Location Data Buyers Guide
12 Questions Every Buyer Should Ask about Location Data
We recently found a guide from the IAB on buying location data that is still relevant today. The convergence of place based audiences (merging device data and places/point of interest) is driving high ROI for advertising campaigns. Understanding the source of the raw data plus the human element involved in matching those latitudes/longitudes to a place is important. Circles or polygons? That’s the level of location discussion today. Contact Skydeo to learn more about our rapidly growing mobile location data and places audiences.
“Place Data
1. What is the source of your “place” information (i.e. data about what businesses, points of interest or addresses are found at specific lat/longs in the physical world)?
2. What is your overall share of 1st vs 3rd party place data (E.g. Do you have a proprietary mapping system/address data or utilize a 3rd party database)?
3. What is your approach to organizing places/place data (E.g. polygons, geo-fence radii, etc.)?
4. How precise is your place information (E.g. are you able to discern the location of a specific store in a mall versus the parking lot)?
5. How comprehensive is your place information (E.g. What percentage of business, addresses, or points of interest do you have place data for)?
6. How do you qualify and/or verify your place information? For example, how do you address the scenarios below:
a. How do you compensate for bad addresses?
b. Do you have a way to account for recent opening and closing of locations?
Device Data
7. What are your sources of device location data (i.e. data used to locate a device) and how do you receive that data?
a. E.g. 1st party (O&O properties/servers), direct 3rd party deal/relationship, impression/ exchange data, etc.
8. What types of device location data do you use?
a. E.g. Device GPS, cell tower/triangulation, user-reported (check-in), user-reported (registration), Wi-Fi, IPS, beacons, low power Bluetooth, zip – local content, centroids, NFC, etc.
9. How do you identify and filter out the types of targetable location data that are not appropriately accurate for my campaign’s needs?
10. How long is your location data stored/considered relevant?
a. Is your device data time stamped?
b. If you offer dwell times, how are these calculated?
11. How do you verify/substantiate that the device location data you are using is accurate?
12. What is the scale of your device location data?”
