Adthena launches granular local search insights solution

Search intelligence platform Adthena is out with a new solution called Local View. It’s designed to give marketers granular data on how people search locally as well as competitive insights on ad copy and spend in local markets.

Local View can highlight local search intent at the DMA, state, city or other local level as well as competitor ad copy, CPC and CTR insights at the local level.

Why we care. The launch comes at a time when Google is making less search query data available to advertisers due to privacy concerns and consumer behavior has changed substantially due to the pandemic, with local behaviors impacted by changing restrictions.

The company says marketers are seeing greater variance in search activity at every local level. “Your location-specific ads need to adapt and be there, and they need to be informed by these changes,” said Ashley Fletcher, VP of marketing at Adthena. “With Local View, we can show you what your audiences are searching for by geography, which ad copy performs best and who you are really competing with, bringing much-needed transparency to location-based search.”

That also includes day-parting views of when you and your competitors are bidding on key terms, as shown in the screenshot below. That data can be used to inform your own bidding as well as that of partners or affiliates.

How it works. Adthena’s systems create a map of the relevant terms for a brand by scanning its website and competitors’ keywords. It then scans Google search pages for those terms at the local market level via local IP addresses and pulls in the organic and text ad listings daily (there is an option to update data hourly). The AI determines the frequency with which to scrape based on a query’s popularity.

Marketers can create custom regions — airport cities or sales areas for example. Local View can also identify opportunities that the company calls “Lone Rangers” — results where now ads are currently showing.

The screenshot below (click to enlarge) shows the desktop performance for top ad copy phrases used by a brand, followed by the top phrases used in competitors’ ads in a particular locality.

Use cases. Adthena highlights six different areas of use cases for Local View insights: search terms, ad copy and local language nuances, competitor threats, partner opportunities, and strategic insights such as local weather and event systems. Local search term data, for example, can be used to understand brand penetration at the local level, seeing local search trends as well as the volume of near me searches for local store opportunities.

“One of the most interesting use cases for me is using paid search to validate radio and television advertising,” said Adthena’s Global Product Marketing Manager Daniel Shepherd during a product demo last week. “As you know, television and radio is notoriously hard to attribute to real conversions and traffic. So what we can do if there are certain terms that are mentioned in your television adverts, in your radio adverts, we can see users searching those terms, clicking on your ads that also mention those terms to help you validate how effective television and radio advertising is.

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About The Author

Ginny Marvin

Ginny Marvin was Third Door Media’s former Editor-in-Chief (October 2018 to December 2020), running the day to day editorial operations across all publications and overseeing paid media coverage. Ginny Marvin writes about paid digital advertising and analytics news and trends for Search Engine Land, Marketing Land and MarTech Today. With more than 15 years of marketing experience, Ginny has held both in-house and agency management positions. She can be found on Twitter as @ginnymarvin.