---
id: "claim-relative-proximity-outperforms"
type: "claim"
source_timestamps: ["§ A Better Predictor of Ad Effects", "¶5"]
tags: ["performance-metrics", "competitive-strategy"]
related: ["concept-relative-proximity", "concept-absolute-proximity", "contrarian-radius-inefficiency"]
confidence: "high"
testable: true
speakers: ["Bowen Luo", "Bhoomija Ranjan"]
sources: ["tail1"]
sourceVaultSlug: "hbr-seg-tail1"
originDay: 1
articleStem: "hbr-tail-115-location-based-advertising"
sourceUrl: "https://hbr.org/2026/03/a-better-strategy-for-location-based-advertising"
sourceTitle: "A Better Strategy for Location-Based Advertising"
---
# Relative proximity outperforms radius targeting

**Claim (author confidence: high; testable):** Targeting customers who are geographically closer to your store than to your rival's store yields **meaningfully higher store visits** than simply targeting everyone within a fixed radius.

The gap in ad responsiveness between **'closer-to-us'** and **'closer-to-rival'** customers is *substantially larger* than the gap between customers who are **'close'** versus **'far'** in absolute terms. This is the empirical basis for [[concept-relative-proximity]] and the case against [[concept-absolute-proximity]] (see also [[contrarian-radius-inefficiency]]).

## Verification status (enrichment)
- **Mechanism — Supported conceptually:** spatial-competition theory (gravity/Huff models) and proximity-nudge research both imply that "closer than rivals" predicts choice.
- **Specific performance uplift — Plausible but not externally validated:** no public field experiment directly benchmarks relative-proximity targeting vs. radius targeting the way described. The "substantially larger gap" magnitude rests on the authors' proprietary six-year dataset and methods.