Dive Brief:

• Kantar Millward Brown, the market research firm with 85 offices worldwide, has partnered with geolocation data provider Cuebiq to help advertisers measure offline results for ad campaigns. Cuebiq’s smartphone tracking technology will be integrated with KMB’s consumer behavior insights research to study audience behavior, according to a statement by the company.
• The companies say data related to the physical location of smartphone users will be particularly useful for the automotive, retail, travel, hospitality, restaurant and entertainment industries. Cuebiq’s technology is embedded in more than 61 million mobile devices in the U.S. and is accurate within 30 feet. The research for offline behavior is available in the U.S. and will be rolled out in other markets later this year.
• Meanwhile, PlaceIQ, a New York-based location data provider, rolled out its LandMark information service this week for marketers that seek to track consumer movements. Beta partners included Ansible, Gas Station TV, Havas Media and The Media Kitchen. The data service is available through subscription or license.

Dive Insight:

Mobile marketers generally have a wide range of analytical tools to measure how consumers respond to an ad with a swipe, click, tap, form submission or page view. But offline behavior like store visits, sales calls or lead generation can be tricky without some kind of customer feedback. Kantar Millward Brown and Cuebiq are among the companies that seek to harness geolocation technology to measure what consumers actually do instead of what they claim to do. Such insights can help marketers gain a better understanding of how effective their mobile ads are. 

That kind of insight is especially important to brick-and-mortar retailers that face a competitive threat from e-commerce merchants that are capable of collecting reams of customer data. Geolocation data can become even more granular combined with store beacons, which are small sensors placed throughout retail locations that track customer movements through a store. The tracking enables advertisers to push promotional messages near the point of purchase while users are inside the store.

The potential power of location data has resulted in surging interest in location-based marketing spend, which is projected to climb at an annual compound growth rate of 24.6% from almost $10 billion in 2015 to $29.5 billion in 2020, according to BIA/Kelsey.