Waze is a crowdsourced navigation app that helps you find the best driving routes.

This is done by volunteer editors creating the maps, and 140 million users helping each other understand the road situation in real-time:

• track traffic jams;
• find out the location of radars and cameras;
• find out and warn others about changes in road conditions (obstacles, police, traffic accidents).

Waze has become one of the most popular thematic applications in the world with over 140 million people in just a few years. Today, Waze advertising is probably on the list of the best marketing solutions for automotive companies that possess physical locations and points of sale. In 2021, we recommended and supported the Shiny&Diski brand team to test Waze ads. As the company sells tires and alloy wheels, we decided to add a business to Waze. Interested? In our article, we answer the questions, "What is Waze advertising?", "How does Waze advertising work?" and reveal all insights in Waze marketing strategy.

By the way, if you are operating in the automobile industry segment, Promodo’s Research on Tire Market Trends will bring high value to you.

How to Advertise on Waze?

Waze for business is an effective marketing tool with several types of ads. The application offers three Waze ad formats of integration: pins, navigational search, and outreach tools (advertising messages).

‍Pins on the map are branded company marks on the application map. When driving past the location, the user will see not just a road network, but also an icon with the logo of the location.

Ads Search is an opportunity to highlight your location in the recommendations during a search in Waze. In such a way, depending on the user’s location, a relevant advertising message will appear when searching for a certain point of interest. Waze app advertising will be the only one and will be located at the top with an indication of the route.

Takeovers and Arrow. Takeovers are advertising messages that appear at the top of the screen when the user drives within a certain radius of the point of sale. Most often, this is an announcement with certain special offers or company news. Arrow allows for making an impression on the user at the first moment of opening the app. In such a case, an advertising icon with an arrow pointing in the direction of the location appears based on the user’s geolocation.

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“Our target audience is car drivers. Considering that all advertisers primarily use Google Ads, there are already many advertising campaigns there: in particular, on Google Maps, which is used not only by drivers”. Vlad Kiselyov, Media Technical Lead at Promodo

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Waze Advertising Opportunities for Business

• Brand awareness growth: Waze shows each store or distribution point on the map and in search results, which increases brand recognition among the target audience.
• Advertising: the application allows you to inform customers about promotional offers, show store locations, and offer them a route.
• Leading customers: the Waze navigation system leads the driver to the store, which benefits the market share of the company.

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“While the possibilities of Google Ads, Facebook, and Youtube are obvious, the clients continue to look for additional unique advertising platforms. This is what makes Waze app advertising attractive. This is not just a promotion tool, a niche platform with a determined target audience, namely car drivers. In addition, the dynamics of growth in Waze is also rather impressive”. Vlad Kiselyov, Media Technical Lead at Promodo

We started Waze advertising in mid-November 2021. We planned to reach our standard target audience through the app. But, since we reached it through a new communication channel, we expected to get more Post-view conversions than when using the usual GDN.

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“In addition, the presence in the Waze application had to strengthen the position of Shiny&Diski as a brand”. Vlad Kiselyov, Media Technical Lead at Promodo

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Now you can customize Waze ads according to the open hours of stores. As the application knows the location of the user, these settings are enough.

Waze Marketing Performance Metrics

• Impressions: The number of times users saw the Pin/Arrow/Takeover.
• Unique Users: The number of people that saw your ad.
• Engagement: The number of engagements generated by the ad.
• Navigation: The number of trips made to your location.
• Cost of navigation: The cost of one trip to your location.

Results of Brand Promotion in the Waze Application

We compiled a Waze advertising review at the beginning of December 2021:

• the conversion rate according to impressions in Waze turned out to be 61% higher than on YouTube;

• the absolute majority of the target audience was unique. We didn’t reach 80% of users with other Shiny&Diski campaigns.

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“You won’t surprise anyone with a banner ad on Google. No matter how cool the creative is. On the contrary, Waze stands out for its nativeness. You don’t immediately understand that this is precisely the advertisement in your navigator. As a result, it attracts more than any campaign on YouTube and GDN”. Vlad Kiselyov, Media Technical Lead at Promodo

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Even though we reached a relatively small audience, about 270,000 people, the indicator of its uniqueness went off the scale: the intersection with YouTube and GDN turned out to be lower than 15%.

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Some of our Waze advertising indicators turned out to be even better than the industry benchmarks:

• rate of clicks on the mark on the map;
• the percentage of users who decided to route to a store after seeing it on the map;
• conversion after viewing the ad: the percentage of people who saw the message and decided to route to the Shiny&Diski location.

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Conclusions

If a business needs to route customers offline, then advertising on Waze is definitely worth using.

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“Waze location based advertising is relevant for any niche business with an offline location that is related to automobiles, including sale, repair, and replacement of auto parts, service stations, tire fitting, car dealerships, gas stations, etc.” Vlad Kiselyov, Media Technical Lead at Promodo

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First, if the main goal is online — for example, to increase reach and conversions based on impressions on the site — then we can also use the application. Secondly, the driver’s navigation to a certain location is another important advantage, which increases involvement in offline stores.

Until the audience gets used to advertising on Waze as it is in other channels, you may gain good performance indicators not due to frequency and budgets, but due to the use of a unique type of advertising.

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