Precisely signs agreement to acquire PlaceIQ (Image Credit: GeoJango Maps on Unsplash)Precisely has signed a definitive agreement to acquire location intelligence vendor PlaceIQ. The move will enable Precisely to improve its offering around location data further. Neither party has announced the financial terms. However, PlaceIQ has raised $52M across nine separate funding rounds (source: Crunchbase).

Josh Rogers, CEO, Precisely (Image Credit: Precisely)
Josh Rogers, CEO, Precisely

Josh Rogers, CEO of Precisely, said, Enterprises today are looking to make better decisions through data they can trust. Precisely offers a unique combination of software and data solutions to help companies achieve data integrity and improve decision making.

The addition of PlaceIQs location data to our portfolio deepens that value proposition by providing our customers with market-leading data on consumer behavior. We look forward to accelerating PlaceIQs decade of innovation, offering new ways for enterprises to improve the accuracy, consistency and context of their data.

What does PlaceIQ do?

PlaceIQ serves the marketing and media space with location intelligence. In simple terms, it helps businesses better target their marketing based on mobile movement data. It does this by identifying where an opted-in device such as a phone has been, the locations it visited and the dwell time in-store.

Mobile movement data is collected only at the device level using each device’s unique identifier. It does not work with apps from advertisers or vendors. Nor does it require an agent to be installed on the device. It is an approach that ensures that no personal data is acquired or transferred to PlaceIQ or its clients.

One of the key benefits for a retailer is dwell time. It shows how long a device has spent in a particular section of a store, such as clothing and technology. They can then see what other clothing and technology stores that device has spent time in. That data can be used to infer the types of products the device owner is interested in. The retailer can then use that data to build a focused advertising campaign for that device.

PlaceIQ also comes with a set of administrative dashboards that customers can use to better focus their analytics use.

What does this mean for Precisely?

This deal is good for Precisely and for PlaceIQ customers. It brings a lot more data to the customer that can be used to refine and enrich the analytics. For retailers, this is a major boost as it gives them more information from which they can create more focused advertising campaigns,

Precisely also gets access to the data points from millions of opted-in devices. When combined with other Precisely data sets, that increase in data sets creates an extremely rich set of data. For a retailer, it allows them to understand much more about the device and where it has been.

For example, large sports and events venues already use mobile movement data to see how visitors interact with the different commercial outlets on their premises. They could now use the data from PlaceIQ to see if people come directly to the venue or if they stop for food or drink. If they come direct, they could be sent vouchers for refreshments at the event.

Additionally, emergency response commanders could use the data to control the flow of people after a major incident.

Enterprise Times: What does this mean?

In December, Precisely launched its Dynamic Demographics solution. It combined the location data that Precisely already has with mobile location data. It already provides much intelligence on how people move around and what they do. However, that mobile location data is only updated every quarter and was only available in certain geographies.

This acquisition of PlaceIQ is the next step in using mobile location data. It uses data captured in the US, which is updated in real-time. Interestingly, when Dan Adams, Senior Vice President – Data Strategy & Operations for Precisely, was asked about real-time in December, he said, “It’s not where we would particularly target ourselves.”

This deal changes that, at least for retailers in the US. It raises the question as to what additional benefits can be seen here. For example, if international travellers have their devices opted-in to mobile location data, will US retailers be able to see those in an expanded PlaceIQ + Precisely data set? If so, it further widens the appeal for marketing.

This is a good deal for Precisely as it widens its data sets and market. The question now is, whom will it acquire next?

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