Hyperlocal Advertising in 2025: A Guide for Brands
- Exverus Staff
- Jul 27
- 4 min read
Even for national or global brands, localizing the messaging and targeting can significantly increase revenue and media ROI.
When it comes to ad targeting, bigger isn’t always better.
Even for national or global brands, not every product or marketing campaign will be relevant to every consumer. Spending ad dollars to reach irrelevant consumers is a waste, so segmenting is non-negotiable!
On a recent earnings call, Adidas CEO Bjørn Gulden said,
“We need to be a global brand with a local mindset. And I say local again and again and again – the world is developing in a way that you need to be successful locally. And, locally, it always starts with the consumer and the athlete.”
And today, a wealth of technological developments are making it easy to get super-precise with your targeting and make the deepest impact for your brand.
Why is local marketing important in 2025?
First, in years of economic uncertainty, media buyers need to be extra judicious in allocating every dollar for the maximum return. Focus your advertising budget into areas with the highest potential for conversion (either now or down the road).
Second, we’ve all heard it ad infinitum, but the media consumption landscape is fragmented. Everybody’s watching, listening to, and scrolling something different! Local marketing is a great way to broaden and retarget your audience, wherever they might be online.
A recent Gallup poll shows that Americans’ trust in the media is down nationwide, thanks to misinformation and bias running rampant. People may be more trusting and responsive to messaging in their local news and communities than mass media outlets.
Furthermore, SOCi’s Local Visibility Index 2024 reported that high-visibility brands
increase their revenue 2-3x the rate of the average company
are more than twice as likely to be seen by consumers searching for local businesses online
Collectively earn about $54.1B per year left behind by low-visibility brands
Finally, EMARKETER reports that 68% of US internet users say localized messaging from national brands makes the ads more relevant…
…but only 26% of marketers consider strengthening hyperlocal advertising a top priority! That’s a big opportunity for your brand to swoop in and meet the neighbors.
How do I optimize my Google Business Profile to show up when people search “[my product/service] near me?"
Google prioritizes three main factors when determining which businesses show up for "near me" searches:
Relevance is how well a Business Profile matches what someone is searching for. This means your Google Business Profile category, business description, services, and attributes need to align closely with search intent.
Distance (or Proximity) is self-explanatory – the proximity of the business to the searcher is a key factor affecting the positioning of the listing in Google Maps. Google considers the user's location to show the nearest relevant businesses.
Prominence relates to how well-known and reputable your business is, both online and offline. This includes your review quantity and quality, citations across the web, and overall online authority.
Other factors may include customer reviews, multiple locations (businesses with more have an advantage), and recent activity with the listing.
How can AI help with hyperlocal advertising?
AI has always been the engine of programmatic advertising, which enables precise targeting and measurement for optimization.
But now, you can get really granular with the help of machine learning models that build AI audience personas based on behavioral patterns and media consumption in a given zip code.
Generative AI technology helps with dynamic creative optimization (DCO) by producing multiple variants of a creative visual asset to test at scale. DCO tech can recognize patterns between audience behaviors and times of the day or year, customer attributes, and creative aspects.
How can I market to a specific region offline?
One of the best ways to reach regional audiences is to sponsor local events. Professional, college, or even high school sports bring people together by the thousands; and the audiences are attentive, in a positive mindset, and loyal to their teams. Concerts and music festivals do the same. Leveraging this built-in passion and sense of community can really serve your brand.
Out-of-home (OOH) or digital-out-of-home (DOOH) media is another great way to expand awareness and spread your message at scale. Dynamic creative optimization comes in handy here, too – you can automatically switch your messaging depending on the time of day, weather, or foot traffic patterns. The creative possibilities are endless, and programmatic DOOH media buying makes precise targeting and measurement a breeze.
“We've heard skepticism about whether OOH works, but we've made a real impact for clients when we've paired foot traffic measurement with our OOH campaigns. We geofence the OOH targeting, and we can see who has passed by and whether they come into stores. From there, we can track lifts or changes in foot traffic after a billboard goes up. We've seen increases as high as 37% for a single store!”
- Georgia Schreiner, Exverus Media Director
Experiential activations like pop-ups, in-store appearances, and guerrilla stunts make a big impression, bring people together, and spur millions of organic social posts for scale.
How do I determine which markets to run paid media campaigns in?
When we run national campaigns like Equinix B2B or The Chosen theatrical premieres, we carefully choose the most important designated marketing areas (DMAs) based on factors like:
Audience fit, which suggests conversion potential
Scale of media availability
Proximity to selling stores/retailers
Size of addressable target audience in each market
DMAs have historically been defined by TV and radio advertising networks, but they’re important for efficiently running paid social, search, out-of-home (OOH), experiential, and other media channels, too!
It takes a team of expert media planners and analysts to compile a bird’s eye view of your hyperlocal advertising’s impact on overall brand-building and sales growth.
To ask questions or find out more about hyperlocal, national, or global media planning strategies, drop us a line below!
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