NEW YORK, NY, October 15, 2015 - The mobile industry is making significant strides toward greater accuracy in location data, according to a new report from The Mobile Marketing Association. The “Demystifying Location Data Accuracy” paper, published today, details key factors influencing location data accuracy, explains how accuracy impacts the many use cases for location data, and describes what the industry is doing to advance location-enabled marketing methodology overall, by improving data quality as well as transparency.

 

Marketers can draw upon the report to access the full potential of location for their businesses, gaining insights to make better decisions about the value location data brings to bear on their advertising. The report represents the latest intelligence from the MMA Location Committee and Location Data Accuracy Working Group, which include leading innovators in location from across the mobile marketing industry.

 

“We applaud MMA members for coming together to bring greater visibility to the importance and impact of accuracy on location data”, said Sheryl Daija, Chief Strategy Officer, MMA. “These efforts will provide marketers with even greater confidence to trailblaze new uses for mobile location and further accelerate the pace of growth in mobile marketing.”

 

Location-enabled mobile advertising is a rapidly growing segment of the media mix. In the U.S. alone, location-targeted mobile ad revenues are projected to grow from $4.3 billion in 2014 to $18.2 billion in 2019, according to research from BIA Kelsey. Location-enabled programmatic mobile inventory has doubled in the last year. And today, over 60% of all mobile ad requests include location data of some kind. The trouble is that less than one third of those requests are accurate within 50-100 meters. Accuracy remains the central challenge to continuing this pace of growth and unlocking mobile location’s true potential.

 

“Transparency is going to greatly remove friction in the buying process. It’s a simple equation that gets played out time and again,” says tenthavenue COO NA, Michael Lieberman. “Understanding the data and truly knowing what they are buying will give marketers the confidence to spend behind geo-location and geo-audiences, which should drive significant industry growth.”

 

In addition to its ongoing education and outreach, MMA’s Location Committee is actively working in conjunction with the Media Rating Council (MRC) to develop a standardized method of counting and calculating the impact that mobile campaigns have on offline foot traffic at retail. Updates on these standards are expected later this year.

 

“Accuracy remains the central challenge to unlocking mobile location’s true potential,” remarked Monica Ho, Head of Marketing Infrastructure at xAd. “At issue is not only the ability to improve engagement by delivering ads with more accurate contextual relevance, but marketer’s ability to reliably track attribution from mobile impressions right to the point of sale.”

 

A panel session exploring the paper, sponsored by Factual, Thinknear, Ubimo and xAd, will be held November 11th in NYC with a webinar on the subject to be held later in November.

 

The whitepaper was developed by the MMA’s Location Data Accuracy Working Group, Co-Chaired by Monica Ho, Head Marketing Infrastructure, xAd and Michael Lieberman, COO NA, tenthavenue, and representatives from 4INFO, Criteo, Dstillery, Factual, Foursquare, Future of Privacy Forum, Google, ImServices, Joule, MEC, MRC, Mobiquity Networks, Near, OpenX, Placecast, PlaceIQ, Reveal, The Mobile Majority, Thinknear, Ubimo, UpSnap, Verizon Wireless, Verve Mobile, xAd, YP, Zebra technologies. The “A Mountain of Locations” Info-graphic was prepared by Imagine Mobile.

 

 

The MMA is the world's leading global non-profit trade mobile marketing association comprised of more than 800 member companies, from nearly fifty countries around the world. Our members hail from every faction of the mobile marketing ecosystem including brand marketers, agencies, mobile technology platforms, media companies, operators and others. The MMA's mission is to accelerate the transformation and innovation of marketing through mobile, driving business growth with closer and stronger consumer engagement. Anchoring the MMA's mission are four core pillars; to cultivate inspiration by driving the innovation for the Chief Marketing Officer; to build the mobile marketing capabilities for the marketing organizations through fostering know-how and confidence; to champion the effectiveness and impact of mobile through research providing tangible ROI measurement; and advocacy. Additionally MMA industry-wide committees work collaboratively to develop and advocate global best practices and lead standards development.

 

Mobile Marketing is broadly defined as including advertising, apps, messaging, mCommerce and CRM on all mobile devices including smartphones and tablets. Members include: American Express, AT&T, Colgate-Palmolive, Dunkin' Brands, Facebook, Ford Motor Company, Foursquare, Google, Group M, Hewlett Packard, Hilton Worldwide, iHeartMedia, Johnson & Johnson, Kellogg Co., MasterCard, McDonalds, Mondelez International, Inc. Pandora Media, Pinterest, Procter & Gamble, Razorfish, R/GA, Starcom Worldwide, The Coca-Cola Company, The Weather Company, Unilever, Visa, VEVO, Vodafone, Walmart, xAd and many more. The MMA's global headquarters are located in New York with regional operations in Europe/Middle East/Africa (EMEA), Latin American (LATAM) and Asia Pacific (APAC). For more information about the MMA please visit www.mmaglobal.com.