Why Wi-Fi advertising is HOT

It’s no secret that Innity has recently launched WiFi advertising. We’ve already run quite few campaigns that proved to be a great success. Why? Because advertising at free Wi-Fi hotspots gives us the chance to capture people’s attention even before they go online. Here’s how it works.

Free Wi-Fi is becoming a necessity for all coffee shops and restaurants to attract young executives who enjoy surfing the web while having coffee or a meal. Some places have set up platforms for advertisers to tap into this target group and grab their exclusive attention for 30 seconds before they get connected to the web. This avenue provides great advertising potential for marketers.

In the second half of 2009, advertisers in Malaysia began to explore this method, called “Wi-Fi advertising”. This breed of advertising is described as a marriage between ambient and digital advertising, an attention board that guarantees viewership before the user gets connected to the digital world.

Wi-Fi advertising is a hybrid of online and offline advertising. Allowing free internet access at the most popular places around Malaysia, such as Starbucks, Coffee Bean, Secret Recipe, Pizza Hut, etc., Wi-Fi advertising can seamlessly be integrated into campaigns and benefit them with its niche audience reach, guaranteed viewership, fine geo-targeting, and formats that users are bound to watch before they browse the internet.

Advertising at free Wi-Fi hot spots is a unique way for marketers to exclusively reach the attention of their prime target audience, whose attention is otherwise difficult to grab as they are mobile, and spread their attention around.

Wi-Fi users can be divided into three major categories:

• PMEBs (professionals, managers, executives and businessmen) — With roles in management, these are affluent mobile professionals. Outside business, they focus on growing their assets and rewarding themselves and their families with the spoils of their hard work.
• Trendsetters — They are in their late 20s and early 30s. They are hitting strides in their careers and moving up the income ladder to wield their discretionary spending power. If it’s new and hip, they’ll buy it — and influence others to follow their lead.
• College youth – They are the urban upper class aged 18-25. They are outspoken, socially active, and adventurous. These users are confident, mobile, and upwardly motivated. They are the affluent professionals of tomorrow.

Now as we have this reach, it’s a matter of capturing their attention and turning them into customers and brand advocates. Mandatory watch is very helpful here, but attention must be drawn to the quality and creativity of the ads, so as to avoid falling under the same trend online advertising faced some years ago, where users became immune to ads over time.

Another strength of Wi-Fi advertising is its fine geo-targeting. When users connect from hotspots, we have the advantage of knowing their exact location; hence we’d be able to identify how close they are to the nearest store which sells an advertiser’s product. This gives us an opportunity to influence consumers to go to that store, which could be just a few steps away.

Advertising at free Wi-Fi hotspots is a gateway to users that gives marketers the ability to capture their attention even before they connect to internet. Being mobile and always connected is not just trendy, it’s becoming a necessity, and Wi-Fi here is the best solution — it offers users free internet access and gives marketers their prime audience reach.