Location-based analytics pioneering startup Placed is seeing good progress with its opt-in location surveying program, which it helped to boost with the introduction of an affiliate program back in March this year. Since January, Placed has seen those participating in its mobile panelist program (i.e., users who have agreed to share location data with the company) increase 190 percent, with daily measurements growing 228 percent.
In total, Placed now has over 100,000 mobile users opting in to sharing their location data, across apps from developers that include its API in their app. Placed makes sure that developers notify their users about the location data use, and how it will be employed, in addition to the default location-based permission request that all iOS and Android apps make. Placed is now reeling in about 100 million location measurements per day to fuel its analytics, and has processed over 20 billion location information requests from devices since launch.
Placed CEO and founder David Shim notes that the growth of Placed’s community and data has increased dramatically, having tripled in the past six months. The affiliate program has likely helped with that, as it rewards developers who incorporate Placed analytics into their app with affiliate fees based on weekly and monthly volume of measurements gathered.
As part of its research efforts, Placed also puts out a quarterly report on the locations covered by its API, revealing what businesses users are visiting most while using apps that are Placed-enabled. McDonald’s topped the list for June, 2013, with Walmart, Subway, Burger King, and Starbucks rounding out the top five. Placed also found that summer blockbuster releases correlated with a sharp spring/summer uptake in app usage in and around theater, and found a strong correlation between visiting theaters and shopping at specific destinations, including the Disney Store, Forever21, The Cheesecake Factory and more.
Those kinds of correlations show why the type of data that Placed is gathering is potentially useful for mobile app developers and those formulating the mobile strategies of businesses – they can tell an app developer what kind of ads might do best within their app, based on where people tend to be using it and where those same demographics tend to shop. Placed’s model was always an interesting one, but now that its database is growing considerably and seeing lots of daily activity, the information it’s gathering is potentially much more useful to advertisers, researchers, app developers and more.