Harris Beber’s route to becoming CMO of Google subsidiary Waze – he joined in April – included a stopover at Amazon selling diapers and five years as the marketing chief at Vimeo.
But regardless of where you are, the key to marketing success is understanding customer behavior and solving a customer’s problems, Beber said. Sometimes that’s same-day diaper delivery and sometimes that’s directing users to their destination safely and conveniently, he said.
A big part of Beber’s job is to help Waze scale its user base and keep people engaged with the app.
Waze, which was acquired by Google in 2013, now has 150 million monthly active users across the globe.
But Waze and Google Maps don’t compete with each other, said Beber, who noted that there’s almost no user overlap between them, because they have very different use cases.
People primarily use Google Maps to find local businesses and navigate through local neighborhoods by car or on foot, whereas Waze crowdsources real-time traffic information from users and volunteers to find the quickest and most efficient driving directions to get them from point A to point B while avoiding traffic, construction sites and accidents.
Context is key
Although Waze is privy to vast amounts of user location data, it doesn’t sell this information and only accesses it while the app is in use. No location data is collected for marketing purposes, Beber said.
But Waze, which monetizes primarily through advertising, does tap into location data to target people with what it considers to be contextual advertising – ads based on geofences in the “context of the users’ journeys,” Beber said.
Waze does serve ads based on real-time location, but the company refers to this as contextual because the ads are based on wherever a given device is in the moment, rather than any meaningful connections or patterns about a particular user, he added.
Although its parent company makes tens of billions of dollars every quarter from data-driven advertising, Beber said that, for Waze’s purposes, contextual ads are more relevant.
For example, based on a user’s trip, Waze can advertise nearby businesses – a fast food joint, perhaps, a gas station or a coffee shop – by suggesting a stop en route that only adds a couple of minutes to the travel time.
There’s no point in advertising a retailer on Waze if it’s 50 miles away, Beber said.
Because Waze can see where its users are in real time on local roads, it’s able to drive incremental value, as in incremental visits, because it delivers relevant ads literally yards away from the point of sale, Beber said.
Safety first
In addition to attracting advertisers, though, Waze has its eye on increasing engagement.
Over the years, Waze has been adding to the number of real-time alerts it can offer to users, including updates on potholes, collisions and disruptive construction and information from traffic cameras. With Google’s backing, the amount of data Waze has been able to pull in has grown “exponentially larger,” Beber said.
The more insights Waze can offer users, the stickier the app will be, which is one of the reasons why Waze launched a Global Event Partner program in 2016.
Through the program, Waze partners with international event organizers, most recently Tour de France in June, to include directions, road closures and other event-based traffic information into its maps. Although the main purpose is to help with user safety, it’s also a user acquisition opportunity for Waze among the spectators.
“It’s a benefit for the broader community, and it’s self-fueling, too,” Beber said. “People love being the first to spot ‘insider information.’”
But sometimes that information can be useful in previously unanticipated ways.
For example, Beber said, a Portuguese reporter investigating a traffic accident in 2018 discovered that a user on Waze had already reported the accident eight full minutes before emergency services were even notified.
Waze worked to integrate more direct and immediate accident alert reporting into the app, which cut down Portugal’s average ambulance dispatch time by about seven minutes, Beber said.
In the US, regulators estimate that shaving off just one minute from the average 911 response time could save 10,000 lives a year.
But balancing a gamified user interface with safety protocol is a tricky dance, Beber said.
Waze has colorful interstitials with cartoon characters that ask drivers to indicate whether or not a traffic stop, accident or other roadblock is still ongoing by clicking “Yes” or “No” on their phones. Users can also initiate an incident report with a button click or two.
“We design those user interactions to be as short as possible,” Beber said, noting that the app is meant to be used on a device that’s mounted safely on a car’s dashboard or by the vehicle’s passenger.
This article has been updated.
