NDA Meets Waze: Ru Roberts and Emil Bielski MD UK Croud on behavioural change and a shift to local

New Digital Age has partnered with traffic navigation specialist Waze for a six-part special series of NDA Meets.The series will dig deep into the company to understand how this unique company is disrupting the market to add value to not only its users but an entire ecosystem of drivers, advertisers, city partners and more. We will be talking to executives at Waze, its  users, partners, and advertisers to gain an in-depth understanding of how the company and the problems it is solving.In episode four, Advertisers  we sit down with Ru Roberts, Waze and Emil Bielski MD UK, Croud.Roberts discusses why, for advertisers, Waze is positioned as an out  of home proposition.  “Waze is unique in its ;positioning. It’s digital but when using it you are fundamentally out of your home and our ad proposition is entirely  location based,” says Rpberts. “So you’ll only see ads when you are within the vicinity of that business or service.” It’s a positioning the strikes a chord with Bielski. “Location-based advertising is increasingly  important, especially with changes in consumer behaviour. Google searches with ‘near me’ appended to them have increased by 150% in the last two years”, he says. There’s also an increasing complexity, driven by things like hybrid working, about where people actually are. Which makes accurate data vital to gain insight about people’s behaviour.”The discussion makes fascinating listening on the changing face of advertising in today’s post-pandemic, digital-first world.