How can you keep up with changing consumer behavior? Location-based datasets are a great data tool to use to understand real-world consumer movement. Cleansed, aggregated mobile location signals give marketers new insights into consumer behavior. Not sure where to start with an observations dataset? We’ve put together a comprehensive overview of what our Observations datasets are and how it can be used by companies to better understand consumer movement patterns.

This data can be used by companies to improve ad CTRs and ROI, gather competitive intelligence, and improve their customer experience. We process billions of pseudonymous location signals every day to build our Data-As-A-Service (DaaS) offerings, like Observations. Observations is our largest dataset. It captures every location that mobile consumers visit and aggregates through geo-hash and time.

Our Observations dataset can be used in different types of analyses including geo-location, footfall, and custom area analyses. This dataset is most often used to measure foot traffic around any location of interest. This allows data analysts to analyze consumer movement or migratory patterns and identify possible sources of fraud. If a marketer is conducting market research, they can isolate signals around any area of interest and focus on analyzing trends in that particular area. On the other hand, a research company may use an Observations data to understand population density, commute or travel patterns, and areas where consumers are moving to- and from. 

Understanding travel patterns and consumer movement is helpful for advertisers determining where to place their ads. For example, an advertising agency has a client who is investing in DOOH ads for their next campaign. The ad agency can use the Observations data to understand where the ad will get the most exposure based on consumer movement patterns. Companies combating fraud can use this type of dataset to identify suspicious signals and devices which don’t show the typical movement patterns of real consumers. In contrast, companies developing their own location algorithms often desire to work with the largest data set available.

Our Observations data is captured and updated daily, so you’ll always have an up-to-date location-based dataset to work with. As consumers move about the physical world – commuting to work, shopping downtown, traveling across the country – new observations are automatically created and added.

Without an Observations dataset, marketers and analysts wouldn’t be able to understand consumer behavior patterns. This lack of a real-world dataset prevents them from creating up-to-date strategies, which can decrease the ROI of their campaigns and increase the likelihood of losing to their competition. By understanding consumer behavior, marketers are able to take real-world consumer movement data insights and apply them to their campaigns.