Location firm Factual announced a partnership with The Trade Desk, a demand-side platform (DSP), on Tuesday. The partnership allows The Trade Desk to integrate Factual’s datasets into its platform and will enable media buyers to use location data when advertising to mobile users.
According to a blog post from Factual, The Trade Desk is especially interested in Factual’s Geopulse Proximity data service, which utilizes Factual’s place-based data to support geofences and a visual map-based, self-serve user interface. Factual runs a first-party database that covers 80 million local businesses and points of interest in 50 countries.
The location advertising space is becoming more accurate and more attractive to media buyers despite its current challenges. According to a new white paper from the Mobile Marketing Association, location-enabled mobile programmatic inventory has doubled in the last year. Sixty percent of mobile ad requests include location data (although accuracy may be dubious). According to research from BIA Kelsey, location-targeted mobile ad revenues are projected to grow from $4.3 billion in 2014 to $18.2 billion in 2019 in the U.S.
The white paper includes a warning: “Publishers are focused on building apps and websites and often do not invest in resources to better understand the data which they send to programmatic exchanges.” As a result, marketers are often looking at outdated or inaccurate methods of measuring mobile location.
Mobile location data is -- and will be -- a powerful force for unlocking attribution and location-based audiences in greater depth. The Factual-Trade Desk partnership illustrates a trend in both the programmatic and location space, and how mobile ties the two together.