and their audience, it will be difficult for us to prove the value of our OOH solutions to the clients creating the impression of no value from OOH to the Marketing Channels Ecosystem. Google Maps is one of the freely accessible Location Intelligence platforms that has the biggest level of data widely acceptable in the world. Therefore, the need to introduce us to some features of the platform and how to creatively analyze its data sets and use them in proving the values of OOH solution to the clients. Therefore, we came up with the workshop to show how to gain audience and location insights from google maps when strategizing and planning OOH campaigns,’’
Also speaking on the occasion, Valentine Elaigwu, Managing Director of Ground Force Marketing Services and member of the Outdoor Agencies Association of Nigeria(OAAN) emphasized on how location intelligence has changed the narrative and improved the OOH practice globally.
Participants at the workshop were issued with certificates of participation which among other things qualifies them for an APCON upgrade.
