How important is accuracy when it comes to customer data? It’s absolutely crucial, particularly in a fast-moving space like location-based advertising. Marketers rely on their advertising partners to live up to their promises, and it’s up to companies like ours to deliver.
It’s for this reason that we annually appoint an independent auditor to ensure the accuracy of our location data. We’re constantly pushing ourselves to make improvements to our platform and infrastructure in an effort to deliver the best possible product to our clients, and this is yet another way to demonstrate our commitment to our partners.
The Results
This year we’re happy to report the results of our third annual Accuracy Audit. Commissioned by Numerator (formerly InfoScout), the audit compares GroundTruth’s in-store foot traffic data against Numerator’s confirmed purchase data for a sample of key retailers, as captured through shopper receipts. Numerator then measures the reach and accuracy of GroundTruth’s database of real-world consumer location data.
What this process revealed is that GroundTruth has 94.4%* visit accuracy, meaning that we can confidently say almost 95% of the visits we see on our platform are actual visits by real consumers. We also learned that our accuracy percentage has increased 4.4% since we began the audit in 2017. It’s also worth noting that the remaining 5.6% of visits are not necessarily inaccurate — it’s simply that the majority couldn’t be 100% verified as a visit through Numerator.
Why We Do It
Let’s be clear: not all companies in the digital marketing space submit themselves to an independent Accuracy Audit. But GroundTruth has always been a believer in third-party validation. This is apparent in our practice of always embracing independent measurement partners, and holds immense weight when it comes to location accuracy.
In an industry like ours, which has given rise to a vast ecosystem of location data in just about 10 years, it’s often up to the vendors to self-regulate. Additional marketing challenges, like ad fraud, are still a major issue for marketers, who find themselves wondering who — if anyone — they can trust.
To this end, GroundTruth is committed to offering our partners complete transparency into the quality and scale of our data, audience insights, and targeting profiles. With a third-party audit, we aren’t grading our own homework. Rather, we’re giving our reliable partners full access to our data to perform the test for us.
How We Maintain Our Momentum
So what’s the secret to increasing our accuracy year after year? We’re working harder than ever to implement additional data quality efforts to improve how we verify “real” visits.
Our 5 Key Improvements
- Store Hours. How frequently does the user visit a store, and for how long? What are the store hours, and when did the visit take place? We only count visits that occur during open store hours.
- Employee Status. Understanding employee status allows us to include or exclude employees from the audit.
- Dwell Time. How long did the user spend in the store? We use dwell time to filter for inaccurate visits.
- Speed. How fast was the user moving when we tracked their visit? If they’re moving faster than our speed threshold, we do not count the visit.
- Horizontal Accuracy. What is the percent accuracy of the latitude/longitude we received? If the horizontal accuracy that falls within a mapped location is not higher than our percent threshold, we do not count the visit.
We’re proud to be able to offer products based on these enhancements, including our Cost Per Visit buying model, which allows marketers to only pay when in-store visits occur. As evidenced by our transparency, we have the utmost confidence in our tech — and we hope that you do, too.
Interested in learning more about our Accuracy Audit? Contact us today.
*Based on an independent study with a leading insights company, Numerator (formerly InfoScout), which measured the accuracy of GroundTruth’s database of real-world consumer location and behavioral data. The Accuracy Audit analyzed 10,000 matched panelists who shopped at a sample of key retailers, consistently submitted receipts to Numerator, and used location-based services via GroundTruth.
