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Why advertisers should necessarily rely on weather data

by meteonomiqs
Why advertisers should necessarily rely on weather data

3 reasons to go for weather targeting

 

It’s always the weather’s fault: rain ruins our barbecue, an upcoming weather change causes headaches, and if it’s too hot, sales drop because everyone is lying by the lake instead of shopping. No matter what we do, whether in everyday life or in business, the weather always plays a role.

But why should we only see it in a negative light? If the weather has such an immense impact, why not literally capitalize on it?

In this article, we’ll take a closer look at why it’s worthwhile to consider weather in your advertising activities and why weather targeting is more important than ever. Especially considering the recent demise of 3rd party cookies.

1. Weather is relevant and provides valuable insights into customer behavior

Everyone has felt the relevance of weather at first hand. Its not just that it accompanies us every day, it also affects us in many ways.

Here are 2 impressive examples:

  • The mere prospect of nice weather puts us in a more generous mood. This was the result of an experiment conducted by two American psychologists. There, the waitress of a restaurant drew the expected weather on the back of the bills. Those guests who expected blue sky the next day tipped more.
  • Also, our memory seems to be influenced by the weather, as a study by Australian scientist Joseph Forgas has shown. He asked customers at a newsstand to remember ten things that were on the counter. The result: participants on rainy days were able to remember about three times as many items as participants who were asked when the sun was shining.

As the weather is linked to our everyday lives and our emotional world, obviously our consumer behavior is also directly influenced by it. This is nothing new of course. However, it is often underestimated by advertisers, although this factor offers many astonishing surprises and opportunities. Namely that the influence of the weather clearly goes far beyond the connection between rain and the sale of umbrellas.

weather effect temperature and rain

Do you want to find out more about the correlation between weather and your online sales? In a case study we conducted for herrenausstatter.de together with our partner mohrstade, we show you how you can manage this in Google Data Studio.

2. Weather is a sales driver and sales predictor

“This weather really makes me want to do xyz”. Surely everyone has said this sentence – with changing products and activities – at some time or another. After all, the products customers are interested in depend crucially on where they are and in what weather. But products and sales channels can react completely differently to the weather, which in addition varies from day to day and from region to region.

This means that in order to be really successful with weather targeting, it is absolutely necessary to know the right trigger points. For example, should the ad be played at 20 or 25 degrees? For this, wouldn’t it be nice if there was something similar to a weather app for everyday life that you could use to optimally adjust your marketing activities to the weather. An add-on that shows when and where it is worthwhile to advertise for which products and then implements this automatically.

The solution: product weather indices

Grafic Indices

An answer to the question of how purchasing behavior behaves per product, location and weather is provided by so-called product-weather indices. Based on the GfK Consumer Panel Germany and our weather data, they predict local demand for individual product groups.

From beer weather to fashion weather to barbecue and cold weather – the product weather indices are available for over 100 product categories and can be integrated as targeting segments in all common AdTech platforms as well as used for Google Ads campaigns. Via automatic location-time optimization, ads are always played exactly when they are relevant in terms of location, time and weather.

Feel free to have a look at our list of available indices. Are the right products not included? Please contact us. We will be happy to create individual indices for you.

3. Weather supports personalized customer targeting and works in a world without cookies

The marketing world is facing a turning point. Increasingly strict data protection guidelines and the slow but inevitable death of 3rd party cookies are putting the entire advertising industry under a lot of pressure. The challenge now is to quickly find alternative ways of targeting customers efficiently.

One approach is situational targeting, where communication with customers is not based on the content they consume. Rather, the key issue is the customer’s current situation. In other words, the question of where, how, and under what conditions. Situational data such as the weather thus complement personalization and weather targeting thus becomes a promising alternative to cookie-based behavioral targeting.

 

Case Study Online-Shopping weather data

 

Whether DSP, DMP or CDP – our product weather indices can be integrated into all AdTech systems without much effort. Feel free to contact us. Together we can optimize your marketing campaigns and create strong sale pushes with our solution.

You can also find more information and cases in our whitepaper “Weatherize you Ads” – How to optimize your campaigns with weather data.

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