One supposed advantage of mobile marketing – the ability to show ads on people’s phones based on where they are – has generated more talk than action so far.

Location plays a role in less than 10% of mobile ad exposures in Asia-Pacific, home to more than a billion handset owners.

That number however is about to climb rapidly, suggests Sanchit Sanga, Asia-Pacific head of mobile and search marketing for WPP-owned media agency, Mindshare.

Sanga, also Mindshare’s digital head for India and Southeast Asia, has run successful tests with marketers working in the banking and finance, consumer goods, retail and white goods sectors. He expects others to follow suit.

“Not more than 5-8% of all mobile impressions in Asia have location variables enabled at the moment,” Sanga tells Media Business Asia.

“It is still an emerging area within the mobile ecosystem. As data fusion techniques evolve, this number will rapidly move into higher double-digits. In the next two to three years, we see this moving to 20-25% for marketers we represent.”

Mobile ads can still miss the mark if relying on location alone, a mistake some brands have made in the past, Sanga explains. The real value comes from blending in other contextual information, such as demographic profiles or historic behavior.

This depth is in short supply in Asia, limiting the scope for effective targeting. Opportunities are opening up however, which will accelerate the use of location-based ads.

Many links in the chain

While markets such as the US and the UK lead the way in location-based marketing today, Asia’s size and diversity makes the region an ideal laboratory for future learnings, Sanga notes.

“We have used Asia as a hub to scale and build an offering which is robust enough to be emulated in the mobile evolved and mobile emerging markets,” he says. “It’s a challenging yet fertile test bed."

Mindshare already works with more than 25 different partners across the mobile value chain. Recently, the agency added another, inking a deal with targeting specialist AdNear to help pinpoint where people are.

AdNear, a Singapore-based company, builds profiles of audiences on the go by cross-indexing data derived from apps with location information from WiFi hotspots and mobile phone towers.

The company is focused on Australia, India and Southeast Asia for now, with an eye on expanding into Japan in the near future.

“While mapping is more evolved in the Western world, the technologies emerging in Asia are world class, and making rapid progress to cover this landscape,” Sanga says.

"Some companies in Asia can accurately target consumers within a few meters."