Factual expands its location-based ad tools

Factual announced this morning that it’s expanding its Geopulse ad-targeting suite, with new products designed to help advertisers measure whether their campaigns drive in-store visits, and to give them more guidance on overall strategy.

You may remember that Factual was founded a decade ago by Gil Elbaz, with the aim of creating an open repository for data. Over time, the company became focused on location data, and on finding ways to use that data in advertising.

“We’ve always been laser-focused on the location data,” Elbaz said. “When we think about new use cases for marketers, we look at it as, ‘How can they leverage our industry-leading location data?’ ”

Geopulse already included Audience (targeting ads based on location data) and Proximity (geofencing). The first of the new products is Geopulse Insights, which Elbaz said takes “the guesswork out of how to translate the target audiences that we catalog [and turn them] into actionable targeting strategies.”

That means looking at data about the audience that an advertiser is trying to reach and coming up with recommendations on how to target and what the message should be. Elbaz suggested that as more advertisers embrace dynamic creative, where different users see different ads, Insights could help brands get smarter about that personalization.

The other addition is Geopulse Measurement, which helps brands understand whether their ads are actually convincing people to visit their stores. This can include A/B testing different ads to see which ones are driving more visits. The data is delivered in real time, so campaigns can be consistently tweaked to improve performance.

Pretty much every player in digital media and advertising is trying to measure in-store visits these days, but Elbaz said Factual’s approach stands out because of the accuracy and scale of its data. Plus, it integrates with existing ad platforms (such as Viant).

“They can leverage [the data] along with many of the partners and marketing clouds that they’re already using,” Elbaz said.

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