Consumer packaged goods brands without physical locations may not immediately think of Waze when planning their marketing strategies, but the driving navigation app’s Ben Crowell says a number of campaigns over the past year have begun to change that perception.

For example, in Q3 last year, Waze began working with f’real, a company that sells milkshakes at convenience stores across the U.S. and Canada.

“The f’real campaign is a great example of smart marketing for a driving audience,” says Crowell, head of Ads Product Marketing for Waze. “The creative is simple, similar to what you would see on a billboard, and includes a compelling offer.”

Even though f’real does not have stores of their own, they were able to place Branded Pins on the Waze map at participating convenience store locations in Boise and Salt Lake City, ensuring nearby drivers would learn where their products are sold.

According to Waze, f’real saw more than 6,150 “offer downloads,” while simultaneously driving over 400 Wazers to Maverik convenience stores. This campaign succeeded by not only increasing driver awareness of participating Maverik stores, but navigations to those locations as well. By allowing users to save the offer to their phone, F’real further increased the chance of store visits at a later time, Crowell says.

As Waze, which has over 70 million monthly global users, expands the features of its Branded Pins, Zero-speed Takeovers, and Promoted Search, the Google-owned company is also looking to broaden the categories of marketers it works with.

GeoMarketing: Location advertising in all forms is above all about context. Since Waze is primarily used for road navigation while en route from one point to another, rather than by someone stopping to look at a mobile phone, do you have to define “context” differently?

Ben Crowell: When you’re a marketer and you know exactly where your customer is and where they’re going, it allows you to do a lot more in terms of reaching the consumer at a moment that’s relevant. That’s our approach to context.

When most people consider location marketing, they think a lot about networks and the geo ad tech you can layer on top of the network. In those cases, you certainly get some data about where users are or where they’ve been, butut you don’t really have any idea where the ad is going to show. With Waze, on the other hand, you know each person exposed to your message is on-the-go and using an app, and being exposed to ads, designed specifically for drivers.

We also talk a lot about intent with our ads. In addition to reaching somebody with the right context and developing relationships with consumers over time, they can also take advantage by navigating to a store location at that moment — or at a future moment — in the context of the app they’re using as well.

Waze ads are often thought of as “a consumer is at a stoplight, here’s a Takeover for a nearby marketer.” What are other scenarios and situations Waze considers when it comes to serving an ad?

At this point, people mostly use Waze to get where they’re going just a little faster, as opposed to using it while they’re at home to figure out where they’re going to go or where they’re going to stop.

We really encourage marketers to think about drivers in that context, as already on the road with a destination in mind. They might be going to work or they might be going home, but based on what you know about that driver and that driver’s particular experience at that time, reach them with a message that’s relevant in that moment.

There are other platforms people use more often to sort of plan out ahead of time where they’re going to go, but what marketers can really take advantage of on Waze is people who are already on the go. We’ve also seen that people who are already on the go are really a lot closer to a transaction, which makes a lot of difference for marketers as well.

If you’re already in your car and you’re on your way home, you’re more likely to stop off and pick up a holiday gift for someone, or need fuel, or need dinner for the family or something like that as opposed to if you’re trying to book a flight, or book travel while you’re sitting at your desk. It’s a different use case, and I think marketers should take advantage of all of them, but what they can really take advantage of on Waze is reaching people who are already out and about and very likely to stop off and buy something, especially if you understand the context of that particular drive.

A lot of apps — such as Uber or Google Now — attempt to anticipate a user’s needs based on their destination habits or calendar items. Has Waze attempted to incorporate delivering ads to someone in advance of a scheduled trip?

It’s something we’re always thinking about. For example, hotels and hospitality is an interesting category for us. It’s one where you might not assume that somebody is just going to stop off on their way to wherever they’re going, and book a room for the night — it doesn’t seem like an impulse decision for most people.

What’s interesting is we have seen success for campaigns that are trying to reach people who are on the road on very long drives and who may need somewhere to stay that night.

It’s actually been pretty successful, and then on top of that, what we’ve seen from some of our hotel partners is they really benefit from having a consistent presence on the map, especially if they’re likely to reach people who are on the road a great deal, and who might need to take advantage in the future.

A good example would be you see pins for one particular hotel brand all over the country or all over the region that you often drive in, and so maybe you develop a little more trust over time with that brand because you know they have so many locations.

If you just seed the message to the right audience about your hotel chain offering clean rooms, or having vacancy, or being available in a moment of need because you have so many locations, then that sort of sticks with the consumer. We’ve seen Waze be a successful platform for hotels where you might not have assumed it would be otherwise.

Are there other categories that you’ve opened up to or seen more interest from that you can mention?

The ones that continue to perform really well and that we’ve had success with over time has been the ones that you assume: fuel, fast food, and auto services.

We continue to bring more partners onto the map in those categories, but there are other areas where we’ve seen some really interesting successful campaigns, one of them is actually CPG, which you might not expect. These big brands who have the shopper marketing groups where they’re essentially responsible for moving more product off the shelves at one particular retail partner.

Generally, what we’ve seen is a lot of success with some of these brands pinning retail locations such as convenience stores, with f’real being a great example.

Those efforts tie back to our Navigation Lift studies. Navigation Lift, which is unique to Waze and something other platforms can’t provide, measures the latent impact of your Pins and Takeovers. We’re able, in a lot of cases, to measure a lift for people who proactively search for your brand days after they’ve been exposed to those ads relative to a control group.

In this case, let’s say that you are exposing users to an ad for chips at Circle K, just to give one example, or even 7 Eleven, same idea. Then, what we saw actually is that people who are exposed to those Pins and to those Zero-speed Takeovers, are more likely to search for Circle K or 7 Eleven in the next seven days than people who are not exposed to those ads.

The ads can include a store brand’s logo, but most of what the creative is showcasing is the actual product itself. For example, we could feature potato chips promotion that says, “Buy two bags of chips and get a discount.” That’s a nice fit for drivers if they’re stopping over to get snacks. But the surprising result is not just that people might drive there via an ad in that moment, but they actually might say to themselves two days later, “Oh, that’s right. There’s a deal at Circle K. Let me see if there’s a Circle K close by and let me navigate there.”

That’s an area where we’ve really seen success and want to do a lot more in the coming year. We’re really trying to tap into these brands and products that people love, and that they might want while they’re driving, or might just need later. In that case, we can let them know which retail locations offer them, and then hopefully prove that drivers are more likely to go to those retail locations as a result of those ads.