In fact, the weather is the single most important external factor in how businesses perform and affects about $500 billion of annual commercial activity among Fortune Global 500 companies.
But what about the relationship between weather and advertising? Advertising is the art of influencing consumers’ buying decisions and as such its impact is maximized when it is aligned with weather trends. While the technology to run weather-based campaigns is not mainstream yet, retailers are experimenting with it and the results are extremely encouraging.
A very interesting case study involves Subway, the famous fast food franchise specialized in sandwiches and salads. Subway recently boosted store traffic 31% by changing its ads to correspond with weather shifts. By using artificial intelligence (AI) software with a real-time signal-based targeting tool, they created dynamic ads for a foot-long sandwich promotion based on weather patterns.
The Subway case study shows that weather has an influence at the business macro level.
However, during our data analysis work for the EW-Shopp project, we learnt that it also interacts with the specificity of a location at a micro level.
Want to learn more about this topic? Read the full article on Ew-Shopp Data Blog.
