That Location Data You're Relying On Is Probably Wrong

This post is sponsored by Thinknear.

When location-based marketing works, everyone benefits. Businesses get to expand their base, and customers can find out more about your products and special deals when they're physically near one of your stores.

Unfortunately, there's a good chance that the location data you're relying upon to grow your business is bad. A new report from mobile ad network and location technology company Thinknear even goes so far as to say two-thirds of that data is incorrect, which can have a huge impact on mobile campaign performance.

Some of the latitude-longitude data that mobile publishers are reporting to advertising networks is so wildly off, marketers could be paying to reach customers over 60 miles away from where the data says they are. They could even be paying for ads served to "nearby" customers located in a different city.

It all comes down to this: There's no policing of location data, so marketers will need to protect themselves before they waste significant budgets each quarter.

Thinknear has come up with a way to help fix this problem with a recently launched Location Score Index, a report that measures the accuracy of the data you're getting from publishers. Location Score is a 0 to 100-point scale that helps marketers better understand the quality of the data used in their mobile location campaigns.

For its initial report, Thinknear sampled and analyzed data from more than 3.5 billion publisher ad requests, 53 million ad impressions, and location accuracy tests on more than 20,000 consumer ad experiences over the first four months of the year.

Demand for location-based campaigns is rising fast, and Thinknear's Location Score Index will be instrumental in helping the mobile industry to improve the quality of available location data. That means you, as a marketer, won't have to worry about data quality. Instead, your location data will start doing what it's supposed to do: drive results.

Read Thinknear's report to learn more about Location Score.

Find out more about Sponsor Posts.