More than 50% of online shopping search queries happen from mobile devices, and 79% of online shoppers have purchased something online using their smartphone.
It’s vital to create an excellent customer journey that begins with prospects receiving advertisements they actually care about. With limited real estate on mobile devices, this can get tricky.
That’s why there has never been a better time to incorporate Mobile Advertising IDs (MAIDs) into your mobile advertising strategy.
Keep reading to learn more about MAIDs and how to use them for marketing your business more efficiently.
What Is MAID?
MAIDs are strings of digits created by a mobile device’s operating system. A device’s MAID is shared with the servers of the apps that your customers use. As a marketer, you can use MAIDs to follow user behavior and monitor their decisions to “remember” their choices.
A user’s MAID options are hidden within privacy settings. These settings can be reset or limited, similar to starting over history or clearing browser cookies from the very beginning.
If you’re leading a marketing campaign, you must determine what’s working so you can do more of it. There’s no way to know whether your messaging is effective without a reliable way to monitor user behavior.
You’ll find two popular types of MAIDs. Each is connected to a user’s mobile operating system. The MAIDs are used to target advertisements, such as Google Ads, at individual users designated by their device ID.
Google Advertising ID
Google Advertising IDs (GAIDs) are unique identifiers that marketers use to collect data about an individual user’s behavior. GAIDs exist on apps within the Android operating system.
By incorporating GAID into your marketing campaigns, you can reach specific Android users through advertisements that are personalized based on previous mobile activity.
Identifier for Advertisers
An Identifier for Advertisers (IDFA) is Apple’s version of a MAID. IDFA is assigned to Apple device users. You can use it to identify and appeal to mobile audience users.
Mobile Ad IDs vs. Cookies
If you’re thinking MAIDs sound a lot like cookies, you’re not wrong. However, there are significant differences when compared side-by-side.
MAIDs Live Longer
Cookies have a relatively short life because they’re session-based. MAIDs are persistent, so they stick around longer.
Using MAIDs, you end up with a more reliable dataset you can use to feed your programmatic advertising campaign.
MAIDs Make Cross-Matching Easier
Cookies were an identification method utilized by marketers for many years. However, they’re now automatically blocked by most browsers.
Browsers seek to protect their users’ privacy. When they detect foreign cookies that exist for targeting reasons between stakeholders in a programmatic chain, the cookies are blocked. This procedure requires cookie matching to link a user identifier (their cookie ID) from one ad technology to another.
Regarding MAID, the value appears to be the same for each of the apps that a specific user is using. Cross-matching then becomes more manageable, allowing you to deliver a more clear marketing message—this is one of the most significant benefits of a mobile ad campaign versus a traditional one.
How to Leverage MAIDs for Social Media
Today, you can’t trust IDs from a single social platform—which is where MAIDs come in handy.
Mobile advertising IDs can act as the foundation for a single user’s online identity. Using company CRM data, linking desktop cookies, and tools like identity graphs, MAIDs can be more targeted and precise.
When used correctly, the consumers you’re observing can jump from app to app—and you still won’t lose the trail.
Our Strategy
At Lazer Marketing Data, we use a combination of website-visitor and location data to provide active audiences instead of a historical passive or purchased audience.
Our approach gives you active consumers and potential shoppers who have visited similar sites and would benefit from your products or services. This gives you the chance to quickly capitalize on an audience that’s ready to purchase, as well as valuable lookback actions to jumpstart your business marketing campaigns.
Use Cases
We combine physical location data and website visitors to create Visitor Identified Prospect audiences. Regardless of your industry or target audience, we can pinpoint active, in-market prospects.
To explain further, let’s take a look at two real-life examples.
Automotive
We monitor the activity around automotive service centers like local or national mechanics to collect MAIDs.
Then, we move the MAIDs to our opt-in consumer file to gain people who visit these service centers and add them to our list. We sell the data to your agency, where you have an automotive dealership client.
Your agency can now market the dealership’s service capabilities to the customers who are actively visiting their competitors. The dealer now has access to first-party data, which they can use to market offers to the same prospects over time.
Boat and Marine
Imagine you’re an agency serving the boating and marine industry. We put digital fences in place to capture visitors to marinas, marine stores, and boat ramps to collect MAIDs.
We then model these MAIDs to our opt-in consumer file to create a database of consumers who visited these locations. We’ll then sell the data to you because you want to know which consumers are interested in boating.
Then, you can offer this data and marketing services to clients in the boating industry. A good example would be a marina or a retailer of everything from fishing tackle to water skis.
Add Mobile Advertising ID to Your Marketing Arsenal Today
Incorporating a mobile advertising ID into your digital marketing strategy allows you to create better campaigns for your clients through unique personalized ads.
All data that surrounding consumer behavior is collected and can be put to work to deliver customized advertisements.
At Lazer Marketing Data, we’re here to serve as an extension of your data and marketing team. If you’re curious about what we can do for your business, schedule a demo today.