5 Analytics Platforms For Better Hyperlocal Ad Targeting
When used on its own, location data can be a reliable way for marketers to determine where their customers are at during specific times of the day and when they’re most likely to be visiting certain stores or establishments. By overlaying this information with other types of consumer data sets, however, marketers can make inferences about their audience’s interests and demographics that would be impossible to glean from location alone.
Location analytics platforms can be just as useful for developers and publishers as they are for major brands and agencies. In fact, these platforms can be a useful tool for just about anyone who’s looking to gather more inside data about their audience or the audiences they’re trying to reach through mobile ads. Here are five location analytics platforms that brands, marketers, and developers can use to learn more about their target consumers.
1. Placed
Placed is an analytics platform that combines consumer location data with metadata (such as a venue’s name, business category, popularity, or hours of operation) and uses this information to make inferences about consumer behaviors. The platform provides clients with detailed reports that show which businesses consumers are visiting most often. For example, developers can use Placed to determine where people were when they turned on their mobile apps, and whether those consumers were more likely to be shopping at one department store over another. Placed Analytics is free for brands and developers.
2. PlaceIQ
Mobile developers and publishers can use PlaceIQ to gain insight into the behaviors and motivations of their target audiences. The platform takes raw location-based data, event data, a social data, and runs it through a series of “data cleansing” processes to extract any patterns and trends. It then uses this information to provide developers and networks with context for mobile advertising. Advertisers looking to put their mobile ads in front of bar-hoppers, for example, can use PlaceIQ to determine when and where their mobile ads should run. PlaceIQ does not publish its pricing structure.
3. Factual
Factual layers location information with community databases to create context for any geographic point in the world. Some of the data sets that Factual relies on have to do with healthcare providers, restaurants, hotels, crosswalks, and discounted offers or daily deals. Developers can use this information to monetize their apps and create more targeted offerings based on user demographics and commercial profiles. Factual offers a variable pricing structure for users who need both API Access and Premium Access.
4. Skyhook Wireless
Using Skyhook Wireless’ SpotRank data intelligence service, developers and advertisers can predict consumer density levels for any geographic location, depending on the time of day and day of the week. The SpotRank service mines information from Skyhook’s existing location system, which developers can integrate into their apps to provide location results, and combines that data with real-time activity and events information. For example, a developer with a restaurant-recommendation app could use SpotRank’s data to find the dining establishments least likely to be busy during the dinnertime rush. Skyhook does not publish its developer licensing fees.
5. JiWire
While it’s not a location analytics platform in the traditional sense, JiWire entered the marketplace with its own tool for layering location information with consumer data earlier this year. The company’s Location Graph service combines the place data JiWire gathers from its media network with consumer travel patterns. Marketers can then use this information to target specific audiences (like business travelers or soccer moms) when displaying mobile ads. JiWire’s platform can be useful to marketers looking to push ads to consumers when they’re nearby businesses they’ve visited frequently in the past.
Know of other platforms that marketers should use for location analytics? Leave a description in the comments.
Stephanie Miles is an associate editor at Street Fight.
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