It seems that you can’t go anywhere in the world of online advertising at the moment without the conversation moving onto the role of advertising cookies, and what the future holds.
With the implementation of GDPR last year, the California Consumer Privacy Act coming into play in 2020, the cookie has come under increasing pressure.
Combine this with Apple’s Intelligent Tracking Prevention and the whispers that Google is also looking to block third-party cookies, and you can understand why everyone in the space is a little worried about what the future holds for the cookie.
We’re going to look at this future, how the cookie works, and how marketers and advertisers can adjust for any upcoming changes in how the advertising industry uses web cookies.
What are advertising cookies? How do cookies work for advertising?
First of all, what role do cookies play in the world of advertising?
Well, cookies are small code snippets that store information related to how the user behaves on the web. This cookie is stored on the user’s web browser and can be used accessed to store and change data related to the user.
Cookies can store a wide range of information, such as the pages you have visited and for how long.
We can divide these further types:
First-party cookies
First-party cookies are created by the publisher or website owner when a visitor is on their site. Cookies enable website visitor tracking which helps a business understand which user is returning and ensure that the page content is right for that user. Often, this is something like language or another element that helps with the user experience.
These cookies also include analytics, such as Google Analytics, which used cookies to measure how users use the site.
Third-party cookies
Third-party cookies are used in the digital advertising ecosystem for retargeting and for behavioral-based targeting. Adding these types of cookies to pages allows advertisers to understand how users behave across the web. Using these, they can build a profile that can be selected to target with ads that are more personalized to each user.
What are cookies used for?
Advertising cookies can be used for analytics and for managing the user experience. But we are interested in the role that they have in the advertising ecosystem.
Here cookies are used mainly to retarget users based on which site and which pages they have visited. What started as a simple way to deliver products to users who had already seen them has now developed into sophisticated methods to target users that have previously visited a specific page or product.
The other side of the advertising cookie is to build audiences based on profiles. As a user visits a site, this information is used to build a profile for that user. This profile contains information such as age, gender, and interests. These profiles allow marketers to build and create new audiences that are relevant for their product or proposition.
What’s changing
The most significant change to the advertising industry in the last few years has been the drive for transparency and user privacy.
Privacy regulators have introduced legislation that limits how advertising cookies can be used to collect user data. These have created a massive issue for the advertising ecosystem, which relies heavily on third-party cookies to build profiles and target audiences based on behavior.
This is because programmatic advertising relies on these third-party cookies as the basis for user-level targeting and attribution. Without this process, marketers can’t target users with more personalized ads and understand when these ads lead to conversions.
As well as this, the people who bring the internet to users have also started to take a tough stance on the issue. At the time of writing, Apple has already announced an anti-tracking update to its native browsers, which blocks the use of third-party cookies. Firefox has implemented a similar policy, and there are reports that Google, who’s browser user base makes up over 60% of web usage, is looking at a similar process.
Another implication for advertisers is that the world has become more mobile-first since the invention of the web cookie. Users are using apps and mobile solutions much more instead of sitting behind a computer.
With all this, it makes a little more sense that advertisers are worried about how these changes will impact their business. But it’s not all doom and gloom – we have some examples of how advertisers can still deliver personalized ads and retargeting campaigns that work.
Potential solutions
Focus on people and context
Instead of looking at the type of consumer and using this to build audiences, advertisers can focus on context.
Rather than focus on the user, placing greater emphasis on where the user is can be an effective way to target audiences. For example, using keywords to gauge purchase intent. Or using a user’s real-world location or environmental factors to understand factors beyond the user that make them ideal for targeted advertising.
Focus on first-party data and reliable first-party providers
First-party data will become an even more valuable currency for targeting users. Solutions that can combine first-party insights and compliance with privacy regulations will be invaluable for advertisers.
These datasets can help to target consumers reliably and with consent from the end-user. For example, anonymized first-party mobile location can be used to retarget users that have visited a physical store.
Wait for a persistent identifier
A persistent identifier is a solution that is commonly suggested as the ecosystem moves away from the cookie. Using this form of identifier, that sits with the consumer and requires explicit compliance with privacy regulations could be a solution.
The problem here is getting this to exist in one form, that’s standardized and that everyone can agree upon. Some areas of the advertising supply chain have introduced this already – but these don’t follow the same standards, making it difficult for advertisers.
Look at other channels
Advertisers will begin to look at channels that don’t require third-party advertising cookies. These will include traditional channels such as email, TV, and app-based ads.
These systems allow advertisers to use a persistent identifier for personalized advertising and marketing.
Conclusion
Marketers and advertisers will need to think about how they can focus on people based personalization in a world where the advertising cookie no longer exists. First-party data or reliable first-party data providers will become a vital source of behavioral data. Using alternative behavioral information, such as location, is a great way to deliver retargeting and personalization at scale.
Mobile ad IDs are currently universal and tracking identity across the moble infrastructure is much simple than the web. The role of advertising cookies is changing and quickly. People-based advertising and first-party data could well be the solution that the industry is looking for.
A simple search using the terms ‘proxy server provider’ or ‘proxy service providers’ yields listicles upon listicles wherein the authors claim to have come up with the top best proxy providers. While some of the results paint a true and accurate picture, it is important to arm yourself with information on what to look for when choosing a proxy provider. This information will help you sieve through the noise and actually come to the right conclusion. In this article, we focus on providing this information. Firstly, though, we shall explore what a proxy is.
What is a Proxy?
A proxy is an intermediary that can take the form of a software-based application or hardware (computer or mobile device). This ‘middleman’ routes outgoing HTTP and HTTPS requests through itself before quickly performing a number of important processes. First, the proxy hides the requests’ real/original IP address and assigns a new online identifier. Next, it sends the ‘modified’ requests to the target webserver. Once the web server responds, it is the proxy that first receives the responses before directing them to the browser.
Of course, all the proxy providers you will likely encounter will rate their products highly. In addition, they will often claim that their proxies are designed to be reliable and can perform the functions outlined in the definition above. In some cases, however, the claims could not be further from the truth, and that is why you need to take a few factors into account when shopping for a proxy.
Factors to Consider when Choosing a Proxy Provider
Here are the essential considerations you should make before selecting a proxy provider:
IP network pool
Customer support
Ethics
Price and Offer
Features
Reputation
IP Network Pool
The size of the IP network pool matters a lot. The pool describes the number of IP addresses the provider can assign its customers. Usually, a good proxy provider has a large number of IP addresses from a majority of the countries in the world. For example, Multilogin, a Antidetect platform that provides built-in access to both static and rotating residential proxies.
A vast network enables you, as the customer/user, to utilize proxy rotators, particularly when web scraping or managing multiple social media accounts. This prevents IP blocking. Still, a large network provides a buffer even if an IP address gets blocked.
At the same time, an extensive network encompassing different countries allows you to bypass geo-restrictions, i.e., access content that can only be viewed by residents of a given location. For instance, a provider that promises to provide a reliable Iran proxy must have tens if not hundreds of Iran-based IP addresses in its network pool. Find more info here on Iran proxies and other similar location-based solutions.
Customer Support
A good proxy service provider provides 24/7 customer support. This is an important consideration since proxies sometimes require regular maintenance. Similarly, they can break down or become unresponsive if you do not configure them correctly. And given that not all users are tech savvy, having access to customer support as and when they need it is crucial as they can get assistance immediately.
Ethics
A reliable and good proxy provider ethically sources their IP addresses. This is particularly essential if you need to use residential proxies or mobile proxies, which route traffic through real users’ devices. Residential proxies assign residential IP addresses, which belong to internet service providers (ISPs). These IPs are assigned to the ISPs’ customers to enable them to access the internet via the ISPs’ respective networks.
Thus, a proxy provider must first seek authorization from an ISP’s customer in order to lease their unused bandwidth. By leasing the bandwidth, the proxy provider will have to route traffic through the user’s devices, and that requires consent as well as the installation of gateway software. An ethical provider follows the right procedures to lease the bandwidth.
Price and Offers
Proxy providers do not set a uniform price for their services. In fact, some offer free services. However, free proxies are not reliable as they are mostly shared. In that regard, you should choose a proxy server that requires you to part with a fee. In addition, the proxy should be competitively priced, i.e., not too high to make it unaffordable nor too low to threaten reliability. Sometimes, you might encounter discounted offers, which you can consider if the proxy provider ticks all the other boxes.
Features
Some proxy providers offer additional features, such as proxy management via a centralized dashboard. Others provide IP rotation capabilities as well as systems that filter requests and responses for added security. It is, therefore, important to check whether your preferred provider offers such features before making the final decision.
Reputation
A good proxy provider is known for its reputation. And you can establish how decorated their reputation is by checking customer feedback and reviews.
Conclusion
Choosing the right proxy provider from a sea of options can be confusing. But you can and will make the right, informed decision by considering factors such as reputation, features, price and offers, ethics, IP network pool, and 24/7 customer support.
Optimally scheduling employees is something that every business and HR manager needs to know. The best employee scheduling tips don’t come from a magic book or a secret formula. While many people think that scheduling is about money, it’s actually about meeting people’s needs. While the exact needs of employees may differ, employee scheduling will always be about meeting those needs. When you think about it, scheduling employees is not just about filling time slots. Meeting the needs of employees is the best employee scheduling method. But it’s not always easy to get those needs met.
Considerations for employee scheduling
Scheduling employees can be a difficult task for managers. It is also very time-consuming and can often cause frustration for employees, especially if they are scheduled for odd or long shifts. When you schedule employees for their shifts, you need to consider the number of hours the employee can work, their availability, and the amount of work the employee can handle. You also need to consider the budget for the workers and the amount of overtime they can work. You can run into trouble with the labor department if you are not careful when scheduling your employees. This is why you need to use scheduling software to make the job easier.
Evaluate business and workforce needs
It is important to know exactly your business needs and how many employees you need to fulfill that needs to ensure that your business runs smoothly. If you have a number of employees, it is important to make sure that you schedule them efficiently so that they are not overworked yet they are not wasting their time. It is important to start scheduling employees as soon as you hire them. An employee’s job should be based on the job description the employee fills out when they are hired.
Know your employees and their needs
Finding the right employees is never an easy task. It involves much more than just hiring the first person who walks in the door. You want your employees to be happy, productive and loyal. You want employees who will work hard and give you their all. The first thing you should do here is to know your employees. Get to know their needs and preferences. If you know them well, you can better meet their needs and ensure they are happy and satisfied. You may also be able to find out which employees are more productive or more reliable.
Managers are busy people, but knowing their employees is an important part of their job. The better they know them, the better they can schedule them. For example, if you have an employee who’s a single parent, you might want to avoid scheduling them for late shifts. Or if you have an employee who drives a long distance to your store, you might not want to schedule them on the graveyard shift. The better you know your employees, the better you can schedule them.
Improve communication both ways
Reducing employee downtime, improving workforce utilization rates, and reducing the likelihood of employee burnout are all key goals of any effective employee scheduling strategy. One of the most effective ways to achieve these goals is to improve your communication with employees, both as a means to educate them on the schedule and to solicit input on their preferences.
Workplace communication is a two-way street. It’s not just about the employer telling the employee what to do and the employee doing it. Communication is a dynamic process, and it’s all about back-and-forth interaction. Communication is also a vital part of any workplace relationship. The more employees can communicate with each other and their employer, the better the relationship will be, and the work getting done on time and with accuracy.
Set scheduling policy and expectations
The first thing you need to do is to set your scheduling policy and expectations. Let employees know what is expected of them, such as punctuality, time management, communication, and flexibility. It is also important to let employees know what they can expect from you, such as a team-based culture, clear communication, and the support they need to be successful.
Utilize an employee scheduling app
Utilizing an employee scheduling app can help eliminate the hassle and stress of employee scheduling. We are all busy, whether it’s at work, at home, or running errands. We always seem to be in a rush to get to our next destination and then in a rush to get back to what we were doing. With so many things to do and places to be, we don’t have time to worry about employee scheduling. Employees also don’t want to worry about scheduling. Employees want to focus on the job at hand, not on figuring out when they will be working. With an employee scheduling app, employees can focus on the job at hand, and the app can take care of employee scheduling.
Identify scheduling abuse and create solutions
It’s a scary time for small business owners. With unemployment hovering at 6.7% and the landscape of labor laws changing, the burden is on business owners to ensure they comply with the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). One area that many business owners need to be aware of is scheduling abuse, which can lead to overtime pay violations. For example, did you know that if you require an employee to work more than 40 hours in a workweek, you are required to pay the employee time and a half?
Many of the scheduling problems that are faced by businesses are due to abuse of the scheduling. For example, when employees book off for vacation or sick days that they don’t actually need and then go on vacation or take a day off work. Find out what your employees are doing and create a solution for it.
Final thoughts
Everyone wants their staff to be as productive as possible, but managers don’t always have the tools they need to schedule employees effectively. Through the use of employee scheduling software, companies can customize employee schedules to maximize productivity and reduce costs. Employee scheduling software should offer flexible tools, features that can be easily customized to fit specific needs, and the ability to incorporate team collaboration and communication.
With an effective point of sale (POS) system for your business, you can greatly enhance the customer experience when they purchase items from your online store. While you may think that the POS system won’t make a difference and has no direct effect on business profit, it does make a drastic change in your sales.
With the help of software, transactions can be faster than before. Every brand can have its personalized POS system according to its features, payment methods, and functionalities.
What is a POS System?
An eCommerce POS is a digital solution that builds a streamlined connection between your online platform and the POS system. It also routes funds to your bank account after every sale.
Normally, the term POS system refers to the cash register. But the modern version of it is software-based and can be used on any smartphone device. As an online business, you can serve your customers and take payment regardless of where you are, without needing a cash register.
How Does it Work?
Let’s start with the basics of how it works to help you understand better. It calculates the sum of the items that the customer has selected to buy. After this, the system processes the payment and modifies the inventory level to reflect sales.
Here are the steps of how the POS system works:
The Customer Selects the Products
When omnichannel shoppers search for a product in an online store, the staff can look for the inventory availability of certain products.
When you click the “add to cart” option, the store staff uses a barcode scanner to add products to the shopping cart. Now the latest point-of-sale systems also enable customers to scan items using a smartphone.
Calculates Total Price
Once the customer has successfully added the items to the shopping cart, the POS system calculates the total costs including tax and shipping fees. It also mentions each amount and asks for confirmation before proceeding with checkout.
Payment Options
To complete the purchase of their products, customers are asked about what payment options they wish to choose. Payment options include cash, gift card, debit card, credit card, Google Pay, loyalty points, etc.
The Transaction is Finalized
When the payment is finalized, the sale is confirmed. Then the receipt of the transaction is emailed to the customer and the products are delivered.
Reasons to Get a POS System
Improve Work Efficiency
With a reliable POS system, you can increase your work productivity and finish important tasks on time. You can save time on paperwork, stock updating, accounting, tracking orders, and much more with a single solution.
This way, you can spend more time perfecting your products and creating quality content to improve the presence of your online website.
Manage Inventory
You can effectively manage inventory and check the updates in real time. A POS system also tells you what to stock and when is the best time to do so. It will also notify you when a certain product is running out of inventory.
Such software can also act as your business advisor by showing which products are most liked by the customers. You can also stock up on the products according to the season or day that is recommended by the software.
Offer Great Payment Experience
If customers find the payment option on your site confusing or slow, they would most likely not return to shop again. It also gives an impression of doubt and they might not end up trusting your site with their money.
With modern POS systems, you can offer most payment options like MasterCard, Bank Transfer, Visa card, Android pay, Apple pay, etc. With various payment methods, you can attract many types of customers. Additionally, offering payment options such as gift cards can attract customers looking to buy gift cards online and benefit from discounts, thereby enhancing their shopping experience.
Speed-Up Transactions
If we talk about how customers shop today, they are quite impatient. If one online shop does not respond properly and fast, the customers would most likely switch to another brand. With a reliable POS system, you can greatly decrease the transaction time and offer the convenience that online buyers are looking forward to.
Besides speed, it also reduces the chances of human error and stress caused by work overload. You can attend to more customers in a small period which increases your sales dramatically.
Receive Feedback for Improvement
With the help of a POS system, customers can rate and share their reviews on your products. Take your time to look at the reviews and make adjustments to your business when you receive a negative review.
While positive reviews will boost your confidence and keep you going further along in promoting your brand. However, when other customers search for reviews, they can decide whether to purchase from your brand or not.
Generate Accurate Sales Reports
You can generate accurate sales reports for your business with effective software. These reports usually provide the following details regarding sales:
Best selling items
Profit margins
Stock Status
Manually input data has more chances of error and mistakes. With accurate data, you can successfully process future transactions.
Make Better Business Decisions
A POS system can help you make smart business decisions quickly. It does so by collecting data like customers, inventory, and sales that can serve as a useful resource for decision-making.
For example, when you look at the dales record, you can identify the most popular product. This way, you can stock up on these products and increase your sales.
Satisfy Your Customers
Satisfy your existing customers by offering incentives and customized offers. To do so, the POS system can track your loyal customers based on their history and offer them discounts. It can improve your brand image and help retain customers.
Attracting new customers should always be your goal, but it is equally important to focus on people who have previously spent money on your products.
Attracting new customers is an expensive strategy that cannot be implemented all the time. Do not underestimate the power of customer retention, as around 65% of business profits come from existing customers.
Whether it’s running effective ad campaigns or crafting the perfect message, market segmentation should be a fundamental part of every strategy.
You have spent the time building a B2C or B2B marketing strategy, and now it’s time to make sure that it resonates with the right audiences.
As audiences get bigger, it can be easy to overlook the value of clear and concise messaging. The bigger an audience, the more diverse the needs of that audience are, any digital marketing course will tell you that. That’s where market segmentation comes in, allowing you to focus your B2B marketing efforts on specific segments.
Segmentation provides an edge over the competition as you can prove that you understand who your audience is and what they need most.
What is market segmentation?
Market segmentation is the process of dividing audiences into smaller groups that share the same characteristics to optimize marketing and advertising and sales results.
This practice is a standard business practice that involves identifying key traits that group audiences and using these to build more specific audiences. Market segmentation also allows brands to create more personalized ads, marketing, and sale journeys.
At the heart of this is the idea that consumers are likely to respond to more personal and customized messaging and campaigns. As a marketer, it’s hard to appeal to your entire audience with a single message. Some might respond differently to a specific message. That’s why market segmentation is essential – it the method of segmenting audiences to provide a more tailored solution.
Types of market segmentation
There are many types of market segmentation. Generally, these methods can be defined into four main categories.
Geographic
Geographic market segmentation is the process of targeting consumers based on a defined geographical boundary. Consumer interests can vary dramatically between different regions, and often preferences can be similar across smaller geographic areas.
Sometimes this process of market segmentation can be a simple as weather associated with a geographical location. It wouldn’t be very productive to sell warm clothes to a region where temperatures are low year-round.
Broader regional segmentation includes looking at countries, cities, and postcodes to group audiences. Specific postcodes can determine household income and even interests.
Geography goes hand in hand with both language and culture. Understanding and segmenting your audiences based on location can help to convey the right message (think soccer in the US and football in the UK).
There are many ways of understanding location, from surveys and addresses through to more up to date and accurate solutions such as location data providers.
Demographic
Demographic segmentation is a powerful way of creating specific audience segments that share similar preferences and requirements.
This form of segmentation is a standard method as many targeting and adtech solution provides some way of doing this when building audiences. It’s essential to do the same to your audiences or customer base to segment effectively.
Traditional demographic breakdowns include age, gender, marital status, occupation, education, income, race, nationality, and religion.
Demographic market segmentation is vital to finding product-market fit, but it’s also a powerful way to determine which channel is the best fit. Optimizing channel delivery relies heavily on reaching the right person in the right medium. Demographics are a great way to do this.
Media consumption changes significantly between demographics, so it’s essential to use this form of segmentation effectively to engage your audience the right way.
Segmenting audiences based on behavior is a popular solution in today’s digital world. Improvements in technology have enabled more touchpoints with greater detail into how audiences behave.
Behavioral analysis provides more options for market segmentation based on how audiences interact with your business. There are many behavioral-based traits to segment audiences, including:
Web activity – how consumers behavior on your website is valuable behavioral data. Segmenting audiences based on time spent, which pages they visit, and other measurable traffic insights is a powerful way to divide larger audiences into potentially effective smaller segments.
Usage with your current product or services. These includes app usage, platform usage, or perhaps just the fact that the person has purchased the last three versions of your physical product. These factors are a great indication of loyalty and where consumers sit in the funnel.
Offline behavior – movement data can help you to understand behavior in the real world. This an effective way of building segments that are grouped based on real-world movement. Segments such as gym-goers or coffee drinkers are powerful as they combine behavioral and geographical elements.
Psychographic
This method of market segmentation is focused more on the intrinsic traits of audiences. It’s similar in a way to demographic segmentation, but it’s more concerned with the emotional and other underlying factors that audiences believe in.
These kinds of insights can be valuable in understanding the motivations, needs, and exact preferences of audiences to create highly personalized segments.
Psychographic traits include personality, values, motivations, opinions, and lifestyle choices.
There are many ways of collecting this kind of information, including surveys or in some sort of feedback process. But offline and online behavior can also be a good indicator of psychographic traits.
Why market segmentation
So now you are aware of the four main methods of market segmentation. It’s time to understand why it’s worth doing. Many marketers identify improved audience segmentation as the most critical priority. Market segmentation offers many benefits to publishers, marketers, apps, and other businesses.
Improves the effectiveness of advertising campaigns
Market segmentation can help to improve marketing activity and advertising campaigns by reaching the right person with the right message at the right time. Segmenting your audiences allows you to provide more personal and engaging advertising, rather than a one size fits all approach.
Targeting a specific audience allows you to tailor the message and timing so that the audience is more likely to respond and engage with your campaigns. Targeting your entire audience with a single campaign is hugely wasteful. A considerable amount of the audience will not be relevant to the campaign, and thus you will be wasting revenue.
Essentially segmentation means that you can remove the irrelevant consumers from this audience, ensuring that you optimize ad budgets, increase ROI and improve the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.
Even if your product or service sits across a broad audience of potential customers, it’s still essential to segment audiences. Some messages will sit better with different segments and work better across different channels, even if the product is the same.
Informs new products and product development
Segmentation is also a useful tool to drive product innovation and can help to hone product strategy. These insights means that product teams can create products that better fit the needs of their customers.
Market segmentation can also identify a need for more specific products that sit in smaller groups within your customer base. Segmenting products is powerful because it helps to sell more and will make customers happier.
Helps to identify new audiences and segments
This process is useful when looking at maximizing the effect of your marketing strategy, but it can also be valuable when looking to grow and scale.
Segmenting your current audience can identify new traits that you didn’t know existed. Seeing this can open up new opportunities related to the newly identified segment. These opportunities can lead to new, engaging marketing campaigns or can even lead to the inception of new products and services that are in need but not currently offered.
Improves business functions and can help to make big decisions
Market segmentation can help a business to understand precisely what their customers want and focus their efforts on these to create a highly specific and valuable product or service. This specification could significantly improve brand perception, lead to more sales, and increase repeat business and engagement.
These insights can lead to better decisions across the business. From product-market fit to product delivery and communication, market segmentation can help to identify the best ways to go about these important issues.
Audience segmentation can also help with decisions such as pricing and can even help inform dynamic pricing strategies.
Common mistakes
There are some common pitfalls that you should look out for when creating your market segmentation strategy.
Too small segments
The most common problem is that businesses go a little over the top with segmentation. Set too many parameters with too much detail, and then end up with a tiny audience.
This mistake means that you will eliminate audiences that don’t fit into your filter but still carry purchase potential. As well as this, you will lose the opportunity to gain quantifiable metrics and insights into specific audience segments.
Make sure you think carefully about how to segment your audience. One or two filters work best, depending on the size of your total audience and total addressable market, of course. The sweet point between segmentation and scale is extremely valuable if you can find it, so be sure to experiment extensively!
Not up to date
Predominantly in the world of traits of digital marketing and advertising, a common mistake is that marketers identify key audience segments that work for their business. But they fail to update these as the needs and products change over time.
Always stay on top of your strategy and constant update and tinker with new methods of segmentation.
Targeting segments that don’t convert
Another common mistake is to identify segments that are both large enough and up to date. But these segments still need to carry conversion or purchase potential.
If the segmentation method creates a group that is not a good product fit and does not have the necessary buying power, then the ROI will not improve just because the audience is segmented.
What is market segmentation?
Market segmentation is the process of dividing their audiences into smaller groups that share the same characteristics to optimize marketing and advertising and sales results.
Why is marketing segmentation important?
Marketing segmentation allows companies to reach consumers with precise needs in a personlized and relevant way.
What is the goal of market segmentation?
Market segmentation can improve the effectiveness of marketing efforts, drive conversions and increase ROI.
Advertising can be a challenging endeavor. Carefully crafted campaigns can often fall short of desired goals, with no apparent reason. Marketers can easily reach the wrong audience or fail to deliver the correct message that can covert or engage consumers.
Today, random targeting is a thing of the past. Marketers have a variety of methods to ensure that the right message reaches the right person at the right time. Advances in behavioral tracking and the increase of powerful datasets have enabled advertisers to boost conversion rates across both online and offline campaigns.
Behavioral targeting is a marketing strategy that uses historical behavior to personalize the types of ads consumers see.
Historical behavior is sourced through powerful datasets that illustrate how audiences behave. Marketers can then use this to create ads and campaigns that match each consumer’s actual behavior.
Behavioral targeting involves building up a detailed user profile and using this to deliver better messaging and better timing. It limits the possibility of advertisers delivering irrelevant ads and helps to boost advertising campaign KPIs.
What are the benefits of behavioral targeting
Behavioral targeting is a powerful marketing tool that is rooted in the modern, data-centric world that we live in. But it isn’t all about using numbers and tech. Behavioral targeting provides value to both advertisers and consumers.
Advertiser benefits
Improved engagement for advertisers
Understanding consumer habits helps advertisers to identify audiences that have engaged with specific products or touchpoints. It also helps to identify audiences that are in the right moment or behavior for a particular campaign. Targeting users with no behavioral intent or brand awareness will limit engagement. Using behavioral targeting will increase a number of critical metrics, such as clicks or conversions.
Matching consumer needs with creatives and messaging
Personalized messaging converts more users and ultimately reduces the amount of wasted ad spend. Relevant ads are much more likely to move consumers along the purchase funnel than generic ads that are not personalized. Ads that align with a consumer’s previous behavior are much more likely to convert than ones that don’t.
Improving the bottom line
Ultimately advertisers want to get the best possible return on investment on their campaigns. Delivering ads that match with audiences previous behavior is more likely to drive conversions than ones that are generic. With behavioral targeting, companies can see a rise in new business, repeat customers, engagement, and other key metrics.
Consumer benefits
An improved ad experience
Consumers aren’t always keen on giving up their personal data. But they also dislike ads that aren’t relevant or ads where the experience is unengaging. That’s why, when surveyed, more consumers prefer personalized advertising. This personalization ultimately improves their experience.
Better efficiency
Ads can be a quick route to purchase, providing a fast way of identifying the best product for their needs without a long searching process. This increases efficiency for consumers, allowing them to get to storefronts quickly and finding the most relevant products, rapidly.
Awareness of new products
By seeing ads that are personalized to them, consumers can keep up to date with new products that interest them. Retargeting based on behavior can also help to complete purchases that a user was distracted from.
Publisher
As well as behavioral targeting benefits the advertiser and the consumer, it also helps the publisher. Where these publishers use ad monetization as a revenue stream, the ads mustn’t be irrelevant to the user as it might reduce engagement with their product, app, or publication.
How does behavioral targeting work in 2021
The process of behavior-based targeting on the highest level consists of collecting information about a user or a person and then using this information to deliver ads that match this information.
Collecting information can be done in many ways, and it can come from many different sources. Often a data management platform (DMP) is used to aggregate this information for advertisers.
Here are some common data sources that are used for behavioral targeting:
These sources provide a huge variety of data that includes:
Website cookie data
Data on how users behave and interact with websites is a valuable method of behavioral segmentation. Users spend a lot of time browsing the web, so the information is rich – pages visited, for how long, in which regions. Therefore these insights can provide a lot of information that is useful to boost engagement and conversions.
Mobile device data
Cookies also work on mobile devices. Understand the behavior of the potential customer on a mobile device can help to understand which format and which message could work best in an advertising campaign.
These web-based insights can be combined with social signals, check-ins, and mobile purchases to understand the best way to target audiences.
Geographic location
Anonymized location can be extremely valuable for advertisers. Especially when accurate and precise. Since the early days of bidstream datasets, device behavior can be accurately tracked to build up detailed profiles of behavior than can form powerful, behavioral-based segments for advertising.
Subscription data
Businesses that have some log-in system require the users to enter details and information about themselves. These fields can be used to understand the users, with address, interests, and contact details help with behavioral targeting. Let’s say you are looking to purchase a Notion template, it makes sense to pre-fill any forms with relevant subscription data, if you have it.
Demographics
DMPs and other marketing software can collect large amounts of demographic segmentation information, such as age ranges, interests, and gender, to create a detailed profile of audiences. This process usually works without using personal information but these ranges are used to create campaigns that can communicate more personally with audiences.
The process of behavioral targeting
The data collection process
User data can come from several different sources. Depending on the source, there are many different ways to collect data. For website behavior, a pixel is used. This process creates and updates cookies that understand how the user interacts with the site. Apps have a similar process. SDKs can collect other behavioral information, such as location data.
This data is usually stored in a DMP, but there are other adtech solutions for storing this information.
Organization and segmentation
Once this behavioral information exists in a central location, the next step is to sort individual users into groups that share the same behaviors.
This segmentation varies significantly depending on the company, product, or goals. For example:
Users who are interested in SEO (maybe even more specific, like a this one, this Bristol SEO agency, or even a industry specific one like this one)
Existing customer who have read at least one blog post related to SEO trends 2020
Delivery and application of behavioral targeting in advertising campaigns
Specific ad campaigns are delivered to match each segment. This process makes the advertising more relevant for each segment and increasing the chance of engagement and boosting conversions.
Activating behavioral targeting
All of this behavioral data can be used across multiple campaigns and in different advertising channels. That’s the benefit of having a centralized place to store the data.
There are multiple ways to activate this data to create behavioral-based ad campaigns that deliver. Here are some examples of how to enable behavioral targeting to drive engagement and increase conversions.
Examples of behavioral targeting
Cross-selling and upselling
Knowing what your customers like and understanding how they interact with your business is a powerful way of knowing which additional products to promote to them. If you can link product A and B, then your audience that has shown interest in product A that are likely to engage with a campaign promoting product B.
Examples include targeting cart abandonment sessions, including viewed products in routine updates or directly linking content related to what your audiences have already read rather than generic content. Behavioral targeted email campaigns is a powerful way to increase email productivity and boost your targeting options.
Remarketing with behavioral targeting
An advantageous and accessible way of using behavioral targeting is to retarget. By identifying users that visit your site, you can reach them on other websites to encourage them to visit again and complete goals.
The most common solutions for this are facebook and google as they have simple to install tracking pixels that can understand users that visit specific pages on your site. You can then activate these segments directly in their platforms.
Location-based targeting
Location-based targeting is an excellent way of reaching audiences based on their real-world behavior. You can retarget audiences that have visited your physical stores, or a competitive store. This can also be applied to e-commerce and other online stores.
These targeting campaigns can be useful because the insights are related to how consumers behave in the real-world. This allows you to create compelling segments based on how people behave over time.
What is behavioral targeting?
Behavioral targeting is a marketing strategy that uses historical behavior to personalize the types of ads consumers see.
What are the benefits of behavioral targeting?
Behavioral targeting can deliver better engagement, better messaging, and better marketing results.
How does behavioral targeting work?
The process of behavior-based targeting consists of collecting information about a user or a person and then using this information to deliver ads that match this information.
What are some examples of behavoral targeting?
Cross-selling, targeted email campaigns, remarketing and retargeting, location-based targeting
Among all stages of elearning software development, data privacy is considered of high importance. Such elements as consumer rights, management of customer information, and data breaches are significant for a company’s success. If you ignore data privacy laws, you should be ready to pay a lot of money, waste time, and probably lose your business’s reputation.
Software elaboration teams should be familiar with current data privacy laws and make sure the software apps, created by them, take into account regulatory mandates. Moreover, these developers should elaborate software solutions in a way that flexibility for future regulatory requirements is ensured.
Privacy Rights Every Customer Has
Software elaboration requires much time and effort. If you believe you have no sufficient skills and experience, you can rely on special educational software development companies that will perform the entire work instead of you. Thus, if you link to jatapp, you can discover real specialists. Here you can hire professional and dedicated elearning software developers who will assist you to create an engaging e-learning solution.
For example, these experts are aware of what privacy rights consumers have while elaborating a software. Thus, guidelines and best practices have been established that enterprises should follow to defend and utilize customer data securely and ethically. Laws define the main data privacy rights consumers are able to make use of freely.
· right to removal or correction of imprecise personal information;
· right to knowledge of what personal information the e-learning software development company is gathering about customers;
· right to have access own personal information and knowledge whether the company is utilizing it;
· right to knowledge of what personal information the company is selling and who buyers are;
· right to refusal of the sale or sharing of customer’s personal information;
· right to limitation of the utilization of customers’ sensitive personal information by a company, etc.
These laws establish that consumers possess all the rights to their personal data. Every educational software development company must abide by data privacy laws and do with that information exactly what consumers request them to do.
Data Privacy Principles during Software Elaboration
In the beginning, all developers were wondering how and what they should perform in order to adhere to data privacy practices. Let’s consider detailed significant steps that businesses should undertake in their way to ensuring data security and compliance.
Keep Customer Data Reliably
Previously, companies did not answer for losing customer information. Only those who stole it were responsible for this. Still, nowadays everything has changed and enterprises started to hold responsible if they do not possess measures for proper protection of consumer data. Nevertheless, current data security laws as a rule utilize vague language and do not provide detailed and concrete security practices for developers to stick to. The laws tend to offer security measures titled “best practice” and “reasonable”. Since software security is constantly developing, all detailed laws require standing reconsideration.
Although prescriptive decrees are not available, nevertheless, some methods exist to assist elearning software companies to improve the data security of their software apps. These methods are the process of integrating proper data-mapping methods into software systems to guarantee companies are completely familiar with all the data they gather, where it is kept, and the way it passes through the business. While creating software, elaborators need to operate with their business partners to reduce data gathered in the software app to just what’s needed. For extra protection, all data should be kept reliably and optimally encrypted at rest.
Besides, it is recommended to abide by DevOps hygiene rules such as automation and uninterrupted monitoring for eventual data breaches or malware. Adopting these rules can assist in improving code security. Moreover, two-factor authentication establishment in software apps will be useful. These measures can be easily combined with other measures, for example, staff education in data security, carrying out formal risk assessments, and maximum access limitations to data.
Only after these practices are put into effect, your educational software development business will be better defended from stolen data. Also, your business’s position will be improved if it will undergo checking for compliance.
Develop Data Security and Privacy Policy
Among guiding principles in data privacy laws, there is one of high importance. This is data transparency and it implies your company provides a clear representation of what data is gathered from the consumer and how your business utilizes it. Adhering to the rights of consumers and granting them capabilities to be aware that their data is secure and available is a clue to data privacy in software elaboration.
Such transparency must be brought to the attention of the public with the assistance of a data security and privacy policy on the website or software app of any e-learning software development organization that gathers and keeps user data. Every data privacy policy should include certain requirements.
Some of these requirements are:
· “what do you gather?” (do you gather personally identifiable, behavioral, or payment data?);
· “how do you gather it?” (do you utilize third-party cookies or data from social platforms?);
· “how do you utilize it?” (do you utilize data for marketing or functional and transactional purposes?).
Being transparent and having privacy policies can assist your educational software development organization to prove it is compliable with data privacy laws.
Conclusion
Transparency in how you gather the personal data of consumers and what you do with it can be handy in complying with data privacy laws. What’s more, is that it can assist you to strengthen the trust of your customers. A starting point can be an understanding of what customers desire from a point of view of data privacy involving transparency, safety, and portability in combination with solid communication and clear comprehension of their rights. Educational software development companies should take into account these business needs when elaborating on software apps.
Both companies and customers get benefits from knowledge of data privacy laws and consumers’ rights. Creating software solutions with the possibility of flexible adaptation and response to changes in data privacy legislation can assist you to improve the position of your business to achieve success.
Responsible gambling is a key element in helping people enjoy gambling without going overboard. 7bit Casino implements best practices that allow every visitor to control their actions and avoid potential gambling related problems. In Australia, special attention is paid to compliance with industry regulations to ensure a safe environment.
Measures implemented to support responsible conduct involve tools for self-monitoring as well as support programs for those who may encounter difficulties. This approach aims to create a safe environment where users can make informed choices and be confident that their interests are protected.
Responsible Gambling Policy
The principles of responsible gambling at 7bit Casino are based on protecting the interests of each user, with an emphasis on a balance between passion and control. Awareness is important here: participation in such entertainment should be perceived solely as amusement and not as a way to make money. The site emphasizes the need to use game limits and other self-control tools to prevent overspending and negative consequences.
The site has developed several actions to maintain a responsible approach. This involves the capability to set limits on deposits and losses, temporary self-exclusion and cooling-off features for those who need a break. The site has also partnered with organizations that provide help for those facing challenges in this area, such as GamCare and Gambling Therapy
Additionally, the site focuses on preventing minors from participating in gambling activities. A strict identity verification system and appropriate filtering tools allow parents and guardians to block access to gambling-related sites. The use of apps such as Family Zone and Net Nanny helps monitor children’s online activity and protect them from unwanted content.
Tools and features for responsible gambling
As part of its responsible gambling policy, the 7bit Casino website provides a set of tools that allow users to manage their behavior and spending. One of the key features is the ability to set limits on deposits, losses and session length. This helps to control the amount of cash and time you plan to allocate for entertainment. Limits can be set on a daily, weekly or monthly basis, allowing for flexibility to adapt them to personal preferences and finances.
The site also provides a cooling off option that allows you to take a break from the activity for anywhere from one day to six months. This tool is useful for those who feel the need to temporarily suspend participation. During this period, the account will be frozen and once completed, the user will receive a notification to reactivate the acc.
For longer pauses, there is a self-exclusion option. This arrangement involves blocking the account for a period of six months to a year, as well as the possibility of closing the account permanently. All these measures are aimed at ensuring that each user can maintain control over their habits and avoid excessive risks.
Protection of minors
7bit Casino pays special attention to preventing minors from participating in gambling activities. For this purpose, strict measures are implemented to verify the age and identity of all users. In case of suspicion or violations, accounts are blocked until supporting documents such as passport or utility bills are obtained to verify that participants are of the required age. This practice helps prevent those under 18 from accessing gambling entertainment.
The site also offers parents and guardians additional tools that allow them to monitor their children’s online activity. Utilizing apps such as Net Nanny and Family Zone helps block unwanted resources and limit underage access to gambling, creating a safe online space for children and teens.
Tips for responsible gambling
Having the right attitude toward gambling is key to having fun while avoiding excessive risks. It is important to follow a few simple rules that will help you keep control of your actions and finances. 7bit Casino offers a range of tools to support users in their quest for responsible gaming.
Set personal spending and time limits
Divide your budget into specific amounts and decide in advance how much you are willing to spend. Setting limits on deposits or losses helps you keep control not only of your funds, but also of the time you plan to spend on entertainment. This way, unexpected expenses can be avoided.
Don’t try to make up for losses
Sometimes after failures, it can be tempting to recoup what you’ve spent through new investments. This can lead to even more financial problems. It’s better to take a break and get back to having fun later, when emotions have subsided.
Use self-exclusion and chill-out tools
If you sense like you’re losing control, use self-exclusion features or a cooling-off period. This will help you temporarily suspend participation and assess your state of mind without the risk of engaging in excessive behaviors.
Inference
Responsible play is an integral part of the safe process to keep control of time and costs. By following simple tips and utilizing the tools available, it is possible to make gambling participation safe and manageable. 7bit Casino provides a wide spectrum of capabilities to help users comply with these rules, from setting limits to self-exclusion.
It is important to be aware of your financial capacity and emotional state to strike a balance. Temporary exclusion or interruption options can help avoid unwanted situations, and support from professional organizations will provide the necessary assistance should problems arise.
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Tips for choosing games on the platform
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This guide will tell you everything that you need to know about location data:
Introduction
The global adoption of smartphones has grown at incredible speed in the last decade.
Mobile devices are a powerful tool for understanding the aggregated behavior of consumers.
Understanding device location opens doors to a wide range of use cases that are unique in many different ways.
Mobile location data provides a granular solution for consumer understanding. Combining this understanding with other datasets is helping to solve business problems and achieve goals across many different industries.
For these reasons, location data has quickly become the holy grail of mobile. Its applications are broad and run across a number of different industries and verticals.
But before we get onto that, what exactly is location data?
What is location data?
The smartphone
The mobile device or smartphone has been revolutionary. Its growth has been incredible – many predict that there are now more of these devices in the world than there are people.
Smartphones have transformed everything about our everyday lives -we rarely leave home without it, and it’s always on our person, ready to provide us with instant information or guidance.
These devices have enabled the location data industry to understand how audiences move and behave in the real world. This information is location data. It comes in many different forms and from various sources.
What is location data?
Location data is geographical information about a specific device’s whereabouts associated with a time identifier.
This device data is assumed to correlate to a person – a device identifier then acts as a pseudonym to separate the person’s identity from the insights generated from the data.
Location data is often aggregated to provide significant scale insights into audience movement.
How is location data generated?
Companies are collecting location data in many different ways. There are several different techniques to collect location data. These techniques differ in reliability (but more on that later).
For now, the primary process of collecting location data requires the following ingredients.
A location source/signal
The first ingredient is a location signal. This signal is not a product of the device itself – it comes from another piece of technology that produces signals. The device listens to these external signals and uses it for positioning. These signals are as follows:
GPS
GPS is shorthand for the global positioning system and was first developed in the 1970s. The system is made up of over 30 satellites which are in orbit around the earth. This technology works in your device by receiving signals from the satellites.
It can calculate where it is by measuring the time it takes for the signal to arrive.
GPS location data can be very accurate and precise under certain conditions, mostly in outdoor locations. In the best instances, the signal can be reliable down to within a 4.9 metre radius under open sky (source) .
Wi-fi
Wi-fi networks are another source of location signals that are great at providing accuracy and precision indoors. Devices can use this infrastructure for more accurate placement when GPS and cell towers aren’t available, or when these signals are obstructed.
Beacon
Beacons are small devices that are usually found in a single, static location. Beacons transmit low energy signals which smartphones can pick up.
Similarly to Wifi, the device uses the strength of the signal to understand how far away from the beacon it is.
These devices are incredibly accurate and can be used to place a location within half a meter with optimal signal strength.
Carrier data/cell towers
Mobile devices are usually connected to cell towers so that they can send and receive phone calls and messages. A device can often identify multiple cell towers and by triangulation, based on signal strength, can be used to place a device location.
An identifier
Each smartphone needs to be associated with an identifier to understand movement over time. This identifier is called a device ID. For iOS, this is called an Identifier for Advertising (IDFA), and for Android, it’s called an Android Advertising ID (AAID).
Meta data or additional dataset (optional)
A location signal combined with an identifier will allow you to see the movement of a device over time. However, for more detailed insights and to get more value from location data, you’ll need some metadata or an addition dataset.
The most common dataset to do this is a POI dataset. This dataset includes points of interest that are important when comparing how audiences move and behave in the context of the real world..
For example, a series of latitudes and longitudes showing how Londoners move between 7-10am could be useful. Tying this to a dataset that included tube stations and key travel routes would allow you to do much more with the initial data.
Location data sources – where does location data come from?
So, we have already looked at the ingredients that combine to make location data, including the different types of location signals. However, what are the sources of location data? If you are looking to use location data in your organization, then you need to know the differences between every potential source. It’s also important to have a data governance strategy to manage the data effectively.
The source can have a significant effect on accuracy, scale and the precision of devices. So, from where does location data come? There are three primary sources:
The bidstream
A sizeable proportion of location data comes from something called the bidstream (also referred to as the exchange). The bidstream is a part of the advertising ecosystem. Don’t worry if you’ve never heard of this – we’ll explain everything.
Explainer: The ad buying ecosystem
The ad buying ecosystem
Before we talk about bidstream data, it’s helpful to understand how ads are bought and sold.
Direct deals with publishers such as an app, site, or network.
Ad networks which group ad inventory to sell it to advertisers
Ad exchanges provide a solution for publishers to offer up their inventory programmatically, allowing advertisers to buy it in real-time. Purchasing advertising inventory in this way produces a bid request.
Why is this relevant for location data I hear you ask? In every bid request information is passed on – this data contains several attributes used to determine whether to serve the ad on the device.
Included in this dataset is a form of device location. A company will package up this location data, and the result is the bidstream location data that is available today.
Bidstream location data is appealing because of the sheer amount of it – it can very quickly provide a large amount of scale. However, bidstream data also comes with specific issues – it can be inaccurate, inconsistent, and even fraudulent. Because it’s captured programmatically ,then bidstream location data also has the benefit of being immediately actionable.
“Up to 60% of ad requests contain some form of location data. Of these requests, less than a third are accurate within 50-100 meters of the stated location”
Telcos
Remember, in the last section, when we identified location signals? Cell tower location is one of these and is the process of triangulating the strength of mobile cell tower signals to place the device in a specific location.
This kind of location comes directly from a telecommunications company (telco). Usually, they have some demographic data associated with the location data.
Similarly to bidstream data, the scale that telcos can offer (they have an extensive reach as in many countries few companies serve the entire population) is appealing.
However, in the same way, this scale is masking many issues with the accuracy of the data. Some studies have found that as little as 15% of data sampled was incorrect.
Location SDKs
A software development kit (SDK) is a toolkit that app publishers can add to their app to provide third party functionality. Developers add location-based SDKs to their apps to access the most precise and accurate location data signals from the user’s device.
Location SDKs come in many shapes and forms – some make use of the core location functionality present in the OS, others do a degree of data processing on top, to boost accuracy.
Some SDKs only operate in the integrated app when the app is open. Others can run in the background to gain broader insights into the movement and behaviors of the device.
Location-based SDKs collect data with the user’s consent – the apps native permissions often collect this consent, but some SDK providers offer consent tools to ensure that the location based app is collecting data in accordance with relevant regulations.
The difference between SDK generated data, and other sources of data can be seen in the accuracy and precision of datasets. Data collected by location SDKs are more accurate because they can listen for multiple location signals.
For example, SDKs can use the device’s built-in GPS to place the device and then, using Bluetooth signal strength from beacons, verify and fine-tune the location of the device down to within a meter of accuracy.
Location SDKs usually have a more sophisticated way of understanding how the device is behaving. For example, the Tamoco SDK uses motion behavior and other entry/exit events to know when a device visits a venue or location.
Why isn’t all data collected using SDKs?
If location SDKs are the most accurate and highly precise, then why don’t we use them to collect all location data?
The issue with many location SDKs is that they require integration into a publisher’s app. This app then needs to cover an adequate number of devices before the data is representative enough to gain any valuable insight or relevant patterns.
However, some SDKs have been built with functionality that benefits the publisher and limits battery usage to a minimal level. These SDKs are the ones that have achieved significant scale.
For example, the Tamoco SDK is optimised to send data in batches to minimise the number of requests. We also modify how data is collected depending on the current battery level.
All of these factors are a direct result of a close working relationship with our developer partners and allows the Tamoco SDK to scale along with our partners.
Publisher datasets
It’s possible to obtain location data directly from app publishers. Some publishers have developed methods of obtaining location by using the devices inbuilt location services.
These will usually coincide with a location-based process within the app – such as looking up a nearby restaurant.
These are often not as accurate as the location SDKs that have been carefully built to collect verified location signals. However, they can be a good source of location data as long as you can validate and understand the process of data collection put in place by the publisher.
We’ve already said that good location data is accurate and precise. However, let’s take a step back and ask ourselves a question – what do we actually mean by accurate and precise location data?
Location data collected by smart devices usually come in the form of a latitude and a longitude coordinate, or a lat/long. This reading refers to the perceived location of the device at the time.
However, how can we make sense of this number and understand if it’s accurate?
Location accuracy v location precision
You might think that accuracy and precision can be used interchangeably. However, in the world of location data, they have different meanings
Accuracy
Accuracy is a measurement that helps us to understand how close the device’s geographical reading is to the actual location of the device.
So how do we measure accuracy? The location accuracy of the device changes depending on the type of signal and the device. Accuracy is measured by looking at the signal type (GPS, wifi, cell tower). The device provides us with a reading of the location and then an accuracy rating. This unit is usually a measure of distance and is the margin of error associated with the measurement.
Precision
Precision is the level of detail associated with the location measurement. The more this is is similar to the other measurements in the dataset, the more precise the data is.
In location terms, we use lat/long to measure this. Firstly we check to see if the data points are realistically within the same area.
The number of decimal points in the lat/long is essential in measuring the precision of location data. The more digits there are after the point, the more precise the data is.
The following table helps to explain precision when looking at lat/long:
Decimal Places
Decimal Degrees
DMS
Qualitative Scale
0
1.0
1° 00′ 0″
Country or large region
1
0.1
0° 06′ 0″
Large city or district
2
0.01
0° 00′ 36″
Town or village
3
0.001
0° 00′ 3.6″
Neighborhood, street
4
0.0001
0° 00′ 0.36″
Individual street, land parcel
5
0.00001
0° 00′ 0.036″
Individual trees, door entrance
6
0.000001
0° 00′ 0.0036″
Individual humans
Not all mobile location data is equal
As many in the industry have stated: the type of location data and methodology is of significant importance. The relevancy of different kinds in different scenarios is often contented.
Mobile location data requires some fundamentals to provide granular insights that we discussed earlier.
So what’s the best way to accurately and precisely collect location data and what happens when signals such as GPS aren’t working?
We think this is another argument for SDK generated data. For example, the Tamoco location SDK can listen for multiple signal types simultaneously. Processing these signals allow the SDK to measure accuracy and then determine which signal to use.
Our SDK, therefore, uses Bluetooth and Wifi to help position the device in areas where GPS signals are weak. This sensor agnostic approach means that the SDK can place the device with better accuracy and more precision by using multiple signals.
Remember, when we talked about the three main ingredients that combine to produce location data. We’ve covered the device and its identifier. We’ve also covered the signals that the device used to position itself.
However, we are yet to cover the additional data that is needed to make use of the dataset. As we have discussed location data is usually a lat/long associated with a device and a timestamp.
We need to understand what this location is to make any use of the data. Knowing a device location is half of the challenge. To do this, we use database that allow us to connect this online data to the offline world. We call this a POI dataset.
What is POI
A point of interest (POI) dataset is a data representation of the physical world. A single POI is a geographic boundary and is usually associated with a physical location (think a store or building).
As with location data POI datasets come with a series of challenges including accuracy. Business regularly move, and as changes happen in the real world, the datasets evolve accordingly.
At Tamoco, we set up our own Place database to explore-in-depth how devices move and behave in the offline world. This database is slightly different from a POI dataset.
Explainer: Tamoco places
Contains metadata associated with the place – opening hours, floor level, polygon footprint and other essential information that can help to verify if a device entered the POI.
Combines with an associated geographical boundary (geofence) that can be used to understand the device activity inside and how long it stays inside.
Combines with any known sensors (beacons, Wifi, or other signal based tech) to help understand when a device is visiting the POI and not in fact staying in a place nearby.
What’s the importance of POI?
Perhaps the best way to understand the importance of a useful POI dataset is by using a real-world example.
No POI
In the above example, we don’t have a POI dataset. We have multiple lat/long, which might be accurate and precise, but we get no value from this as we have no connection to the real-world.
Bad POI
Here we have a POI dataset which connects the lat/long to a physical location. However, the POI is slightly in the wrong place, which means we think the device has visited the coffee shop, but they are waiting outside, or elsewhere. The implications of this will become more evident in the next section.
Places database
Here we have a place with opening hours and altitude. We have a geofence which allows us to see when the device enters and exits. We also have a Wifi and beacon sensor that we know is inside the coffee shop. Using this, we can verify with accuracy that the device was inside the place.
Connecting location to POI
At Tamoco, we do this through a process called visits. This methodology is a powerful data science technique that allows us to validate whether the device is inside a place and to say with a level of accuracy how long a device was inside.
Where other data providers will claim a device is inside a store if a single lat/long shows up inside a POI, we go much further.
What happens if this single data point is an outlier from a car driving past. What if the POI is in the wrong place?
Tamoco uses essential device information (yes, this is possible only by using a location SDK) such as motion type to verify visits to a place and filter out any false visits.
Location data use cases – how to use location data
Hopefully, by this point, you will have understood more about how location data is collected and how device location is used to understand the connection between online and offline.
However, what are the uses for accurate and precise datasets? How can your business benefit from adding location data to your business? How do you integrate this data effectively?
Segmentation and targeting
Marketers are always looking for ways to identify relevant audiences for their advertising campaigns. They want to segment their audiences as much as possible to maximize campaign relevancy and convert more users into paying customers.
Location data is an effective and unique method to achieve those goals. The reason for this is that location is a significant indicator of behavior, interests, and intent.
For marketers, the patterns that you exhibit can be used to create a very detailed image of what you look like as a consumer. Location data helps to create an accurate representation of your interests, and this can be used to bring more targeted and relevant ads to potential customers.
When using location data to target audiences, there are a few things to consider. Depending on the business and the campaign marketers may use a different combination of each of these in a single campaign.
Real-time v historical
Marketers might want to run a different campaign depending on the kind of data available to them. One way that they do this is based on time.
Realtime
Realtime location-based targeting involves identifying when a device is in the desired location and usually involves a mobile targeting. The process is simple – when the user is in the desired location, deliver an advert instantly on that users device through programmatic advertising.
Historical location targeting
This form of targeting is usually called retargeting, and it is similar to real-time that we discussed above. The difference is that over time, the devices that appear in a predefined location are used to build an audience. The advertiser will then retarget this audience at a later date.
Visits vs interests
Visits
Targeting based on visits is a clear way of building an audience that has visited real-world locations such as a specific coffee shop.
Depending on the value of the POI database this can be extended to include devices that have visited all of the stores across a brand (for example every Starbucks) or every visit to a type of venue (example – visits to coffeeshops in Austin).
Interests
Using location to target people based on interests is another way of reaching a highly specific audience. This method is similar to visits but usually consists of several repeat visits to a location or combined visits that fit particular criteria.
For example, an interest-based target audience, such as big coffee drinkers could contain devices that have visited any coffee shop at least three times in a weekly period.
Another example could be active consumers – these could visit both a gym and a health shop within a month.
Interest-based location targeting is interesting because you can create very specific segments. However, as with other aspects of location-based targeting, the more specific you get, the less scale you can achieve with your campaigns.
Channels for location-based targeting + examples
By combining these, you can create highly targeted audiences using location data. But how do you then reach them?
Programmatic
Using device identifiers marketers can feed relevant devices into their programmatic stack to automatically buy ad impressions and target the desired devices in near real-time.
The same data can be used to retarget at a later date in a social feed or via another programmatic channel.
The benefits of this strategy are that you can automate a lot of the marketing process. By using location-based audiences, you can ensure that you are reaching the right audience with the right message.
Tamoco offers these as pre-built segments (both visit and interest based) that can be activated directly in your DSP for targeting, or in your Data Management Platform (DMP) for combining with other data sources.. This process can be used to reach consumers across several programmatic channels and on different devices.
Some examples
Drinks brand targeting consumers in real-time when they visit a venue.
In this situation, we would identify several venues that stocked the relevant products. By feeding visit data into the programmatic stack, it is possible to deliver mobile ads to the device while that visit is going on, or after the visit has occurred. This ad could appear in-app inventory or while browsing the web on the device.
Retargeting through social visitors to gyms with a health drink
Here visits to the category of gyms would be used to build an audience. Next, we would feed the audience into the social targeting platform (facebook ads or similar). The campaign would deliver the retargeting ads to the consumer in their social feed.
Targeting a competitor’s bank customers with a better offer
In this example, devices seen inside a competitor bank are targeted with advertising intended to initiate a switch to a new bank. The data would be historical and might include multiple visits to verify the person is a customer. This data could be used as part of a campaign across several different channels, depending on the marketing stack.
What about location-based segmentation?
The examples we have given include building a new location-based audience to feed into targeting solutions. However, the same principles can be applied to an existing audience.
For example, you can use location data to segment your audience into more specific segments and tailor each targeted ad to be more relevant to each segment.
Personlization & engagement
Today’s consumers demand a high level of personalized communication. Location data can help to bridge the gap between communication and personalization.
Location data can help to personalize ads and messaging to new customers. It can also help to personalize the customer experience.
Consumers want personalization, and everyone from marketers to product designers wants to deliver it.
Location-based marketing personalization
In marketing, location data can help to personalize ads, changing the creative for segments of the audience. This personalization is done by segmenting the ad audience based on location data behavior. These segments are then used to deliver creatives that are relevant to their behaviour – think ‘enjoyed your coffee today’?
Tailoring the ad message boosts personalization and boost the key metrics that marketers are always looking to improve
Location based engagement
Location technology can also be useful for personalizing the customer experience. Integrating a location SDK into your consumer-facing app can support location-based personalization, boosting engagement and retention in the long term.
For example, you can deliver contextual notifications when a user is in a relevant location. Remind users of items left in their app basket when they are nearby to a physical store, for example.
Using location to predict what your customers want
The data that marketers now have at their disposal has enabled them to do more than just personalize based on past consumer behavior.
Location datasets can take personalization to the next level. B2B content marketing personalization is becoming predictive. Brands and advertisers can now combine multiple data sources to understand how consumers behave on both a micro and macro level.
Using this information, it’s possible for marketers to become predictive with their personalization.
Marketers can continuously update their perceived customer profiles with data that explains a consumers profile clearly. This process helps the business to personalize the consumer journey and remove potential barriers to purchase.
Measurement and attribution
As we have seen, the world of marketing and advertising can benefit from using location data in their targeting, segmentation, and personalization strategies. However, location data is valuable in another area where marketers have struggled – attribution.
Advertising is usually quite easy to measure in the online world. If a consumer clicks an ad and makes a purchase, this can be measured and attributed pretty accurately to the ad.
However, what happens if the goal is a store visit instead? Marketers have been scratching their heads for years trying to solve this conundrum. Location data is the missing link that can connect the two.
Location data can act as the link between the online and offline, linking a digital programmatic ad to a store or venue visit.
This link allows marketers the ability to measure and quantify the return on investment from their campaigns. The same capability is useful for out of home (OOH) providers who are looking for a way to link their real-world ads to digital or physical conversions.
It always goes back to accuracy and precision
Location-based measurement and attribution are useful, but it requires data that accurately represents a consumer’s real-world behavior. This data needs to be more than just a single data point – marketers need to know with certainty that a store visit is attributed to an ad to measure ROI effectively.
This requirement is another argument for a place visits methodology that we have already discussed. Device characteristics such as motion and dwell time are essential in providing an online-offline attribution solution that accurately links digital ads to store conversions.
Examples
Digital campaign attribution
An agency is running a campaign for a clothing brand. The campaign is delivered to audiences programmatically. The campaign aims to drive footfall to stores stocking a new range.
The impressions and clicks can be measured by the agency, but the brands want to know if the campaign is driving customers to their stores.
Using location data and matching against the IDFA/AAID’s targeted during the campaign, an exposed audience is created. A control audience is also built to compare the exposed group against users who weren’t targeted during the campaign. By having an exposed and control group who were equally likely to visit the clothing brands stores before the campaign, it is possible to isolate the impact the advertising had on store visits by seeing how store visits between the groups move during, and for a period after, the advertising period.
OOH
A brand runs an OOH campaign across multiple OOH sites and wants to understand which of these was the most effective in driving online purchases, or whether the OOH advertising was driving online purchases in the first place.
Through an accurate understanding of where the OOH sites are located, and by accurately and precisely understanding how a device moves in relation to the site (an accurate view of this needs to factor in how much time a device spends close the site, how fast they move past the site and a number of other factors the Tamoco SDK factors in) it is possible to build a group of devices that were likely to have been exposed to the OOH advertising.
These devices can be compared to similar devices that weren’t exposed to the advertising, and their device identifiers can be matched to customers in the companies CRM or DMP to measure the impact the OOH advertising had on store purchases as well as which of the OOH locations was the most effective in driving purchases.
Analytics and insights
Location data is a useful tool to analyze how large numbers of people move and behave to identify large scale trends and patterns.
These kind of insights are usually difficult to attain at scale in the offline world. Location data works as an indicator of where people go and how they behave – and how these change over time.
In the realm of advertising and marketing, location-based analysis can deliver valuable insights, such as:
Comparisons between brand, category, or another group of physical locations over time. Such models will look at the footfall changes over time.
A brand can use location data to understand more about its customer demographics – where they live and work, where else they shop
Insights into their store performance – average unique visits per month, number of repeat visits, average visit length.
This analysis can be used for a variety of adjustments. Including changing campaigns to suit the real-world behaviour better, to fundamentally changing market strategies to match the data of how a customer is behaving in the real world.
Beyond advertising
These same insights can be applied outside of the marketing and advertising vertical. Using footfall can be useful across a range of industries including retail, finance, real estate, healthcare, and government.
Retail
Location data can be useful for both smaller and large retailers. Understanding store visits, as well as customer behavior through mobile device data, is having many positive effects on the retail sector. These insights can help inform business decisions such as store layout, opening times, staffing, and more.
Finance
Location data is an essential tool for finance analysis. Device location can help to identify fraudulent activities and protect users with an added layer of security.
Understanding footfall through big data sets is valuable for the financial sector. Mobile device data can help to forecast earnings, number of customers and other KPIs before they are formally reported. These insights help to inform investment decisions.
Real estate
Anyone looking to invest in real estate, or open up a new store branch can use location data to understand how busy certain areas are, what type of people you’ll see in certain areas and how well similar businesses in that area perform.
Government
The rise in mobile location data has provided better opportunities to understand how cities work. It’s helping to create systems and infrastructure that reflects this.
Combined with the increasing number of connected devices in cities, central planning authorities now have a set of tools that can inform decision making in many different areas.
Mobile location data is contributing to a better understanding of where demand for public infrastructure is most significant. For example, we could examine mobile device location data to understand the most cycled roads within a city. This information is precise and invaluable when planning where to implement new cycling routes.
The same is true of traffic and congestion. In increasingly crowded and polluted megacities, it’s crucial to understand how traffic issues can be alleviated. Understanding traffic flow and where to build new road structures or introduce new low emission zones is vital to making the kind of smart city that can sustain current levels of population growth.
Location data can have a substantial positive effect on this kind of planning. Thanks to the accuracy and uniqueness of mobile device data and location intelligence, it is changing how decisions are made in cities and towns around the world.
Verification
Transparency – why do we need it
As the amount of location data available to businesses increases, there is likely to be more bad data. Poor third-party data sets are becoming more frequent, with providers unable to validate the accuracy and precision of the data.
We’ve already discussed the need to for accuracy and precision in location data – the difference can mean a falsely attributed visit, irrelevant targeting or a negative impact on customer engagement.
The most accurate providers will be able to verify their first-party data sets. They can provide a detailed methodology around how they collect data. This is one of the main benefits of working with a provider that controls data collection – their data is first-party and therefore reliable and transparent.
Explainer: 1st, 2nd and 3rd party data
Third party data is data that is purchased from outside sources where the provider you are working with is not the direct collector of the data.
Second-party data is somebody else’s first-party data. This data comes from their first-party audience, the source is clear, and the provider usually demonstrates the accuracy and collection.
First party data is your data that is collected directly from your audience or customers.
Of course many businesses don’t collect first-party location data so they work with a location data company to source the data for their campaigns, or other business needs.
In this scenario, second party data is much more reliable than third-party data. You can understand how the data is collected as the methodology is transparent, and the data accuracy can be verified. Of course, this doesn’t confirm that the data is accurate – but at least you can check yourself if this is true.
The best providers can explain how they collect data, how they filter out inaccurate data and can usually provide a reliability score with data to allow the end-user to understand the data they are working with.
Privacy
2018 saw the introduction of GDPR in Europe. In the US, the upcoming CCPA act data privacy will still be front and center in the data community. We are quickly moving towards a world where each individual will have control over their data.
Businesses using location data will need to take a similar approach. It’s pivotal to allow the individual to take control of their data. Businesses must inform users of how their data is used. They must provide clear opt-in and opt-out solutions so that transparency can be placed at the center of the big data revolution.
Businesses that utilize location data will need to be clear about how they collect and use consumer data. Location data providers need to have a clear opt-in process that allows consumers to understand how their data is used.
Data providers should provide solutions at the point of collection, which allow them to manage consent preferences through to the point of data use.
As with the verification of accuracy, understanding data privacy is more accessible if your provider is working with first-party data.
For example, at Tamoco, we have built consent functionality into our SDK. This allows the publisher to collect user consent at the point of data collection in accordance with the IAB framework.
For the data user, this means that they can understand how consent was given, and for which purposes.
When choosing a location data provider to work with, there are many things to consider. With several different sources, signals, and methodologies available, it’s essential to understand exactly what each provider is offering.
We have put together the following list of questions that are useful when selecting a location data company.
Buying location data
So you have a valid use case for location data, how to do you go about purchasing location data?
We have put together this section to help you to understand what to look for when working with location data providers.
What does good location data look like?
As we mentioned earlier, it’s important to look out for a few things when buying location data you should look for the following attributes.
Quality
In terms of quality, you want location data to be accurate, and you want it to contain the attributes that you need to achieve your goals. In terms of accuracy, you should look out for a score in the data set. This will tell you how much you can trust a data point. It might make sense to filter out data that sits below a certain level of accuracy, depending on your project. Don’t be afraid of asking your location data provider if they can give you a trust or accuracy score.
Then you should look at the metadata. Most providers will provide more than a lat long. As a good rule of thumb here are the attributes that you can expect to find in a location data set:
Field
Description
Example
device_id
The advertisment id for the phone
6E82079C-8346-4DA5-BF5B-76214862F7DC
device_ip
IPv4 address
192.0. 2.146
event_ts
The timestamp of when the location observation was collected
2020-12-06 16:39:28.000 UTC
latitude
The north-south position of a point on the Earth’s surface. First part of the device location
30.27297
longitude
The east-west position of a point on the Earth’s surface. Second part of the device location
-97.731528
geohash
A 1.2km x 609.4m grid which the Latitude and Longitude falls under
9v6s0p
accuracy
The accuracy of the device in meters
10
region
ANSI standard two letter state code
TX
country
ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 country code
US
device_type
Device type
Phone
device_os
The type of operating system. iOS or Android
Android
device_make
Extracted from the phones user agent. Defines the device manufacturer
Samsung
device_model
The device model number.
SM-A300FU
app_id
A anonymized and internal identifier for a unique app supplier
2684758
Scale
When purchasing location data you need to ensure that the provider has sufficient scale in the country where you need the data. You should consider how large the country is and then ask how many unique devices are in the dataset. This ratio will give you a good idea of the provider’s coverage in that area.
Some projects (training AI) might require a higher level of coverage, whereas other use cases could be workable with less.
Ultimately different location data providers and companies will be better suited for different types of location data.
Here we’ve don’t the legwork for you and broken down the best location data providers for each data type.
Best provider of raw location data
Raw location data is location data or mobility data in its purest form. This data is often pseudonymized but you should check with your provider. The primary use cases here can be vast, but they can feature in a number of industries from automotive to finance and marketing.
At Tamoco they carefully curate personalised feeds or raw data. It’s powered by leading ML algorithms to filter out bad data and it’s fully filterable by region, time or another attribute. Best of all it’s delivered programmatically in a way that suits your project.
Best place to buy property data
Property data is used to augment raw data to provide an outline of buildings and or pieces of land that don’t show up on a classic map.
The primary use of these datasets is to asses building risk factors.
Best provider: SafeGraph.
Best place to buy visits data
Visits data is a form of mobility data that is used to identify how many times a device is seen in a particular location. This data uses a proprietary technique to attribute. raw location point to a POI.
The used for this are found in retail, finance and governance.
Mobility data is counts of people that visit a POI but they are generally anonymized and done on a higher level than a single POI. This kind of data will usually include timings such as average times of visits.
This data type is used for advertising, urban planning and insurance..
Tamoco provides extensive mobility data and is one of the leading mobility data companies that operate globally. Its smart tech allows datasets to be generated quickly based on fully custom requirements.
Where can you buy location data?
You can find location data in a number of places from marketplaces, and exchanges or by talking directly to location data companies. These companies will have a dedicated team of experts who can help you to understand the nuances of location data, mobility data or geospatial data.
How much does location data cost?
The cost of location data can vary hugely depending on your use case or the size of the dataset. Other factors that can affect the cost of location data are the region (some country’s data is worth more than others) or the quality.
Questions to ask a location data company
Place/POI
What is the source of this data?
How much of your POI data is 1st party vs. 3rd party?
How do you organize the geographical area around a POI or place?
Can you share how precise your POI/place data is?
How many POI locations do you have?
What metadata is associated with these places?
How do you verify your place database?
Device
How do you collect location data? Is this process first-party, or is the data 3rd party?
What type of device data do you use (GPS, wifi, beacon, etc.)?
Is your data sourced from an SDK?
Do you have a method in place to filter out data that isn’t relevant for my campaign or merely inaccurate?
what is the scale of your dataset?
Red flags
The number of Businesses in the location data space can make it hard to differentiate between them. Below are a few red flags that you should keep an eye on the next time you’re speaking to one of these companies.
All of our data is accurate to 5m
Some data providers will make big claims regarding how accurate their GPS derived data is. As mentioned earlier, GPS can be accurate within a 4.9 meter radius, and this can be further improved when combining with WiFi and Bluetooth signalling.
The truth of the matter though is that GPS accuracy will vary massively, possible reasons for this are:
Mobile devices lose and regain mobile reception as they move around
Buildings, bridges, trees and roofs can block and reflect GPS signals
The better data providers don’t just look at the accuracy of GPS signals. They will take additional data fields into account, such as looking at the motion type, speed, altitude etc of the device to determine the likelihood of a device visiting a store at a given point in time.
Accurately measuring how a device moves is a complex issue, and you should be wary of data companies giving simple answers with blanket statements.
Our visit data is correct because of our precise polygon geofences
Accurately mapping POI is important to try to understand whether a device actually spent time there. However, a lot of data providers out there will claim that the reason they’re able to attribute POI visits is because of the precise polygons they’ve been able to draw around POI.
As mentioned above, GPS accuracy has a high degree of variability. You can have a precise polygon geofence around a 20 square meter retail unit, however if all the signals you place inside the geofences have +/- 50 meter accuracy, you’re not doing a good job at understanding who spends time in that POI.
Want to learn more?
At Tamoco, we are always innovating in how we collect and use device location. We’ve spent years fine-tuning our methodology to correctly verify how a device moves and behaves in the real world.
What is location data?
Location data is geographical information about a specific device’s whereabouts associated to a time identifier. This device data is assumed to correlate to a person – a device identifier then acts as a pseudonym to separate the person’s identify from the insights generated from the data.
How accurate is location data?
Location data is only as accurate as the source. GPS is usually the most reliable but only outdoors. Usually a combination of Bluetooth, GPS and other signals will provide a more accurate reading of device location.
Is location data compatible with GDPR?
Yes. Businesses that utilize location data will need to be clear about how they collect and use consumer data. Location data providers need to have a clear opt-in process that allows consumers to understand how their data is used. Data providers should provide solutions at the point of collection, which allow them to manage consent preferences through to the point of data use.
What is location data used for?
Location data can be used to target, build audiences, measure and gain insights and understand the offline world.
