Placecast, a leading location-based mobile data management platform, today announced the launch of Location Verification — a new independent ad verification product that validates location accuracy of geo-targeted mobile ad campaigns.
Location Verification is the only product in the market using highly accurate carrier data from Pinsight Media, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sprint®, to confirm the location accuracy of mobile ads. This solution will help diminish wasted mobile ad dollars and more effectively reach target audiences.
Location Verification debuts at a crucial time in the industry as an estimated $16 billion will be spent on targeted mobile ads in the U.S. this year. 96 percent of marketers consider location data to be important, but 40 percent expressed concern around the quality of location data. Rightfully so, as initial Location Verification results show at least 25 percent of media spend is wasted, and in many cases much more. Of the $16 billion spent this year on targeted mobile ads, approximately $4 billion is squandered.
“It’s staggering to see how many millions of dollars are wasted every year based on old or inaccurate data,” said Kevin McGinnis, CEO of Pinsight Media, a wholly owned data and insights subsidiary of Sprint. “We are proud to support solutions like Location Verification that help raise the performance bar in the mobile advertising industry.”
Traditionally, location-based ad vendors do not have this kind of “truth set,” or deterministic data, to which they can compare and verify location data. Instead, they rely solely on pattern recognition — probabilistic modeling — such as eliminating latitude and longitude coordinates with too few decimal places to be precise, or looking for devices that appear so often that they can be assumed fraudulent.
The Placecast Location Verification product is unique in that it uses a truth set of location data — the holy grail of deterministic data — from Pinsight Media to test the accuracy of location, offering a level of accuracy that cannot be provided by pattern recognition alone. Placecast’s tests suggest truth set data uncovers at least twice as much inaccurate location data compared to pattern recognition.
Advertisers implement a standard tag into their location-aware mobile ad campaign. Placecast then analyzes the tag data to validate user location at the time an ad was served. The advertiser receives reporting with percentages of daily impressions that met or did not meet the advertiser’s geo-targeting parameters. As a result, media fraud is reduced and advertisers benefit from optimizing their campaign, selecting vendors that best deliver on campaign goals.
The Location Verification product has already been deployed by media technology companies like MediaIQ.
“By integrating Placecast’s verification capability into our AiQ analytics platform, we’re able to offer advertisers a level of confidence in location-based advertising which hasn’t been previously available,” said John Goulding, Head of Product for MediaiQ. “Furthermore, with verified location insights we’re one step closer to providing an accurate and comprehensive view of the entire customer journey–both online and offline.”
Rather than building data profiles or targeting specific customers, Location Verification simply uses anonymized and aggregated location data from carriers to verify whether the media being bought is accurate or not. Essentially, Pinsight Media’s data is used as a “yes or no” check for location. No personally identifiable information is used or exposed.
“Since inception, we’ve been laser-focused on solving the complexities around location data, which is why we’re pleased to offer Location Verification, the first and only product set to tackle inaccuracy in the location space,” said Alistair Goodman, CEO of Placecast. “Carrier data is a canonical truth data set that enables us to understand and score the accuracy of data in the mobile ad ecosystem to an unprecedented level. With the power of carrier data to verify accuracy, mobile advertisers can feel confident that they’re optimizing their ad spend toward reaching their appropriate geo-targeted audience.”
A leader in mobile since 2005, Placecast manages millions of mobile user profiles and location data to help its clients better understand consumer behavior, and enables brands to create highly-targeted mobile advertising campaigns. This is its first independent third party measurement solution for use across any mobile ad platform. To learn more about Placecast’s new product and other offerings, please visit:http://www.placecast.net/
About Placecast
Placecast is the industry’s leading enterprise mobile data management platform (DMP) that combines carrier data, location data, and user behavior across different devices to provide marketers a rich understanding between people and places and to help them make smarter marketing decisions.
With Placecast’s suite of products, advertisers can create custom audience segments and target customers with location-enabled mobile ad campaigns on Placecast’s demand side platform (DSP) or evaluate the accuracy of campaigns and impact on customer behavior.
Placecast has created over 400 million unique mobile user profiles utilizing billions of mobile data attributes and has been trusted by global enterprises such as Rogers, AT&T, Discover, Visa and O2 Telefonica. Placecast has helped brands such as Starbucks, Gap, JetBlue, and Subway deliver more relevant and personalized mobile experiences to their target audiences and optimize.
Founded in 2005, Placecast is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Atlanta, New York, and London. Placecast is backed by CNF Investments, ONSET Ventures, Quatrex Capital, and Voyager Capital.
About Pinsight Media
Pinsight Media is a mobile data and brand intelligence company. Leveraging verified, first-party mobile data from more than 32 million mobile users straight off the network, Pinsight Media works together with businesses and marketers to provide actionable insights that support smarter business and marketing decisions. This includes analyzing key demographic, behavioral, and location-based information that can help businesses uncover new audiences, discover new market opportunities or define more effective customer engagement strategies. Pinsight Media is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sprint®.
About Sprint
Sprint (NYSE: S) is a communications services company that creates more and better ways to connect its customers to the things they care about most. Sprint served 59.7 million connections as of March 31, 2017 and is widely recognized for developing, engineering and deploying innovative technologies, including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the United States; leading no-contract brands including Virgin Mobile USA, Boost Mobile, and Assurance Wireless; instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities; and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone. Sprint has been named to the Dow Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) North America for the past five years. You can learn more and visit Sprint at www.sprint.comor www.facebook.com/sprint and www.twitter.com/sprint.
