• by Ben Frederick  @mp_benfred, January 11, 2016

UberRetail parent company UberMedia, geospatial business intelligence consultancy B.I. Spatial, and the Directory of Major Malls (DMM) announced a partnership today to provide trade area analysis for shopping centers using GPS data from cell phones.

Trade area analysis uses data to identify the best locations for retailers to build or buy new brick and mortar space.

They are used with psychographic and demographic data to develop trade area profiles, retail sales forecasting, real estate strategy development and to enhance retailers’ local marketing campaigns.

The partnership will provide trade area analysis for about 7,200 shopping centers and malls in the U.S.

“Essentially, the product acts as a proactive and predictive driver of deeper, more precise insight than traditional ring and drive time-based trade areas,” stated Tama Shor, president and CEO of DMM. “The focus on ‘reality versus rings’ removes the known inaccuracies in antiquated real estate location decision models and replaces it with fact-based identification of true consumer activity.”

According to ABI Research, in-building wireless data will grow to reach 53 exabytes by 2020, meaning that places like shopping malls, sports arenas and public transportation will be centers for massive WiFi traffic. Nick Marshall, research director at ABI Research, stated that video traffic far outpaces any other kind of traffic, consistent with other findings in the industry as consumers migrate towards large screen smartphones, known as phablets.

Shor also made note of the potential for more precise and targeted advertising opportunities for digital and mobile ads, search advertising, billboards, and direct mail campaigns.