Quova Geo-Locates Web Visitors Without Tracking Behavior

A recent national survey indicated that, by a large majority, Americans strongly object to behavioral targeting online.

Which was good news for Quova, a company that provides geo-location data about IP addresses. Unlike behavioral targeting, which includes monitoring which web sites you've visited and even some of your offline activities, geo-coded targeting simply establishes where you are, within a range of 25-50 miles, given the current generation of technology.

Quova, a ten-year-old privately held company has a very simple way of describing what it provides its clients. "We can tell you the geographic location of a Web site visitor. It is that simple," is the company's promise on its website.

The chances are very high that whatever IP address you are using with your computer, router, printer or Xbox unit, Quova can come well within shouting distance of your precise location.

(In my case, it located me across the Bay in Oakland, but that was via the initial, free level of service provided and made visible at Quova's website. If I were a client, the company indicates, additional identifying information would be available to zero in more closely on the actual location of my current IP address.)
In a media sense, this type of geo-targeting means that local news content can be served to you, which is one way The Examiner.com, a Quova client, uses this data. The other use, of course, is to serve ads that are relevant not based on how your behave online but where you are located.

"We have information on over two billion IP addresses," says Kerry Langstaff, VP, Marketing for Quova. "Our accuracy at the country level is 99.9 percent. For the U.S. States, it is 98.2 percent."

(Quova's accuracy data are audited by Price-Waterhouse-Coopers.)
"We are constantly updating this information," says Langstaff. "Our data changes about 5-7 percent every month. Among other things, we will derive the latitude and longitude and pinpoint the IP to within 25-50 miles. That basically is, on average, over a two zip-code area."

Continental Air uses Quova data to serve users one of 56 homepages in seven languages based on lP location and also to provide city-by-city promotional fares.

"Hyper-local is the next phase in this business" says Langstaff. "We are using new technologies to improve the granularity of the geo-coded data down to a single zipcode. We also can triangulate using WiFi locational data and GPS."

The big search engines have Quova data "baked into" their systems, for providing sponsored ad links based on user location. Other uses of this technology includes detecting possible cases of credit card fraud.

"If we find that the IP address is significantly different from the billing address, that may be an indicator of fraud," notes Langstaff. "We can also detect proxy server use, which in some cases may be an attempt to conceal location."

Then there are uses that help clients comply with laws, regulations or policies. "Major League Baseball is one of our biggest customers, and they have to enforce blackout provisions even if you're watching the game online. They've been using our data for years to detect whether you are in a blackout area."

Another media usage comes from the BBC, which is not allowed to serve ads inside the U.K. due to the large annual fee U.K. residents are assessed to finance the BBC's domestic operations. "But when they figured out they could sell ad space directed at users outside of the U.K., they began to use our data to be able to do so."

The next frontier for geo-coded data is mobile marketing and ads. Quova is partnering with Navizon, which uses cellphone towers and WiFi hotspot data to pinpoint location of mobile devices, in some cases triangulating it down to within one block.

Recent related Bnet Posts:
National Survey: Most Americans Object to Targeted Ads "It may be a speed bump or something considerably more serious for online media's dominant business model, but a national survey released today indicates that anywhere from two-thirds up to three-quarters (or more) of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers..."
The Examiner.com-NowPublic Hookup: Part Two "There are a number aspects of this week's acquisition of NowPublic by the Examiner.com that promise to put the business model of a hyper-local news network to its largest test to date..."