3 ms·

One of the main promises of hyper-local geotargeting was the ability to build audience pools based off of location data that could be correlated with inferred h

One of the main promises of hyper-local geotargeting was the ability to build audience pools based off of location data that could be correlated with inferred home location mashed up with Zillow data to provide home value and estimated equity. On paper this kind of targeting would be really appealing to home improvement chains, banks, and even restaurants. I never really bought that way when I was a media buyer, so I can't say if it was ever effective. That said, I imagine it was more compelling to marketers when the data was sourced from a few trusted entities. Now, practically every free-to-play android app is asking for location data 24/7, no doubt to be sold to data exchanges. Once a location data relationship is established with an app publisher, there really is nothing stopping them from feeding psuedo-random location pings and getting paid for it. Its just another form of ad fraud. I wouldn't recommend a major digital buy to my worst enemy these days; Facebook lies about their metrics, Google sticks your ads next to child porn, display has been destroyed by domain spoofing and arbitrage. Maybe good old-fashioned direct buys with publishers are still safe, but there is a reason why TV budgets have held strong.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago
This just kicks the can one level down the road. Aggregator companies like PlaceIQ, Foursquare and Yelp will act as the intermediary and create more rigorous ways to detect spammy / useless location signals, and smooth out location tracking data. Those intermediaries are the main worries, because brands or marketers may not trust every random Android app, but they will trust Yelp or Foursquare or something, and frankly given additional scale from data bartering and SDK pings that send back location from many other apps, places like Foursquare or Yelp really can provide targeting services that come close to what adtech has always promised. To be clear, I’d consider this a bad thing, because places like Foursquare or Yelp, whatever they may say to put a PR spin on it, are quite literally preying on people who unwittingly share their location data and don’t really understand the terms, especially not when it’s some tertiary SDK traffic logs agreement causing some music app or hotel app or weather app to send them data tied to your IP address or device ID. If those businesses can’t monetize their basic value proposition, like a app to search reviews of restaurants, it’s a signal to delete & shutdown the app... but unfortunately it’s become the reverse: a signal to abandon investment into the actual user and diversify all kinds of deceitful behind the scenes ways of getting user data and making users into the product.

mlthoughts2018 8y ago

This just kicks the can one level down the road. Aggregator companies like PlaceIQ, Foursquare and Yelp will act as the intermediary and create more rigorous ways to detect spammy / useless location signals, and smooth out location tracking data. Those intermediaries are the main worries, because brands or marketers may not trust every random Android app, but they will trust Yelp or Foursquare or something, and frankly given additional scale from data bartering and SDK pings that send back location from many other apps, places like Foursquare or Yelp really can provide targeting services that come close to what adtech has always promised. To be clear, I’d consider this a bad thing, because places like Foursquare or Yelp, whatever they may say to put a PR spin on it, are quite literally preying on people who unwittingly share their location data and don’t really understand the terms, especially not when it’s some tertiary SDK traffic logs agreement causing some music app or hotel app or weather app to send them data tied to your IP address or device ID. If those businesses can’t monetize their basic value proposition, like a app to search reviews of restaurants, it’s a signal to delete & shutdown the app... but unfortunately it’s become the reverse: a signal to abandon investment into the actual user and diversify all kinds of deceitful behind the scenes ways of getting user data and making users into the product.