Quova Blog

Data 2.0 Summit Panel: Advertising and Personalization Data

Leveraging data has been a question since the beginning of data collection. Now with demographic, customer intelligence, ecommerce targeting and real-time analytic data the question is even more prevalent. Advertisers are tasked with using this data to ensure the right advertisement, message and/or product is seen by the right customer.

This year’s DATA 2.0 SUMMIT in San Francisco addresses how to ensure this data is being used to better target messaging and ads to customers. The 12 panels and 7 workshops by thought leaders will address:

• Accessibility
• Standardization
• Adaptability
• The Big Data Web.

NEUSTAR’S MITEN SAMPAT will be speaking on the panel “Advertising and Personalization Data.” This panel will cover targeting ads to users on a one-to-one basis and what data need to be available for more advertising personalization. Sampat is one of six on the panel. The other panelist include:

• Hooman Radfar of CLEARSPRING TECHNOLOGIES
• Omar Tawakoi of BLUEKAI
• Russell Glass of BIZO
• Mark Zagorski of EXELATE
• Mark Torrance of ROCKET FUEL INC.

Peter Kirwan, Neustar VP, Entrepreneur in Residence will also be presenting on the “Why you should join the API Economy” panel with our partner MASHERY. As well as leading the workshop “Consumers vs. Creators: Making Sense of the New Data Marketplace.”

Location + Search: A Perfect Marriage ?

One of the leading thinkers about the past, present, and future of search, John Battelle was recently quoted as saying, “Location is the most important signal on the Internet, after search.”

While keywords tell the search engine ”what” a user is looking for, their location tells the search engine ”where” they might be looking for it. Umpteen simple examples spring to mind when it comes to the localization of search results. From the simple case of pizza delivery restaurants, to local plumbers, and other regional services, localization is a core feature of the modern search engine.

However, little is written about what businesses need to do about this. How does a business ensure that they appear in front of current and potential customers who may search for their products or services? What does this mean for how they advertise on search engines, social networks, review sites, and navigation aides?

The answer lies in understanding the underlying mechanisms of how search engines and location-based services function and interpret the context of local. Search engines rely on a variety of metadata attributes when they crawl the Web to index and appropriately categorize content. When it comes to local content, search engines typically look for addresses, phone numbers (to determine area-codes), SMS short codes, URL naming schemas, reviews, and other common listing information. This allows search-engines to present the location-aware results to their users and help them find what’s relevant to them. For webmasters and marketers, it’s important to get listed and categorized correctly.

The other side of the coin for search engines is to determine ”where” the user is. This is commonly achieved through a variety of sensors such as IP addresses, GPS co-ordinates, Wifi signals, barcodes, QR codes, etc. Each sensor each has its own advantages and limitations when it comes to scale, accuracy, availability, and privacy features.

With so much commerce, content, and connectivity going mobile, the marriage of Local + Search is here to stay. As recently reported by expert journalist Greg Sterling, as many as 3 billion queries per month are being registered with local intent. Oh, and the percentage of searches with local intent on mobile constitutes a significant percentage of search volumes; more specifically 33% in the case of Google, 40% on YAHOO!, and a massive 53% on Bing.

What can “where” do for you?

Personal vs. Private: A way to engage AND respect your online targets

Not so long ago, consumers were okay with an onslaught of marketing messages. That was the norm. But not anymore. Thanks to the Internet and mobile explosions, buyers want a more personal, relevant experience. And yet they want their privacy too. As a marketer, you’re walking on egg shells.

What’s Keeping Digital Marketer’s Awake at Night?

At a recent Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) dinner, marketers from New York tapped into their collective brainpower to address the main issues that keep digital marketers awake at night, and how they could overcome those challenges.

Via different conversations, similar questions surfaced, namely:

• How do we prove what’s working and what’s not?
• How do we get better metrics to measure success?
• What’s the formula for success?
• How do we provide services matching the customer’s needs?
• Marketing opportunities have become so confusing with so many choices, vehicles, messaging, and technology. How can we simplify and still get great results?
• With all the hype on instant gratification for transactional marketing, how do we get the discussion back on branding?

From these questions, I see two main themes: 1) quantifiably measuring success, and 2) measuring the right type of success.

These two issues are at the heart of business success. Without being able to measure the right success, agencies and brands could go down a slippery slope that’s costly and time-consuming.

Simply speaking, transactional marketing equates to instant gratification on today’s balance sheet, and brand/relationship marketing is good for the long-term. Having a good balance of transactional and relationship marketing – with the appropriate metrics in place for each of these areas – will help advertisers bridge the gap between instant gratification and a deeply entrenched, long-term strategy.

What digital marketing challenges keep you up at night and, more importantly, what are you doing about them?

Be Relevant: Creating Deeper Engagement with Local Online Marketing

Join Neustar’s Vice-President of Enterprise Marketing, Sophie Shiatis, on Thursday, March 7th, for the webinar “Be Relevant: Creating Deeper Engagement with Local Online Marketing.”

Learn how new technologies enable marketers to target and engage audiences based on their location. Knowing a user’s location allows you, for example, to display relevant content to help spike conversions.

Join this insightful discussion and:

• Learn to engage buyers in more relevant ways
• Grasp the roles of local search, social media, mobile and more
• See why it’s critical to localize your website and target banner ads to boost sales

If you missed the webinar, but would like to see it, you can watch now to see the full webinar.

Mobile vs. Tethered Mobile

Mobile advertising is hot. But it’s also a crowded, confusing marketplace. Technology is advancing quickly, with the evolution of Real Time Bidding (RTB) reducing the barriers to entry and creating dozens of mobile ad networks and exchanges. To understand the landscape, it helps to know the difference between what is truly mobile versus devices “tethered” to WIFI connections.

Not all mobile impressions are the same. According to socialtimes.com, over 90% of all tablet usage is over a WIFI connection. While tablet computers—mostly iPads at this point—and smart phones are classified as mobile devices, the majority of usage is far from mobile. Reaching an iPad (or smart phone) user on an in-home WIFI network is different than reaching someone on a 3G mobile device as he or she happily wanders the streets of San Francisco.

Also, mobile advertising doesn’t enjoy the widespread use of cookies found in the world of display advertising. This makes behavioral targeting difficult, demographics almost impossible and geolocation an ever-present challenge. Many publishers try to enrich mobile impressions with user-registration data. It only affects a small percentage of impressions, however, and registration databases are notoriously inaccurate. Some mobile apps request the user to allows GPS tracking or exact Lat/Long (referred to as Location Based Services or LBS), but as Pew Research points out, only 4% of all mobile impressions are location-aware. Pinpointing a phone to an exact location enables some interesting marketing applications, but it doesn’t really help you understand the user.

This “blind spot” can be reduced with IP intelligence, that is, data which identifies the characteristics of the mobile user, including the “who” and “where.” IP intelligence allows marketers to target users on a 3G or 4G network—again, versus a tethered WIFI connection at a home, business, airport, you name it. As a bonus, IP geolocation supports user privacy, since personally identifiable information (PII) is not collected.

Neustar offers IP intelligence that helps you make the most of your mobile advertising opportunities. Besides enabling you to target ads by organization type, we offer the ability to identify devices accessing the Internet through a mobile gateway; in fact, you can often identify the geographic location of that impression to a region or metro area. You can also gain useful IP geolocation data when a device is tethered to WIFI. We clean our data both through automation and our “GeoGeeks,” a team of IP intelligence experts.

Mobile marketing is often times referred to as the “Wild West.” However, once gold was discovered, the West did not remain wild for long. Mobile advertising is exploding and Neustar is helping to apply IP intelligence in new and innovative ways. We’re pushing the ecosystem forward and making mobile marketing AND marketing to a mobile device effective and clear. Can you hear me now?

Localized Personalization: The Custom(er) Experience

Everyone wants to be understood. Buyers are no exception. So when marketers are able to say, “We understand” or “We can help,” they deliver to customers a more personal experience. One proven way to do this is to show an understanding of the buyer’s local area. It’s the ultimate in relevant.

Rev Up Results with Relevancy
Say, for example, a motorcycle manufacturer is seeing strong sales in a certain area. By grasping a few key data points—it’s spring and more people are riding even though the weather is iffy, or the area is renowned for its curvy mountain roads—the brand can get the right message to the right people in the right place at the right time. Suddenly, there are offers for accessories like rain gear or heated gloves, vests and seats. Next thing you know, incremental sales are starting to spike, thanks to localized offers wrapped in local messaging.

Now if you’re targeting a local area overseas, your website needs to display the right language and currency. Sounds obvious, but some companies forget to close this loop and end up paying the price.

Test. Refine. Repeat.
In the motorcycle example, marrying different types of internal and external data helped to shape messages and ultimately behavior. Even if all the data aren’t readily available, simple metrics such as sales by geographic area and seasonality can boost sales.

Of course, savvy marketers test a range of strategies and tactics. Which performed the best and fit their marketing vision? How did results vary based on specific messaging, creative and/or timing? Monitor and experiment to optimize your local efforts. Strive for continuous and incremental improvement. Set and forget is not an option.

The Bottom Line
Localization buys you:

• A relevant customer experience
• Stronger long-term relationships
• Another tool to build your brand
• An intelligent way to lift sales

And these are all things that you can take to the bank.

An Extraordinary Technique in Retail Advertising

Social, local and mobile are three remarkably disruptive technologies which, when unified, can revolutionize retail advertising. The integration of these tactics is increasingly (and fondly) referred to as “SoLoMo.” These previously independent channels have converged, bridging the retail and eTail worlds and providing unparalleled opportunities to target consumers.

Credit the adoption and penetration of smart phones, which is now right around 45% among the United States’ wireless subscriber base. Their enhanced capabilities have radically changed consumption behavior. They are quickly becoming the preferred device for searching the Web, interacting with social networks and connecting with local businesses. For any skeptics who feel that the smaller sized screens present a barrier, following are a few stats that warrant consideration:

• Mobile phones will overtake PCs as the most common Web access devices worldwide by 2013 [Gartner]
• 91% of Mobile internet access is to socialize (compared to 79% on desktop) [Microsoft]
• Facebook reported having over 425 million monthly active mobile users during December 2011, accounting for nearly half of its worldwide user base
• Mobile search volume is up 130% year-over-year [Google]
• Half of all local searches are performed on Mobile devices [Microsoft]

Other metrics are worth noting. In Q4 of 2011, mobile search advertising among retailers was up 269% year-over-year according to IgnitionOne, the highly reputable New York-based digital marketing firm. After all, some 90% of purchases are made within 20 miles of the home. Sixty-five percent of mobile users use their device to find a business before making an in-store purchase. And 52% of adult wireless subscribers use their phones in stores to help with purchasing decisions. In the social arena, 90% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know.

Savvy retailers recognize that when applied strategically, SoLoMo can transform traditional B2C relationships. This synergetic blend of marketing tools enables retailers to engage, connect and interact with consumers ubiquitously. By implementing mobile, they ensure that consumers can reach their business anytime, from any location. In leveraging social, they can nurture personal relationships and capitalize on the viral nature of this medium. And by targeting on a local level, they can guarantee higher ROI by captivating audiences (those closest to purchasing) with truly relevant offers.

The bottom line: the SoLoMo triple-play empowers retail advertisers to reach the right audience, at the right time, with more compelling messaging.

#ATSChat Recap: How Reaching your Digital Audience Has Changed

On December 6^th, we hosted our first Twitter Chat, #ATSChat. Thank you to everyone who participated by sharing their knowledge in display advertising.

As promised, below is  a transcript of the #ATSChat. The questions we asked were:

1. How was display advertising changed over the past 5 years?
2. How has the explosion of technology products and services made digital marketing easier, how has it become more difficult?
3. How can advertisers evaluate or ensure a greater return on investment for long-term brand building?
4. Has IP based display advertising made targeting and messaging for brands easier, if so, how?

#ATSChat Transcript.

Audience Targeting Solutions: How to Choose the Right Tool to Reach Your Digital Audience

Join the #ATSChat Twitter chat on Tuesday, December 6^th, at 12:00 p.m. PDT as digital marketers come together to discuss the importance of targeting display advertising for branding ROI. Its about who is visiting your website, from where.  This is your opportunity to join the discussion, ask questions, contribute to the conversation and find out more about how to find your audience and share the most relevant messaging with them.

WHAT: Neustar’s Quova is hosting the #ATSChat Twitter chat for digital marketers to share information, ask questions and discuss opportunities around audience targeting solutions.

WHEN: Tuesday, December 6^th, 12:00-12:30 p.m. PDT, engage in the chat using the #ATSChat hashtag.

WHERE: On Twitter, join the conversation by adding hashtag #ATSChat in your Twitter status updates; you can also follow in real time using http://search.twitter.com and entering #ATSChat in the search box.

WHO: The Quova audience targeting team (@Quova) will moderate the discussion. Anyone can participate via their Twitter handle. We want you to share your knowledge, ask questions and help drive the conversation!

The Why of Where: Reasons Why Online Marketers Should Use Geolocation in Their Campaigns

With all the challenges that marketers face today – texting and social media having a firm grasp on our distracted consumers – it’s important for us to utilize all the tools we have at our disposal. The main question constantly being asked is, “how can we keep consumers online to engage with our brands?” It is essential that brands serve up the most relevant and targeted ads possible for true engagement. There are many options available today but IP geolocation definitely stands out from the crowd as it provides pertinent information about a Web user without actually infringing upon any privacy concerns.

Serving Hyperlocal Content

Geolocation allows marketers to think locally and personalize content – advertisements, local news, or local search results – in a scaleable and measurable way. With all of the advertisements being targeted at Web users, it is difficult for brands to get their ads to stand out from others, especially when the ads are not relevant. Would a home owner living in Southern California really be interested in an advertisement for snowmobiles? Through geolocation, marketers can be ensured that the most tailored content is reaching the appropriate local market.

Preservation of Privacy

Through IP geolocation, brands will not only benefit from the localization of advertising, but will also keep consumers privacy safe. IP intelligence lets a site owner understand where site viewers come from, but not who specifically. With IP intelligence, no cookies are being dropped and no Personally Identifiable Information is being pulled – no Web tracking or Web history will be extracted. Marketers receive only the information they need to know, where that person is logging on from, that’s it.

Data Delivers

IP geolocation provides marketers with data to analyze the success of a local campaign to determine the MROI. For example, do you want to know if your latest advertising had an impact in New York, but not in California? This is the kind of intelligence needed for further planning of a similar campaign in the same or new demographic.

So, as you plan your next campaign, ensure that geolocation is a component to further your success.

By Steven Cook, former Samsung Electronics SVP, CMO, North America; former P&G and Coca-Cola global brand marketer, and CMO Council Advisory Board Member. www.FortuneCMO.co

From SEO to GEO: Why Marketers Need to Jump on the Geolocation Bandwagon

There has been so much buzz in the industry around location, with location-based apps, services and targeting coming to the forefront of the conversation. But why is it essential to have location integrated into a campaign? Location-based ads are imperative to a successful campaign as 80 percent of purchases are made within a 14-minute drive from a consumer’s home. Essentially, “where” is the most important signal on the Internet, after “search” that is.

During my 25+ years as a global brand marketer at P&G, Coca-Cola and as Samsung’s CMO N.A., I’ve witnessed marketing, advertising and consumer engagement approaches transform from ‘push’ to ‘pull’, especially in the past few years with rapidly changing digital tools and consumer empowerment. During the pre-digital years, I saw it all — local printed directories, zip code and segmented direct mail, billboards — any means possible to reach an exact demographic and target audience. The common thread within those offline strategies was location. While these engagement tools still have their purpose, the question today is how to reach your targeted audiences locally online where and when they want to be engaged, especially with rapidly growing mobile platforms, through sophisticated technologies available today. Another pain point is the need to measure results and increase MROI versus traditional targeting tools.

Currently, online advertising has no scalable way to reach consumers at the most granular level, beyond their location (state, city, zip code). As a result, poorly targeted online ads lead to lost revenue with lackluster conversion numbers. But, we are slowly getting one step closer to the conversion numbers of direct mail, billboards and TV ads through technologies like IP geolocation, a key ingredient in the location ecosystem.
The latest IP geolocation data can tell marketers if a user is logging on to the Internet from a home or a business and what type of business. Finally, B2C and B2B brand marketers are able to more effectively deliver display ads to the right people. This means that you can target students while they’re checking their e-mail on campus. Not interested in marketing on campus? How about insurance, banking, lodging, dining, government, recreation, advertising or telecommunication? Now you can reach these audiences from your keyboard.

Here are some benefits to localization:

• Increases customer engagement with more relevant messaging.
• Increases offline or online traffic, conversion and sales by automatically personalizing merchandise assortments by location.
• Powers local search and discovery via IP geolocation.
• Localizing content is the key theme that will resonate with retailers.
• Localizing product-related content (e.g. local imagery/video) and promotional content (e.g. personalized ads and offers) are a priority for businesses.

The ability to geotarget ads is undoubtedly a game-changer. IP targeting is a win-win for everybody: consumers see ads that are actually relevant to them — while maintaining privacy — and advertisers no longer have to guess who’s looking at their ads.

By Steven Cook, former Samsung Electronics SVP, CMO, North America; former P&G and Coca-Cola global brand marketer, and CMO Council Advisory Board Member

WHAT CAN LOCATION DO FOR RETAILERS? COME SEE US AT ETAIL BOSTON TO FIND OUT!

Throngs of advertising, marketing, and retail professionals are descending upon Boston for eTail East 2011, a conference dedicated to growing the ecommerce industry through networking and innovation.

But what does location have to do with eTail Boston? Well, members of the Quova team are attending the conference (Booth No. 58) to show ecommerce pros how adding geolocation to their websites can have a positive impact their bottom line.

For one, making websites location-aware will ensure that ad campaigns reach the right audience without violating digital privacy as no cookie is ever dropped and no personally identifiable information in extracted. Essentially, you can tell a lot about a potential shopper from their location. Discovering a web user’s location can help reduce attrition by allowing you to customize landing pages specifically based upon IP information, whether it’s the right language, displaying relevant currency and shipping information, or even saving retailers from the embarrassment of advertising flip flops to Alaskans.

Geolocation can also help retailers avoid the pitfalls of online credit card fraud. Forrester Research predicts that online retail sales will increase an average of 10 percent per year for the next five years to reach $278.9 billion by 2015. Geolocation can help Internet merchants spot red flags and prevent fraud losses by validating purchasing points, cards and cutting data breaches.

Sounds good, right? If you’re an online retailer gearing up for the busy holiday season or even looking for new marketing strategies, stop by the Quova booth to see a demonstration on how geolocation works and what it can do for your business.

Touch base with our sales team to learn more about how our data works in the real-world, after the show is over.

If you can’t make it to Boston from Aug. 8-10, follow us at @Quova to see our live tweets from the event.

To learn more about how adding Quova’s data to your site can support your marketing and advertising campaigns, check out our MarketingLand videos at http://www.quova.com/marketingland/.

WHAT’S HOT IN VEGAS BESIDES VEGAS?

FOWA kicks-off today…in Las Vegas. Yes, Vegas in June. So, it’s only natural if you are asking yourself why anyone in their right mind would want to go there apart from the sweet hotel deals at this time of year?

In one word? Applications. In two words? Quova and applications. We are happy to be meeting up with many of the people who are at the forefront of developing novel apps and who are at the epicenter of what is emerging.

What will we be talking about? In a nutshell: we’re constantly thinking about new ways to assist our developers in achieving their needs. That is why we recently introduced the ‘Featured Solutions Gallery’. These are modules that have been developed by integrating Quova’s IP based geolocation data within environments currently used by developers.

A little history, the first module was GeoPosty. A simple and elegant WordPress plug-in launched at the same time as our Portal at the end of 2010. And now we’ve added three more modules: SDL Tridion, Apache mod_rewrite and OpenX. Here’s a breakdown of our new featured solutions:

• SDL Tridion has fully integrated Quova’s IP address based geolocation and network data into their Ambient Data Framework (ADF) using our RESTful API. The combination of Quova and ADF creates data elements that can be used directly in a web app. You can actually see Quova data at work through the weather widget, which automatically converts into WOEID (Yahoo’s GeoPlanet) to be used into the weather RSS Feed.
• Apache mod_rewrite user requests can be redirected based on their location so companies can more effectively serve up localized content and implement rudimentary load balancing based on the origin of the request. Traffic can also be redirected this way by using integrated Apache mod_rewrite with Quova’s IP address data using the mod_quova extension module. Take a look at what’s been developed.
• OpenX has been extended to define limits for ad campaigns. This will improve revenue by geotargeting ads at a granular level based on the country, state and city of web visitors. In addition, marketers can further restrict placement of ads by applying confidence factors to optimize ad dollars. See how you can improve your ad revenue here.

These implementations showcase a broad range of capabilities from a weather widget to increasing ad revenue.

If you are at the Future of Web Apps show please stop by the Quova booth to share your idea with our staff. If you haven’t yet signed up for our free API, we can take care of that for you too. Even if you aren’t joining us in Las Vegas, visit www.quova.com/developer for all the details. Who knows, maybe the next Featured Solution could be your app!!

IP Apocalypse: Fact or Fiction?

Recently announcements about the last IPv4 block being assigned have created consumer concern that the Internet will “run out,” and those familiar with the technology calling this IPv4’s “funeral.” Fortunately for our web-centric society, the Information Superhighway is not about to dead-end. In fact, IP infrastructure is at a crossroads, but this does not by any means spell the end of the IP world, as we know it.

The current IP version 4 (IPv4) provides approximately 4 billion unique addresses, which service 99.7 percent of the Web. While there may be concern about the “end” of IPv4, these concerns are distinctly overblown. The IPv4 standard will continue to be viable for some time due to the fact that every device does not need one of these 4 billion IP address. Techniques such as NAT (Network Address Translation) currently extend address space by creating sub-networks that assign blocks of IP addresses to devices that need them.

At the most basic level, a home or office router allows a home or office to connect all its devices – PC’s, printers, wifi-enabled gadgets, maybe even a space-aged coffee maker – by sharing one IP address. So essentially, the current generation of home and corporate networking equipment will continue to support your PCs just fine. ISPs also play a role in maximizing the use of each address by assigning IP addresses dynamically to most home customers. Even with millions of devices accessing them, it is unlikely that all 4 billion addresses would be in use at the same time. In fact, allocation doesn’t equal use: it’s impossible to prove that we are actually using every allocated IP address.

However after years of talk, the industry is finally starting to plan more actively for IPv6. Many major content publishers like Facebook, Google, and Yahoo have launched domains for IPv6 native customers and on the ISP side Verizon Wireless now assigns an IPv6 address to every 4G wireless data customer. The industry is holding IPv6 day to bring attention to the growing IPv6 deployments.

IPv6 has actually been around for a while. The specification, RFC 1752, was written in 1995 — but hasn’t become relevant until recently. The main reason IPv6 is important now, is that we have used up the available IPv4 address space. And, Quova has been delivering IPv6 specific geolocation data to our customers for over 2 years. We are using our experience and resources to support our customers in a seamless transition from IPv4 only to dual mode IPv4/IPv6 world that we will increasingly face in the next several years. Though there is no authoritative answer as to when IPv4 addresses will run out, recent reports from the Regional Internet Registries said that only 8% of the IPv4 addresses are unallocated and the remaining addresses are expected to run out by 2012.

About World IPv6 Day

Facebook, Google and Yahoo, all websites with more than one billion combined visits each day, are joining the Internet Society and major content delivery networks such as Akamai and Limelight Networks, and Neustar, for the first global-scale trial of the new Internet Protocol, IPv6. On June 8, 2011, dubbed “World IPv6 Day,” participants will enable IPv6 on their main services for 24 hours.

The industry must act quickly to accelerate full IPv6 adoption or risk increased costs and limited functionality online for Internet users everywhere. These leading companies are coming together, including Neustar, to help motivate organizations across the industry including Internet service providers, hardware manufacturers, operating system vendors and other web companies, to prepare their services for the transition. We put together some answers to questions that we thought you might have.

Q1: What is “WorldIPv6Day”? When is it?
A1: As stated by the Internet Society, “on 8 June, 2011, Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, Akamai and Limelight Networks will be amongst some of the major organizations that will offer their content over IPv6 for a 24-hour “test flight”. The goal of the Test Flight Day is to motivate organizations across the industry – Internet service providers, hardware makers, operating system vendors and web companies – to prepare their services for IPv6 to ensure a successful transition as IPv4 addresses run out.”

Q2: What impact does Quova anticipate from that day?
A2: It will certainly bring more overall attention to IPv6. However, as stated above, June 8 is being driven by content providers, not ISPs. ISPs need to start provisioning IPv6 IP addresses before the market will really take off.

Q3: Does Quova provide IPv6 data today?
A3: Quova has a JumpStart program for customers that want to start integrating IP based location and network data into their IPv6 applications. The data set is currently in a limited set of fields for IPv6. The availability of other location and network intelligence will be dictated by demands and market adoption.

Q4: What delivery mechanism supports the IPv6 data?
A4: The IPv6 data is available as a data file or through GDS 6.2, using the Java API.

Q5: I am not currently running GDS6.2. Can I still enroll in the IPv6 Jumpstart program?
A5: Yes, you will need a separate instance of the GDS to run the IPv6 data.

Q6: How can I enroll for the IPv6 Jumpstart program?
A6: Please contact your Customer Success Manager or email support@quova.com.

Q7: What specific fields are currently available in the IPv6 data?
A7: The data is derived from registry records and includes:

• continent
• country, country_code
• region, state
• city, postal_code, phone_number_prefix, timezone, latitude, longitude
  dma,msa
• registering organization

Q8: How many entries does Quova have today?
A8: It varies by week but approximately 60,000 rows.

Q9: Can the Jumpstart version be used on our production systems?
A9: Yes, the Jumpstart version has gone through Quova’s full QA cycle. GDS customers are required to use a separate GDS instance. As a reminder, at this time, support for IPv6 is available on GDS 6.2 using the Java API.

Q10: When will Quova be releasing a generally available version of its IPv6 data?
A10: Quova plans to take feedback from our customers to develop a full set of offerings related to IPv6. A generally available version will be released when IPv6 is more widely deployed by ISPs around the world.

Q11: When will most people get access to IPv6?
A11: The rollout to residential consumers has not really happened yet. Comcast has begun trials and they plan to complete the transition by 2012 once they determine which of several approaches works for them. And, everyone with Verizon 4G wireless service gets a native IPv6 address. Some businesses have access to IPv6 but it is still unclear how many who have access are taking advantage of it. Only until recently, content available via IPv6 was lacking, but that is changing.

If you have any further questions or would like to enroll in our Jumpstart program, please contact support@quova.com.

Quova Announces New ‘User Type’ Data: Where Are Your Visitors Coming From?

Trying to reach a niche audience, target a campaign at college students, or serve up targeted ads on your blog? According to JiWire’s Mobile Audience Insights Report, in Q4 of 2010 57% of respondents were more likely to respond to an ad that was relevant to their location, up 10% from Q1. We’ve just made this one step easier with our new ‘User Type’ data. As the emphasis on location-based advertising grows, we’ve implemented granular data to help you target your Web visitors, down to determining if someone is coming from a home or business, and if so, what kind of business.

In a nutshell, ‘User Type’ data comprises up to four data fields that enable even more granularity in terms of knowing whether a user is logging on to the Internet from a Business connection or a Home connection. This is a significant step towards further characterizing the location of an Internet user. Knowing the place of connection provides actionable information that can be incorporated into your business decisions.

The possible applications for ‘User Type’ data span all prevalent uses of IP geolocation data, including content localization, target advertising, digital rights management, fraud prevention and traffic analysis.

Here’s how ‘User Type’ data could work. Ad networks could use the data to identify when a user is connecting via a hotel, and serve banners advertising discounts at a nearby restaurant. Or say a user attempts to complete a financial transaction with a merchant or bank that knows they normally connect from home. That will raise an alert when the connection is made from a public space like an Internet cafe or library.

Now for a deep dive on the four data fields that comprise the ‘User Type’ data:

• 1. Home: Indicates whether the connection is made from a residence.
• 2. Organization Type: Classification of the type of organization for the place of connection. This field provides heterogeneous categories that are useful for gaining more information about the user. Over 40 different categories for industries are provided, including Insurance, Banking, Lodging, Dining, Government, Education, Recreation, Advertising and Telecommunication, to name a handful. As well, services include Internet Service Providers, Financial Aggregator Services, Travel Services, Internet Hosting Services, and more.
• 3. ISIC code: The associated International Standard Industrial Classification code, Rev. 4 of the organization type.
• 4. NAICS code: The associated North American Industry Classification System code, v2007 of the organization type.

By adding ‘User Type’ data, we’re further characterizing the location of users, and making sure that your customers get a tailored experience not just based on where they are on a map, but whether they are at home, at rest, on the road or on the go.

KEEPING DEVELOPERS HAPPY FROM JSON TO HACKATHON

Change is good. And here at Quova, we’re excited to announce the enhancements to our developer portal that we’re sure will make developers happy and developing with the Quova API easier than ever.

• First, we’ve added a new Featured Solutions gallery. Wonder what other people are building with our API? Need inspiration for a project? In the Featured Solutions gallery, we showcase modules that are developed to integrate the Quova IP-based API with your environment. What’s more, developers who build a unique app with our API just might see it featured in our gallery.
• Got questions? Want to connect with the Quova developer community? In our Developer Forum, you can start a conversation with fellow developers, ask and answer questions, get tips on how to tweak your code for optimal performance and learn how to overcome glitches.
• And, in addition to XML format, we’re now providing optional JSON formatted responses. Our JSON solution is up and running and ready for you to access, just make sure you specify the response format in your request. For more information, stop by our REST API Guide.

For those of you in New York City, we’re going to be at the TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon this weekend. Stop by the Mashery booth on Pier 94 to find out more about using Quova’s API. Join the more than 500 developers for pizza, beer, coffee and lots of Red Bull as they hack the night away at this 24-hour event. Location is hot, so why not use our free developer API calls to make your creation location aware?

And, while we’re speaking of APIs, whether you’re attending Disrupt Hack Day or not, we’re still accepting submissions for our “Location Developer Challenge,” where judges will determine the winner–and award prizes–for the best location-enabled Web app that incorporates Quova’s API. Submit your application at http://www.quovadevchallenge.com by Wednesday, June 1, 2011.

New Study Reveals That Marketing is Still a Paper Chase

When it comes to IP intelligence, at Quova, we’ve got it nailed. When it comes to Marketing intelligence, we wanted to ‘check’ our thinking to make sure our assumptions were accurate.

A study we commissioned in April about the ways in which marketers are trying to engage consumers in their homes was quite revealing in terms of how important location is to most marketers, and taught us a few things as well.

What did we learn?

The good news we learned is that marketers love location. The bad news is they still love paper. The huge, forbidding bundle of paper delivered to your mailbox (that you ignored and probably never opened), is the preferred method companies use to reach customers at the local level, according to our research.

The survey helped us to get a sense of how marketers are adopting new technologies and tactics to reach target audiences where they live shows that fully 30% of the respondents, all of them marketing and advertising professionals, give local printed directories and direct mail the highest ranking among all the options presented. In case you’re wondering, billboards come in at 10%, fortunately far behind search-based advertising online or contextual social media, like Facebook.

Despite the myriad tools that marketers have at their disposal, there is a pretty entrenched mindset that still exists. It’s hard to reach people at their doorstep, and until now, direct mail was one of the only ways. This is wasteful and, expensive.

We learned that methodology among individual marketers still varies. Most of the survey respondents seemed to be familiar with newer strategies—not just social media but also local ‘flash’ sales through companies like Groupon and Living Social, and keywords used on search engines. Adoption of these channels has been slow due to lack of the ability to implement and measure. Only 5 percent of repsondents say local ‘flash’ sales are their most relied upon method, but nearly 9 percent say that geolocating across both standard and mobile channels is a top pick for marketing to new customers. This makes sense, because nearly 60 percent of the respondents also believe that marketing has become either somewhat or significantly more precise with the use of mobile technologies to reach consumers.

So why can’t marketers cross that digital divide?

The bottom line is that even in this increasingly digital economy, consumers spend up to 80% of their disposable income on businesses within 10 miles of their home. Every company needs to tap into that market. And, what the marketing industry clearly needs are initiatives powered by IP geolocation data that helps target digital campaigns down to a zip code, without being intrusive. That’s what will drive the message home, and reduce trash in the process.

*The online survey of 250 marketing and advertising professionals was commissioned by Quova and conducted by Market Tools in April 2011.

EU Online Gambling and IP Geolocation

By Steve Sawyer

Online gaming has been in the media again this week as three of the sector’s biggest operators have been indicted by the US government for failure to comply with laws prohibiting “the acceptance of any financial instrument in connection with unlawful Internet gambling”. Once again the industry is dragged into debate about whether or not poker is really gambling, and, on a wider note, about the opportunities to exploit online gaming sites for the purposes of money laundering and all the criminal activities behind it. But why do we not run up against these same issues in the UK or Europe where most countries operate well regulated online gaming industries, and what precautions do operators take in order to guard against the dangers?

Well of course I’ll come at this from an IP geolocation perspective as this is where our expertise lies, but IP geolocation can be effectively used as part of a range of complementary technologies that allow online gaming to flourish when carefully managed.

There are two key ways in which Quova customers such as Ladbrokes and King.com use our technology to help them operate online. Firstly as a means to cut down on fraud. Card Not Present (CNP) Fraud is well known in the industry and we’ve all heard the horror stories of someone checking their bank balance only to find that large quantities of hard earned cash have been flittered away in online stores. One step on from this is using stolen cards to launder money through online services such as gaming. This, in particular, is what alarms the US government as this laundered money is then often used for ill-gotten purposes.

Using IP geolocation however, operators can drastically cut down the risk of someone other than the cardholder using a specific card. How do they do it? As part of each monetary transaction, operators will (just as online stores do) create a risk score for a user. This score is made up of IP data fields such as: is the user logging in from the location they usually log in? Is it the same type of connection? Are they in the same country as the one their card is registered to? Based on this information, an overall score is built up and the operator then either allows the transaction, blocks the transaction or asks for more information to clarify the situation. This all happens in the blink of an eye but these commonly used procedures can not only reduce rates of CNP fraud, they have the extra effect of helping to stamp down on money laundering as well.

The second way IP geolocation helps is to ensure that operators adhere to international laws on compliance. For instance, European gaming operators must not allow those located in the US to access their services. By simply blocking all IP addresses from the US, the operators can quickly deal with this issue and sleep better at night knowing they are on the right side of the law. “But I’ll just use a proxy then” I hear you say! Yes you could, but users sat behind a proxy often (not always I know!) have something to hide and most operators approached by a user behind a proxy will also bar access to their service just to make sure.

Intelligent use of IP data can help all sort of online businesses to operate effectively and, if you’ll excuse the pun, I’d bet that many didn’t realise how easily it can be integrated.

QUOVA DEV CHALLENGE RAMPS UP WITH EXPERT TEAM OF JUDGES

We’re proud to announce a team of seasoned industry professionals that will be on the judges’ panel at our first “Location Developer Challenge.” And the judges are:

• Marshall Kirkpatrick, co-editor of ReadWriteWeb.com
• Ben Metcalfe, founder of Swordfish
• Nick Ducoff, Infochimps CEO
• Miten Sampat, Quova’s vice president of product strategy

These judges are slated with the task of weighing in on the best location-enabled Web app that incorporates Quova’s API. Developers must use Quova’s IP location data to create a Web application. All submissions are welcomed.

The developer with the coolest Quova-powered application will accompany the Quova team on a trip to Las Vegas, where they will demo their app at the Future of Web Apps Conference, June 27-29.

Two runners up will win free Quova IP geolocation services for the website or Web app of their choice.

Want in? Sign up for free access to the Quova API at http://developer.quova.com/ and submit your application at http://www.quovadevchallenge.com by Wednesday, June 1, 2011. The grand prize winner will be announced on June 17, 2011.

To stay posted on the “Location Developer Challenge,” visit our blog and follow us on Twitter @Quova.

We can’t wait to see what develops!

Hyperlocal is fastest growing segment of the advertising industry, Kelsey reports

By Mike Blacker

Recently, BIA/Kelsey released projections for online local advertising that is expected to reach $42.5 billion by 2015. This is a pretty impressive number and, no doubt, a head-turner across the industry. Local advertising represents one of the fastest growing segments in the online advertising industry with many companies emerging to tackle some of the challenging issues and, of course, chase a piece of the projected $42.5 billion pie.

Many companies over the years have attempted to tackle the online local marketplace. With such a fragmented market, getting enough scale in each individual market to support the business model was not easy. Even obvious players, like the various yellow page companies that have dominated the local scene for decades, have had a hard time making the transition to the digital world. Search (i.e. Google) has been an obvious channel for local businesses, but unless users search for specific terms like “Santa Barbara Pizza” or “Santa Monica Bike Shop” there is simply not enough scale to make an impact. In order for the local market to truly scale, the industry needs to focus on simplifying access for mom and pop businesses, innovating new technology to drive geographic accuracy and proving that online ads get people out of their seats and into stores to spend money.

One of the main issues in local online advertising is the lack of geographic accuracy at the neighborhood level. Online geolocation data providers offer accurate IP targeting to the city or DMA level, but few options exist online for local businesses to reach customers in their neighborhood. Without any kind of reliable zip code data in the online world, small neighborhood businesses are limited in their online options. A local bike shop or restaurant in Bellevue Washington may only have a customer radius of a few miles, so reaching users in the entire metropolitan Seattle area is not effective. Even a large box retailer like Target knows that 85% of their sales come from within a 14 minute drive time from their stores. With few online options available to reach customers in their community, local businesses have stuck with what they know best — local publications, word of mouth and the Yellow Pages.

Local publishers like City Search, Yelp and MetroMix provide excellent market level content and reviews for entire DMAs (Los Angeles, New York, Seattle), but lack scale or ability to target users in individual neighborhoods. The Patch hyperlocal news channel has launched in over 800 towns ranging from 15,000-100,000 people, but the validity of the model is still questionable considering the cost to produce and support highly localized content. Large publishers like MSN, Yahoo and Google all have impressive registration databases and offer some local solutions for advertisers, but traditionally marketers have questioned the validity of self-registration data when millions of users live in zip codes “12345” or “90210.” Social sites like Facebook and Craig’s List provide a great platform for local advertising, but both only provide a small portion of the overall pie. As more companies focus on the local online marketplace, better targeting, technology and access will emerge to support local business.

The sheer scale and fragmented nature of the local online marketplace have left many entrepreneurs to focus on social, search, behavioral targeting and other low hanging solutions to support the industry. Without the ability to geolocate users in a particular neighborhood, there has been little reason for businesses to focus on developing the support systems necessary for local businesses to build creative, and launch and manage campaigns. Local mom and pop businesses like restaurants, craftsmen, shops and services are not generally technically savvy and/or lack the funds to hire an agency to manage the process. Even large agencies struggle with the complexities of digital advertising.

It is difficult to quantify the total sum of local advertising, but many claim it is likely that more than half of all advertising is at the local level. With over 85% of all goods purchased within 10 miles of the home, it is easy to understand why there is an increasing interest among local business owners in the online marketplace. An average of 28% of a consumer’s time is spent online, so naturally local businesses would like their ads to follow.

One thing is clear from the Kelsey Group projection, local online advertising is a fast growing business with lots of opportunity for growth and innovation. The companies that can deliver more accurate targeting and campaign management solutions will certainly have an opportunity to take a large piece of the $42 billion pie.

F5 Friday: Hyperlocalize Applications for Everyone

True to their name, smartphones are intelligent devices. They allow you to make phone calls, access your bank account and check into the nearest bar within a matter of minutes. When it comes to geolocation, mobile phones are easier to geolocate than a desktop or laptop because of their built-in GPS capabilities, but this doesn’t mean the need for geolocated web applications is nonexistent.

While it is harder to provide hyperlocalized applications for desktop and even laptop users, those looking for the nearest coffee shop should be able to find it, no matter the device.
Hyperlocalized applications should be an opportunity for users, whether they are on a smartphone or a desktop. How is this possible? Solving this data discrepancy lies in the infrastructure, which involves the ability to perform this task and the capability of gathering location-based data from users’ IP addresses.

One solution that solves this is the dynamic partnership between Quova and F5. As Lori MacVittie, F5 product manager, recently wrote in a blog post, “The F5-Quova partnership provides for the availability of robust GeoLocation data that can be used in a variety of ways, not the least of which is to enable application developers access to data necessary to architect innovative, modern and highly integrated applications able to take into consideration the location of a consumer – whether they’re mobile or tethered to their desk.”

Developers can now use this data to build apps that respond to the user’s location, be it on a train, at the mall or on a desktop computer at home. The integration of these two components ultimately gives the user the opportunity to access tailored web browsing – wherever they go.
To read Lori’s full post, visit the F5 blog.

Hack For Japan Conference Announcement

We are reposting this information, so please spread the word! A great oppy to use data for good. In order to use the Quova location API, please go here to sign up to use it for free: http://developer.quova.com/

A number of tech companies are hosting a series of online events to develop services for victims of recent disasters in Japan.

Register for the event (in English) here: http://goo.gl/8Ohul

After the earthquake in eastern Japan, many applications have been created to collect information from businesses and individuals in order to assist with rescue and relief. Among these tools are Google’s Crisis Response page, sinsai.info, Yahoo! JAPAN’s disaster information page, etc.

Despite a large number of applications having been created, the applications are not very integrated with each other. There is an opportunity here for developers to collaborate better in their efforts in order to increase the effectiveness of the applications that are built in the near-term.

Many business and organizations already offer a variety of services that assist in developing applications that would be useful in a relief effort. This event is being held in order to remove some duplication of efforts, and increase efficiency of development among an international community of developers.

This is not merely a one day event, but instead a common starting point for a series of projects to help in the relief of Japan.

Because of the nature of the situation in northeast of Tokyo, it would be very difficult to host a physical meeting in or around Tokyo. Many companies have evacuated their employees to other cities, or are having employees work from home. Therefore, this event will have a small number of physical locations in other Japanese cities, while also containing a very large online component. If you are in Kyoto, Okayama, or Fukuoka, please see below for specific locations. If you are attending this event in an online capacity, a series of communication mechanisms have been setup, and are described below.

There are already services provided by companies to assist in the development of these tools. We are recommending using existing technology to launch and iterate quickly. These technologies include various APIs, hosting services, and web services. Examples platforms Android or iPhone, Windows or Mac clients. The easiest way to develop for all of these things is to develop a web application, however other options may need to be pursued for offline tools. Service technologies that everyone can use are provided by Google, Rakuten, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Twitter, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, OpenStreetmaps, Hatena Co., Evernote, etc. A list of available technologies is available on the Technologies page.

We are also encouraging developers to either consume existing data sets, or provide their own. It would be a great thing to have a large amount of public data, that developers could use and extend in different ways. Some current suggestions include PowerMeter readings, seismic sensor readings, radiation readings, internet latencies, road statuses, etc.

Welcome to Quova’s first “Location Developer Challenge”

Last year, we opened our API to the developer community allowing users to build location enabled applications for the web, desktop and mobile devices. With location-powered applications continuing to change the way marketers reach consumers in a dynamic online environment, we’re proud to announce our first “Location Developer Challenge.” The challenge? Build the coolest location enabled Web app or find novel ways to demonstrate visualization of the data that captures attention, engagement and clicks using Quova’s API.

We’re kicking off the Challenge at South By South West Interactive (SXSWi) this week in Austin, Texas and will wrap up in June by announcing the winner in fabulous Las Vegas at the Future of Web Apps Conference. But, there’s plenty of fun to be had between these infamous developer conferences.

To start, we’ll be giving away monthly spot bonus awards of $500 to lucky entrants starting in April. The winner of the Location Developer Challenge will join the Quova team, as our guest in Las Vegas, to demo their creation at the Future of Web Apps Conference. Two runners up will receive free Quova IP geolocation services for the website or Web app of their choice.

How to participate:

1. Sign up for free access to the Quova API at http://developer.quova.com/
2. Submit your application to the Location Developer Challenge at http://www.quovadevchallenge.com by Friday, April 15, 2011.
3. Stay tuned to your email and the Quova blog for monthly “spot bonus” winners to will be announced via email and on our blog.
4. Turn in your app by June 1, 2011.
5. Grand prize winner will be announced June 17, 2011.
6. Terms and conditions will be posted on the Developer Challenge website on March 14, 2011.
7. “Celebrity” judges to be announced – stay tuned!

Quova is a premier source for developers to access location data in its purest format. With this data, we are powering the apps and websites of tomorrow “know where.” Who will develop the hot web app for location? That’s what we’re challenging you to do with the Quova API. We look forward to your feedback along the way, so stay tuned on our blog and Twitter @Quova.

Attending SXSW Interactive? Stop by the Mashery Circus Mashimus Lounge

The popular tech, film and music festival, South By South West, is kicking off this week in Austin, Texas and Quova will be there to participate. This year, we’ll be joining Mashery in the Circus Mashimus Lounge for Web Application developers and designers to demo our API, and kick off an exciting new developer challenge.

In addition to the API demos and developer fun, there will be drinks and food for those needing a well deserved break from the crowds. The Circus Mashimus Lounge is conveniently located in Room 3 on the first floor of the Austin Convention Center. For more information on the events taking place in the Lounge and the companies participating, visit Mashery or follow the #circusmash hashtag on Twitter.

Follow us on Twitter to stay updated on our SXSWi interactive plans!

Quova Hosts Post Financial Times Digital Media Conference Mixer in London

Our EMEA team was picking up the cocktails on Thursday 3rd March after the dust had settled following the Financial Times’ annual Digital Media & Broadcasting conference at the Marriott Grosvenor Square London. A relaxed time was had by all at the informal get-together for analyst and media-types from the conference, at the Barley Mow pub in the heart of London’s Mayfair.

In addition to a handful of familiar faces including Quocirca’s Bob Tarzey and SC Magazine’s Paul Fisher, the team welcomed new friends from the worlds of gaming, media and business. Initial conversation inevitably centred on Culture Secretary, Jeremy Hunt MP, last minute decision to pull out of the conference, before Gareth, Walter, Steve and Miranda got sucked into some meaty geolocation chat with their media guests.

The FT’s flagship industry event was a roaring success once again, with decision-makers, strategists and visionaries from music, broadcasting, advertising, publishing, social media and gaming coming together to discuss where the growth lies in digital. Arguably the biggest news from the event has been the BBC’s decision to go international with its widely lauded iPlayer application, enabling residents outside the UK to have full access to features and archived programming for a very affordable subscription fee.

For a list of 2011 events we plan to attend/sponsor/speak at please go here: http://www.quova.com/media-center/events/

Please continue to follow events, news, and updates from the entire Quova team on Twitter, @Quova.

Wall Street Journal Quiz: Should gambling be legalized in the US? 82.4% of respondents said…yes!

We took the quiz. Guess what the majority of respondents to this WSJ online quiz, in response to recent news in the gaming space said?

Lawmakers in some states are pushing for bills that aim to steer around federal laws prohibiting Internet wagering. For instance, New Jersey lawmakers are expected to soon decide the fate of a bill that would let Atlantic City casino companies run gambling websites for state residents. Since gambling itself is not illegal, should the next step be to legalize gambling websites?

This is not surprising, considering the enormous upside, financially, to do so. And, if and when this change in the laws governing online gambling change, what are the U.S. based businesses and gambling outfitters going to need to do to stay compliant when we do eventually go this route? Put IP geolocation data to work to help them meet government requirements for regulating online gambling, state to state.

In her article entitled ‘States Make Play for Web Gambling’ WSJ writer Alexandra Berzon addresses the latest pros and pitfalls of these potential legislative changes. The article says “The first real test of the state efforts comes this week in New Jersey, where Gov. Chris Christie is expected to decide the fate of a bill that would let Atlantic City casino companies run gambling websites for state residents. “

The bill would make New Jersey the first state to sanction online gambling. The Republican governor, who has until Thursday to veto or sign the bill, hasn’t publicly stated his stance. And, once the first brick is laid, we expect there to be more to follow, stacking up right behind New Jersey, to collect much needed tax dollars to help subsidize the deficit that so many states face across the U.S.

We have been monitoring this industry for a long time in EMEA, and will continue to do so in the U.S as well. Please do not hesitate to contact us to have a conversation about what this could mean for your business, if you “play” in the gambling or gaming space. info@quova.com

Five Ways to Detect Fraud

As cited in our recent whitepaper published last month on Fraud, CyberSource Online Fraud Report highlights that out of 318 online sellers surveyed an average 1.4 % of their orders are lost to online fraud, often resulting from buyers who used credit card numbers later identified as stolen. For example, the report estimates that in 2007 $3.6 billion in online revenues were lost in this way.

Though geolocation is just one of the risk monitoring tools used (the average e-merchant online uses at least four tools), it provides an important line of defense. The foundation for geolocation is the Internet protocol (IP) address – a numeric string assigned to every device attached to the Internet. When individual surfs the Web, their computer sends out this IP address to every Web site visited. Geolocation can provide much more than a geographic location. Many providers supply up to 30 data fields including country, region, state, city, ZIP code and Time zone for each IP address that can help to further determine if users really are where they say they are.

Equipped with this information, e-merchants can use geolocation to flag suspect transactions and address them individually.

Five key Ways to Detect Fraud using Geolocation include:

1. Check for anonymous proxy servers and other location-masking systems
   While not all proxy servers are bad, the use of an anonymous proxy that hides or masks a unique IP address can be a fraud indicator. Lists of anonymous proxies that are abusing the system are provided by a select few geolocation vendors (including Quova) that notify the e-merchant when an order comes from one of the proxy servers.
2. Check the distance between actual and expected user locations
   It’s a general rule of thumb that shoppers will be logging on the Internet within close proximity to their billing or shipping addresses. Many Quova customers report that orders coming from 500 miles or more away from the expected location have a higher probability of being fraudulent. With geolocation, e-merchants can elect to decline, or flag for review, orders falling X miles or more away from the shipping or billing address.
3. Use domain information to assess risk
   With access to domain information gathered from the shopper’s ISP, it can be easier to determine whether an order should be declined, accepted or flagged. An e-merchant can track user sessions and know that the customer frequently connects from work and from home.
4. Build user profiles
   Once a profile is built, e-merchants can look for changes & differences between the observed behaviors they see online and what they have on file. Geolocation provides a simple way for merchants to expand their user profiles behind the scenes by assuming that most valid orders will follow the same pattern. If several different domain extensions or ISPs are used in one day, chance are those orders may be fraudulent.
5. Use time-zone information to track the transaction velocity
   If a user is connecting to a Web site in relatively short periods of time and the log-ins are more than 1,000 miles away from each other, this is a major red flag for an online merchant. For each shopper, e-merchants can use geolocation data to enable business rules that:
   • request the current local time at the shopper’s location;
   • alert them to potential ‘time-zone hopping’ within a short period of time, where the same account is accessed from multiple geographic locations; and
   • alert them to orders placed at times of the day that aren’t consistent with previous orders stored in the users profile.

It is not unusual for a Web site to keep track of user behavior, such as pages they have clicked on and the products they purchase. This is called behavioral targeting and due to the customer’s computer never being accessed, geolocation does not infringe on personal privacy. In a nutshell, geolocation is just one of many things you can check in the fraud cycle and protects both the consumer AND the merchant from criminal activity.

Web Advertisers: ‘Do Not Track’ Doesn’t Mean Do Not Target

By Marie Alexander

This week’s announcements by Google and Mozilla allowing Web users to opt out of tracking tools on individual websites has turned the Web advertisement eco-system up-side-down. With increasing pressure from law makers, the FTC’s recent call for a “do-not-track” system and the concern over Internet tracking of children’s websites, browser creators like Microsoft (they have also promised new opt-out tools in IE9), Firefox and Google are racing to give users the option of “opting out”of online tracking.

First, some clarity. Although Google’s “Keep My Opt-Outs” tool is available now for Chrome, it is similar to the functionality of tools such as Ghostery, a product from Evidon, who manages the aboutads.info database Google’s tool pulls from. Additionally, Google’s tool only allows consumers to stay “opt-ed out” of tracking by companies that comply with NAI self-regulatory framework, and users have to proactively deselect each company in question. Mozilla is attempting a much bigger task changing Firefox to place the user choice in the HTTP header that every site could read, with no action by the user required. This could give advertisers reason to pause.

While consumers, legislators and child privacy organizations see this week’s announcements as a win, online advertisers fear they are losing the ability to sell targeted ads the way they currently do; and fear a substantial revenue loss. However, cookies and tracking devices are not the only way to analyze a Web user’s characteristics. IP geolocation data can tell you the general location of a Web visitor using an IP address, meaning targeted information can be obtained about a visitor based on the general location of a computer they are using. This is all possible without installing cookies or tracking a person’s online behavior.

For example, major airlines can target visitors by their location. If you log-on to an airline site in San Francisco, the airline can choose to show you specials on flights to Los Angeles or San Diego, rather than showing you deals on flights from Chicago to Washington D.C. And guess what? It’s those impulse buys – the getaway to San Diego while booking the business trip to Boston – that our travel clients see as a big win, because their customers see it as a win. All of this is possible by simply using IP geolocation, no cookies or tracking needed.

As the privacy battles continue, advertisers and marketers are going to have to find innovative methods for targeting their marketing messages at the right consumer audience. Retailers that are personalizing ads by behavior can also personalize ads by zip code, or even by the weather. In an increasingly online world, everyone wants to the web to feel like home, but online privacy advocates, advertisers and retailers should know there is a safer, less invasive way to know Web visitors by knowing where they are.

Location in 2011: Does knowing ‘where’ help inform where you are going?

We think so. As 2011 gets off to a super-charged start, the Quova staff is reflecting on what is ahead.

We may not have a crystal ball, but we’re close. We see opportunities for people who discover the power of location, such as developers not just of apps, but of all Web technologies. In 2010, location came into its own, both empirically and applied to existing technologies. Quova added new customers including marketing agencies, consumer brands and social networks.

2010 was the year location took center stage. Even though WE have been up to our eyeballs in IP geolocation data for ten years, it seemed like the world woke up to the power of location, overnight. Through the advent of services like Foursquare and Facebook places, a user’s specific location is registered in real-time in the larger social graph. While that is a novel advancement, we see this as a significant sign that finally, people understand the importance of localizing content that is geared to a user’s experience on the web. (Which is where 98 percent of all Internet users conduct business, searches and make purchases – via a fixed IP address.) And despite the up-tick of check-in services over the past year, a Pew Study research report showed that only 4 percent of American’s actually “check-in.”
We’re helping to expand and personalize your web experience, but without giving away personally identifiable information. No caloric cookies, no annoying check-ins! For example, by enabling the community to build location into a website with our API, we have friends like Mobiah, who have given Web developers the ability to customize content such as coupons, ads or weather widgets, using the WordPress plug-in they call GeoPosty.

What else are we looking at? Gambling legislation in the U.S. We have accounts in this industry in EMEA, and it’s easy to see why. It’s a profitable industry that could bring major changes to tax laws in 2011. Why not help stimulate our economy? See this Wall Street Journal article to bring yourself up to speed on recent legislation. For further insight, Casino Enterprise Management outlines how geolocation can help iGaming companies with compliance and regulation.

As we jump into 2011, the team is excited about integrating with a larger family, the Neustar family. We joined their family in the fall and as the year kicks off are thrilled about the new partnerships and innovation being forged between the two companies. The combination of services that Quova and Neustar offer are cutting down barriers in communications; between barcodes, DNS and geolocation, the breadth and depth of our services has grown exponentially. The synergies between our companies allow Neustar to complete the “Network Puzzle” and bring a presence that is rooted in Virginia into the Silicon Valley. Keep an eye on our blog for exciting updates that will be coming this year.

And finally, developers looking to test the waters with geolocation, we welcome you to join Quova’s developer community at http://developer.quova.com/.Twitter users can follow our developer updates @QuovaDeveloper or @Quova.

Are Americans Taking a Holiday from Checking In?

Mobile location-based services have received a lot of buzz over the past few months and are being used in a variety of ways to attract consumers. Some of the most popular tactics being used are coupons/discount offers, specials for the users who check in most frequently and users who log the first check in and/or provide tips. However, despite the increasing popularity of smartphones and the millions of check-ins, a study from Pew Research recently found that only 4 percent of online adults use location-based services.

Other interesting findings from the study include:

• 7 percent of adults who go online with their mobile phone use a location-based service.
• 8 percent of online adults ages 18-29 use location-based services, significantly more than online adults in any other age group.
• On any given day, 1 percent of Internet users are using these services.
• Men are significantly more likely than women to use a location-based services (6 percent% of online men versus 3 percent of online women)

With the location wars heating up, the looming question is will these services be able to break past tech savvy users and into mainstream society?

It seems that “check-in fatigue” has already set in, as the relentless chore of updating one’s location becomes overwhelming. And, while many businesses are rushing to join the mobile craze, there is still a lack of repeated and ongoing participation from businesses that continue to limit the appeal to users.

Although mobile check-ins may be the fad of 2010, companies around the world taking advantage of IP geolocation are already doing what mobile check-in services are trying to convince consumers to do.

IP geolocation companies, like Quova, allow online businesses to instantly identify a visitor’s geographic location, so that they can then display relevant and unique content based on where in the world their users are. A user is presented with things like content in the appropriate language, targeted ads, local coupons and directions to stores in the area – and they don’t have to do anything but launch a browser.

So what’s in the cards for location services in 2011? We think, with the increasing use of IP geolocation, it will become natural for Internet users to expect targeted and relevant deals, without being required to take any action when they visit a Website. What are your thoughts on IP geolocation and location-based services as we move into 2011?

The Road to Oz is Paved with…Geolocation Data?

by Nate Grassman

That’s right munchkins, latitudes and longitudes for US cities have gone over the rainbow, and postal codes have come along for the ride! But Auntie Em, how can this be? As you already know, Quova is committed to delivering the world’s best geolocation data to our customers, and that includes our extensive database of worldwide locations (our Reference Data as we call it). So while we always seek to improve the geolocation assignments we make, we also take steps to improve the data that sits behind those assignments.

Quova unleashed its army of flying monkeys with the objective of refining the postal code and latitude and longitude coordinates returned for cities in the United States. The newly implemented process will now yield city postal code assignments that better align with our user’s expectations on a regular basis. The new assignment may be the center of the city or where the largest portion of the population resides. Thus our customers can rely on a consistent city, postal code, and latitude/longitude assignment that more accurately reflects where users are.

This is just one more example of how Quova continues to reinvent how geolocation is done. So when it comes time to choose a vendor for your geolocation needs, all you have to do is tap your heels together three times and say “There’s no place like Quova.” See you out on the yellow brick road!

Meet the People Behind Geolocation

Who are the individuals and companies that rely on this innovative technology for their business success? You can find out in the latest issue of The Why of Where. In this issue, we’re shining the spotlight on those who rely on Quova geolocation data to transform the way they conduct business online while protecting the privacy of customers.

First up is Irish broadcaster RTÉ. The Irish have a flair for telling stories and we’d like to share theirs with you. As you may know, the Irish love soccer. And it was the chance to stream Champions League soccer in 2006 that led RTÉ’s Marcus O’Doherty to Quova IP geolocation to meet contract compliance. From there, Marcus tells us, it was a steady build to new opportunities – the Olympics, World Cup Soccer and a new online service for popular broadcast programs. More viewers logged in, more advertisers soon followed and ROI grew.

And speaking of growing ROI – e-merchants can look forward to increasing theirs this holiday season, as analysts predict there’ll be more online shoppers this year than ever before. While good for retailers, it’s also prime time for criminals, and busy times like these require rigorous vigilance for leading payment service provider SafeCharge. Helping prevent online credit card fraud for its customers is what Tel Aviv-based SafeCharge does – and does very well. Using IP geolocation they track fraudsters to their source through country ID and routing path and then block their access to a site—all within the blink of an eye.

And what about us customers? Fraud is our problem too – and privacy concerns are a big issue for us in the virtual world. These days we even wonder if our favorite sites – especially the ones we know and love – learn more about us than we want them to when we click in. In this video interview, Perry Tancredi, Senior Product Manager at Quova, talks to Sarah Austin of POP 17 about privacy, popular sites and the type of site to avoid to keep your private data private.

So whether you’re watching, buying or just surfing online, there’s a good chance IP geolocation is behind the scenes adding convenience, safety and privacy to your experience. Click here for the full stories in our newsletter.

Developing with Quova

Over the past 11 years, we’ve developed a product to help businesses get the most out of geolocation data and watched as a decade of technology has changed the way businesses execute their strategies. In the era of rapid development and constantly evolving applications, we decided to open Quova to our community through the Quova Developer Portal.

The developer portal is making it easier to build your own Quova-powered applications for the web, desktop and mobile devices. Since the portal opened, it has attracted developers from around the world and we’re looking forward to partnering with developers on projects built with the Quova API, as we have most recently with Mobiah on the GeoPosty WordPress application.

We’re encouraging experienced and aspiring developers to register for a free account. Registered developers have the opportunity to use the Quova API free of charge. Highlights of the API include:

• Intuitive RESTful interface
• Structured or unstructured responses
• Always the most current data
• 24 x 7 uptime

As a developer, you can integrate the data from Quova into the web applications on your site to prevent fraud, comply with local regulations, target your marketing message and localize content. To help you get started, we’ve provided code samples for popular programming languages such as: PHP, Python, Java, Ruby, Perl and C#.

To our API users, we’re attending the Business of APIs conference today in San Francisco along with our friends at Mashery. If you’re in San Francisco, stop by to hear discussions about how to successfully launch an API, what developers are looking for in an API, listen to case study presentations and more. We’re also attending SF Beta in San Francisco on November 9; we hope to see you at one or both of these events!

We look forward to connecting with you at the API conference and developing with you in the upcoming
months.

Location, Crowd Sourcing, and Crisis Mapping

A Week in the Life of Quova

Did we see you at SES San Francisco last week? Or perhaps saw our announcements with Mobiah and Mashery? Each week seems to be filled with exciting news events, and new ways our data can be used and mashed up.

This week, you may have noticed that we’ve been doing some re-jiggering over here on our website.  It’s new and improved navigation should make it easier to find the information on all things IP intelligence. Let us know what you’d like to see more of  and please tell us what you think.  If you have questions, we can answer: info@quova.com.

We are pleased to report that on Wednesday August 25th two of our teammates presented at a Google TechTalk in Zurich – check it out on Slideshare here. Perry and Tobias presented some pretty interesting findings stemming from a neat visualization project Stamen Design undertook with us – read more about worldwide gambling behavior patterns reflected in our data on their blog. 

Meanwhile, stay tuned. We have new customers to talk about, we’ll be launching a new Quova Developer Portal and have a couple of product announcements up our sleeve.