inMarket Expands Audiences Segmenting Product in Bid to Fix Programmatic Location Accuracy
In-store advertising vendor inMarket is expanding its offerings to agency trading desks this morning, with the announcement that it’s opening up its Audiences segmenting product as a self-service solution. Beginning today, agency bid desks will be able to use inMarket’s reservoir of first-party location data to enable hyperlocal targeting and reduce crossover contamination in dense markets.
“Location has become such an integral part of advertising. Brands aren’t testing and learning anymore — they’re relying on location to drive ROI,” says inMarket Chief Marketing Officer Cameron Peebles.
Today’s announcement marks the first time that inMarket has offered a self-serve product in the company’s 10-year history. The data now being made available to brands and agencies was previously available exclusively through inMarket’s managed campaigns.
“The demand has been so high for a programmatic solution using our data that this became a natural extension,” Peebles says.
That demand comes as location plays an increasingly critical role in brands’ go-to-market strategies. Peebles says the demand for inMarket’s Audiences segments highlights the fact that demographics aren’t good enough anymore, and that the places we visit are the true indicators of who we are and what we’re interested in.
“No matter what you sell, inMarket location data has become a critical part of online-to-offline campaigns that drive people to your product,” he says.
Opening up its first-party location data to trading desks is one way that inMarket is looking to fix the issue of inaccuracies within programmatic location data. Peebles explains that problems with programmatic location data crop up when vendors substitute quantity for quality. He says that inaccuracies can also be based on collection methods. For example, relying on unverified third-party sources.
“Our data is 100% first party, based on direct integrations with the world’s top apps—combined with our location waterfall of full cycle, always on GPS, WiFi and the nation’s largest beacon deployment,” he says. “Bid stream data simply doesn’t stack up.”
inMarket pairs opt-in consumer location data with a vast point-of-interest marketing platform to reveal consumers’ journeys throughout the day, to, from, and between various points of interest.
In addition to enabling audience profiling for brands, inMarket’s solution will reduce one of the biggest pain points for brands and agencies relying on programmatic — crossover contamination. Particularly in crowded areas, like major cities, imprecise targeting can lead to a consumer being targeted at the wrong location. For example, a brand that’s trying to reach people dining at a specific restaurant may accidentally be targeting consumers doing laundry at the laundry mat next door. inMarket’s Audiences segmenting product utilizes the company’s beacon platform to continually validate data points. The company says its solutions outperforms bidstream location data.
“If a location platform uses inferior tech — like bidstream data — it’s much more difficult to differentiate if a consumer visits the gym or the QSR next door. Using the same example, you might want to target folks who visit the gym six days a week — but your target audience includes people who eat burgers six days a week,” Peebles explains. “Our location waterfall of beacons, full cycle GPS and WiFi virtually eliminates this problem — because we know if the consumer is on the treadmill or in the burger line. This way, brands aren’t wasting dollars by mis-targeting folks because their location vendor can’t determine which places they really visit.”
Stephanie Miles is a senior editor at Street Fight.