August 4, 2011

According to Marie Alexander, CEO at geo-location services company Quova, women are more likely to raise concerns about why talks might be halting between staff or not opening up, while men are also more likely to respond to these questions. “If two men are sitting at a table, it’s likely that neither will even bring up such issues and those things affect the workplace more than people think,” she told Computing.co.uk.

August 2, 2011

The growth of location specific services, such as Quova and FourSquare, and the latter’s relationship with GroupOn, could lead to interesting developments. GroupOn’s offers can now be highly targeted as the user moves, using FourSquare’s location awareness.

August 1, 2011

Dawinderpal Sahota speaks to some of the industry’s leading women to find out the consequences of IT’s gender divide.

August 1, 2011

And in practical terms, the “feminine touch” is also important for improving communication in the workplace, according to Marie Alexander, managing director at geolocation services firm Quova.

July 18, 2011

Local agency Anatomy teamed up with SF’s Westernized Production to make these interestingly art directed videos for geo-location client Quova.

June 28, 2011

First up – I had a nice visit from Marie Alexander, President and CEO of Quova. Quova identifies
the location of someone coming to an internet site – for localised advertising and search, compliance issues – say where gambling is not allowed in some states in the US. We talked about the comfort zones for geolocation and what is like to live and work in the Valley.

June 22, 2011

IP GEOLOCATION OUTFIT Quova has said that tracking individuals on the internet “does not provide a good return”. Marie Alexander, president and CEO of Quova, a firm that supplies internet protocol (IP) address geolocation data to firms such as the BBC, Facebook, Ladbrokes, Major League Baseball, Symantec and Sega said that IP geolocation is far less intrusive than other means of tracking user location and behaviour such as cookies. Even as one of the largest firms in the IP geolocation market, Quova still says that narrowing a user’s location down to a postal or zip code is unreliable.

June 15, 2011

Quova’s is a geolocation service, went free last November. The company has revamped its developer portal and added a few awesome new features to the Quova API. The company also added JSON as a response format, as so many other APIs have lately. Unlike the APIs ditching XML, Quova is keeping the XML format and expanding developer options. Also, the company added a developer forum and app gallery to its portal, to encourage community around its API.

June 15, 2011

First launched in November 2010, Geolocation data pioneer Quova has this week ramped up its developer portal with a new set of ‘guidance features’ for developers seeking additional help.
The Quova Developer Portal is described as a location for developers to gain free access to the Quova API to build their own geolocation-powered applications to the Web, desktop, and mobile devices.

June 3, 2011

Today Quova, which specializes in IP geolocation, announced a feature called “user type,” which allows users its clients to know whether users are logging in from a home or office address. Knowing general user behavior, such as if one most often logs in from home, will help the company predict if something is off, and better pinpoint fraud.

June 3, 2011

Quova’s location awareness APIs now provide results in JSON as well as XML.

June 3, 2011

Quova, a Neustar service supporting geolocation targeting, released a data module Friday dubbed User Type. It lets marketers identify whether a consumer logs on to the Internet from a business or home connection. The technology aims to help further characterize the location of an Internet user, such as did the person log on through a connection in a hotel, a university or through public Wi-Fi in a Starbucks.

June 1, 2011

While IPv4 only provides location data to target ads based on approximate locations such as cities of “postal ZIP codes + four,” Quova executive Evelyn Dixon said IPv6 will give marketers and advertisers more precise targeting by connecting each device to its own IP address.

May 30, 2011

We recently worked with Quova, a company specializing in IP to location data and services. They commissioned us to develop a custom OpenX plugin that enables OpenX users to make use of the Quova Geo IP API.

May 25, 2011

The idea is to use Quova IP location data services to serve geotargeted ads, coupons or other content to users of your Web app or website. Essentially, just build the coolest location enabled Web app or website that captures users’ attention, engagement and clicks using Quova’s API.

May 8, 2011

Quova surveyed 250 marketing professionals and found that 37% of them still rely on old school, offline methods like direct mail and the yellow pages. By contrast, only 5% utilize group buying sites like Groupon and LivingSocial and 4% take advantage of mobile geolocation.

May 6, 2011

Quova just released results of a survey conducted among US 255 marketing professionals. What might be surprising to some is the degree to which marketers/advertisers still rely on print yellow pages and direct mail to reach consumers in local markets — as well as how effective

May 1, 2011

Is it my data in the first place, someone asked? How do I get my cut? That’s hard, said Miten Sampat of Quova, and besides you’re already getting rewarded. “The answer is yes, it would be nice if there was a way for consumers to be compensated for opting in giving data to the ecosystem, it’s just a hard problem to solve right now. There’s so much confusion about what opting out is. This vision will come from somebody who creates a plugin that fits in a browser that understands all the data I’m sharing. But what you’re getting already is free content – that really is what you’re getting in exchange.”

April 15, 2011

Contests continue to be a great way for API providers to encourage use of their platforms. These contests also quickly increase the number of apps built on a platform, which makes a difference when developers are later assessing potential APIs with which to integrate.

April 14, 2011

While much of the buzz around geolocation centers around mobile apps, Quova’s business focuses on fraud detection and geographically targeted ads for website visitors from desktop and laptop browsers. “We’re not a mobile play,” said company spokeswoman LaurieAnne Lassek in a phone interview, “but the web is not going away.”

April 8, 2011

They were founded in 2000 and they geolocate users through IP address location data as well as tracing network gateways and router locations. They also likely traceroute users coming through proxies to better determine location to some degree, and they analyze request latency of users passing through proxies to help determine physical distance from the proxy servers’ physical locations.

February 4, 2011

Many online gaming companies and payment processors, especially in the U.K., have been early adopters of Quova’s IP Intelligence technology. We began working on this issue in 2001, providing IP geolocation services to the early online casino ventures of MGM Resorts International and Hard Rock, among others who chose an IP geolocation solution to protect against regulatory violations that could have undermined the integrity of their entire operations.

January 5, 2011

In the U.S. online gaming world of the future, knowing where your customer is located will be a matter of significant importance. Accepting a single wager or payment from a state or tribal entity that has laws restricting either all or specific types of online gambling can bring stiff legal consequences, including asset freezes, loss of business license, monetary fines and even imprisonment.

December 2, 2010

If you’re an online retailer, keeping shoppers engaged when they visit your site will be essential to make sure they spend their holiday dollars with you. With this challenge in mind, Quova has a few tips to share on how IP geolocation data can help you effectively target your visitors and increase your sales conversion this holiday season.

November 5, 2010

Using the Developer Portal, users can pull geographic location and network data for any Internet Protocol (IP) address in the public address space. Quova’s REST API provides a RESTful (REST) interface that returns data over HTTP including area code and time zone, longitude and latitude, and MSA (Metropolitan Statistical Area), network information, and the postal code, city, state and region of any Internet Protocol (IP) address in the public domain.

November 5, 2010

Mapping fixed IP addresses to locations can let Web sites offer different ads and promotions to people in different metropolitan service areas, says Marie Alexander, CEO of Quova, a fixed IP service provider that counts Continental Airlines among its customers.

November 5, 2010

Quova, a company that claims to power 95 percent of location searches on the Web, has been acquired by Neustar. Founded in 1999, Quova helps online retailers, government agencies, and other organizations determine where their website visitors are located. That allows them to improve search results, fight online fraud, regulate digital content, and deliver geographically targeted advertising.

November 4, 2010

We’ve previously covered 3 free to geolocate any user. Today there’s another option, with Quova offering its service for free for the first time. The simple API provides extensive geographic information with only a user’s IP address (like 208.75.242.38) as input.

October 4, 2010

Steve Sawyer, VP business development EMEA at Quova, said that each state or country is setting its own taxation limit on providers and this led to a need to be able to ‘ringfence’ websites to ensure that only a certain audience can access it.

August 19, 2010

“It is, indeed, a pretty amazing set of features. Putting some thought into how you can use GeoPosty might just drive you to marketing your site in ways that you had never before thought possible.”

August 19, 2010

“Full told, Mashery has more than 50,000 developers using its API management services. Quova used Mashery to create its own developer portal so that third-party developers could take Quova’s platform and create mash-up location apps with it, said Marie Alexander, chief executive of Quova.”

July 21, 2010

“Geo-location services and a few other related tools can give most marketers the tools they need to be effective without compromising the identity of customers. According to Quova CEO Marie Alexander, rising concerns over PII have more companies than ever rethinking their approach to marketing for fear of running afoul of fines and other penalties.”

June 13, 2010

Direct Newsline: For direct marketers, what is the value of being able to capture IP address, when so much of what they do is based off personally identifiable information?

Marie Alexander (CEO, Quova): Marketers were given access to billions of customers on the Internet, but were told they should go after them one at a time. But when you look at what retailers and businesses have done for decades, they have marketed to geographic areas, and done so quite successfully. We are trying to mirror what they have done in the physical world back into the Internet.

Online, the value of looking at an anonymous IP address is that it’s not necessary that marketers know who browsers are in order to put information and content and products in front of them that make it a better experience for them, and to get them the things they are looking for.

March 31, 2010

“After discovering Quova’s offerings, it became obvious that we needed to include their IP Geolocation data in our ready-to-use location infrastructure,” said Matt Galligan, cofounder and CEO of SimpleGeo. “Quova’s data will enable developers using SimpleGeo to locate their users easily, regardless of access to GPS or WiFi data. The partnership just made sense.”

February 18, 2010

“The addition of Quova Wi-Fi geolocation technology in our solution has immediately increased the value of our products and services, and it was easy to integrate into our systems, ” said Bill Gordon, Director of Wireless Product Development at Absolute. “Providing the best solution for our users means our customers can be confident that their laptops and mobile computers are best protected.”

January 20, 2010

Geolocation databases can be purchased and installed on a given web server but this is old hat. Real time lookup, delivered as an on-demand service makes more sense – send an IP address and receive a co-ordinate. This is the way leading vendors in this area such as Quova, IP2 Location and MaxMind have moved.

While consumers continue to enjoy the benefits of buying online, there is increasing effort to link them seamlessly with the real world behind the scenes. Being online may sometimes feel like a virtual experience but the solid Earth and the real kilometres that separate us all remain a reality.

Read Quocirca’s full report here.

December 1, 2009

When it comes to the European market, how important is it to be local? Chole Rigby assesses how and why retailers can and should be considering the local angle, and takes an in-depth look at one pioneering project to improve the European in-store experience.

November 10, 2009

“We are trying to open things up and to make it really easy for online businesses of all sizes to get set up with geolocation,” said Quova vice president of business development Steve Sawyer.

“Depending on how you use geolocation, it could be as simple as writing a few business rules.”

November 10, 2009

Your mobile phone and PC can reveal your exact location to all manner of firms and organizations. Stewart Mitchell looks at the benefits and the threats of Geolocation.

July 28, 2009

I previously have written about Quova in my extensive article, “Geolocation: Core To The Local Space & Key to Click-Fraud Detection“. My earlier description of them reads practically as an endorsement – something I very rarely do at all. But, I think what I wrote is pretty accurate, overall. Quova is considered pretty much best-in-class of the companies providing geolocation data mapping, because of their greater variety of geo data sources, their more sophisticated mapping methods, and because they actually submit to a third-party audit for data accuracy.

July 6, 2009

“We selected Quova due to its strong track record within the fraud prevention market. We were also impressed by its level of accuracy in detecting an IP address right down to city level for a variety of online payment methods,” said Robert Kuzelj, CEO of PAY.ON. “We are in the process of a strong global expansion and we believe that by using Quova’s data we can further strengthen our fraud screening process, in addition to reinforcing our position as a leading global player within the payment market.”

June 23, 2009

Kerry Langstaff, Quova’s vice president of marketing, sees the company’s technology as a way to jumpstart local news: “The success of community-centric blogs and websites shows that consumers still value local news. By providing hyperlocal, community-centric content online, publications can not only re-attract local readers, but also advertisers interested in reaching a niche geographic audience. With revenue opportunities shrinking for media publications, a hyperlocal model can be used to create a new channel of advertising revenue within an existing infrastructure.”

June 9, 2009

One of Spain’s top five financial services firms, Bankinter, is installing Quova’s geolocation data systems to fight fraud in its online operation.

The Quova software can authenticate eBankinter customers by analysing and comparing current login behaviour in real-time versus usual login patterns. The geolocation programme can also check the IP address of where someone is logging in from and ensure this conforms with the usual accepted pattern. If an anomaly is spotted, for example if the customer logs in from a location or time zone that’s very different than normal, a block can be enacted or follow-up questions demanded.

Bankinter’s e-banking operation is confident that the installation of the new system will help it to fight off rising cases of attempted fraud, which are rising across the financial services industry in the wake of the recession, a typical pattern of behaviour spotted during all recent downturns.

April 16, 2009

“Given that LOUISE is an industry leader in content management, repurposing and distribution for broadcasters, the Quova IP geographic authentication technology provides a perfect complement to the enterprise LOUISE workflow,” said Hervé Obed, founder, ProConsultant Informatique S.A. “Content providers spend a tremendous amount of resources and money developing programs for specific markets and they apply stringent geographical and rights requirements on broadcasters. As TV stations extend their reach with new delivery platforms, such as live VOD and the Internet, they must ensure that the distribution rights are protected. By integrating the Quova’s unique IP geolocation expertise with the strong metadata management in LOUISE, broadcasters can be confident their content reaches users in authorised regions only. ProConsultant Informatique is dedicated to enhancing the media distribution and viewing experience with forward-thinking technology and partnerships such as the one we are entering into with Quova.”

April 9, 2009

Have you ever been routed to the wrong version of a website – or denied access altogether – because the site thought you were in some other country, because that’s where your ISP is headquartered. If so, then you were a subject – a victim, some might say – of geolocation techniques. The upside is they’re getting more accurate, according to Marie Alexander, CEO of Quova, which is one of the leaders in this area. She says that, as more and more websites use geolocation, pressure from end-users has pushed formerly sniffy carriers and network operators to open up to companies such as hers.  What they’re revealing is the internal network mapping that geolocation needs in order to provide the best possible fix. That in turn enables websites to provide localised content – yes, including local adverts – while ensuring that the carriers’ customers aren’t wrongly locked out.

April 5, 2009

Since deployment, Bankinter’s security department has been able to significantly decrease the amount of online fraud and identify theft, detecting potentially suspicious user behaviour. Quova provides Bankinter with geolocation data about those customers with no impact to their online experience. The data works with all browsers and requires no plug-ins or stored cookies and does not invade an Internet user’s privacy.

April 1, 2009

Continental Airlines is using Quova’s IP geolocation data to localise web content and promotions and streamline its online sales process… Prior to working with Quova, every visitor to the site, regardless of physical location, landed on the homepage. This forced many customers to self-identify their country and language, which slowed down the buying process and added steps to the sales cycle. Geolocation streamlined this process. In addition, Continental is localising the marketing banners and placements on its website based on country-level geolocation, and in the near future will begin to target its marketing placements at the metro level.

March 26, 2009

“Continental is a great example of the immediate and long-term impact that our geolocation data can have,” said Marie Alexander, CEO of Quova. “In just a few short months, and with very little overhead, Continental was able to improve the customer experience – increasing homepage banner click-through rates by 200% is a massive achievement and we’re proud of the role we played in that accomplishment.”

March 25, 2009

In the six months that Continental has been working with Quova, it has reportedly improved click-through rates of homepage banners by as much as 200%.

Prior to selecting Quova, Continental tested data from several geolocation providers and based their selection on four criterions: granularity, accuracy, frequency of updates and ease of integration. Quova data reportedly scored the highest on all accounts.

March 5, 2009

IP geolocation data provider will provide its services for Realmedia Latin America. The partnership extends the reach of Realmedia Latin America’s Open AdStream, an ad serving technology comprised of network and site-specific advertising.

March 4, 2009

Knowing your enemy is the start to fighting any battle. Online, the merchant’s enemy is anyone who fraudulently orders goods or services either with stolen credit card numbers or by hacking into a customer’s account.

Internet Protocol (IP) geolocation is just one of the risk monitoring tools used by merchants, but can provide an important line of defense. IP geolocation is a Web technology that can accurately identify the real-world geographic location of an Internetconnected device – the moment the user clicks into a Web site. Using only the IP address
assigned to their computer, the country, state or even city can be identified reliably. IP geolocation is usually implemented as part of a back-end fraud or authentication system where merchants use the data to build business rules into their Web application which can flag suspect transactions and address them individually.

February 18, 2009

The Quova Wi-Fi geolocation tracking technology included in certain Computrace products allows Absolute’s enterprise customers to view the location and location history of IT assets via Absolute’s secure customer portal. This portal enables Absolute’s customers to find lost assets and helps them discover thefts earlier. And, in the case of theft, Quova Wi-Fi geolocation tracking technology can help the Absolute Theft Recovery Team locate and recover Computrace and LoJack for Laptops-protected computers.

“The addition of Quova’s Wi-Fi geolocation technology in our solution has immediately increased the value of our products and services, and it was easy to integrate into our systems, ” said Bill Gordon, Director of Wireless Product Development at Absolute. “Providing the best solution for our users means our customers can be confident that their laptops and mobile computers are best protected.”

February 11, 2009

Quova’s newly added patent describes a method for determining the geographic location of an Internet user based upon combining trace routes, user registration information, host names with textual patterns that reveal geolocation information and Internet Service Provider (ISP) service area information. These trace routes describe the pathways by which data moves through the Internet. Each node or “hop” in the trace route is identified by an IP address. These interconnected nodes can be used to recreate the topology of the Internet. Each geolocation can then be assigned to these IP addresses in order to determine the location of each node, up to and including the end user’s IP address and the geolocation of that end user.

February 4, 2009

Quova has announced that the United States Patent and Trademark Office has granted the company a patent on a new method and system for identifying the geographical locations of Internet users. This technology is part of the industry-leading IP geolocation data and services that Quova provides to customers in a variety of industries for fraud, compliance, regulatory and marketing purposes.

February 3, 2009

“Quova is committed to advancing the best practices in IP geolocation data and services,” said Marie Alexander, President and CEO of Quova. “With this patent, Quova is again pushing the industry forward in how data is analysed, verified and shared with customers. We understand the business decisions that our customers make based on the data we provide, and we continually strive to work with them to improve processes and better understand their results.”

January 30, 2009

iLoaded uses geo-blocking software from Quova, which allows it to block specific media assets from being downloaded in selected regions, rather than simply blocking access to any video on the site. It’s a more fine-tuned approach and at least allows non-Hollywood content (which isn’t tied up in complicated licensing deals) to gain an international audience.

January 20, 2009

Now more than ever, you cannot afford to lose money to online fraudsters who purchase goods using stolen credit cards. Geolocation monitoring can help you detect fraudulent orders before you fall prey.  As Quova explains it, the foundation for geolocation is the internet protocol (IP) address, a numeric string assigned to every device attached to the web. When someone surfs the web, his computer sends out this IP address to every website he visits. An IP address can provide information regarding the user’s country, region, city, postcode, and time zone, which can help you determine if the visitor to your site really is where he says he is. Equipped with this information, you can use geolocation to flag and address suspicious transactions.

Quova offers five ways to use geolocation to help you detect fraud:

1. Check for anonymous proxy servers and other location-masking systems.
2. Check the distance between actual and expected user locations.
3. Use domain information to assess risk.
4. Build user profiles.
5. Use time-zone information to track the transaction “velocity.”

December 18, 2008

What refinements and new iterations are you looking at for geo-locational applications going forward?
Looking forward, another important area of application will be mapping Wi-Fi IP location by routing Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers to triangulate precise location. This type of marketing would of course be permission-based. But as you can imagine, the potentials for customizing content based on the Starbucks location someone is connecting from can be enormously valuable not only to marketers but to consumers who get truly relevant information.

December 1, 2008

Research shows that when a customer provides a registration address in one state but places the order from another, it often indicates fraud. Transactions across national borders raise the red flag even higher. International transactions represent nearly half of all credit-card chargebacks, and a short list of nations (Ghana, Vietnam and Lebanon among them) produces the most fraudulent transactions. IP geolocation can automatically decline or flag suspect transactions. Where the risk from a particular location is extreme, that location can be blocked. Sophisticated e-retailers look for specific IP address fraud indicators, such as checking the distance between the actual and expected user location, and have rules in their web applications to automatically decline, or flag for review, orders falling X miles or more away from the shipping or billing address… While not all proxy servers are bad, the use of an anonymous proxy that masks the IP address can be a fraud indicator. In the end, geolocation is just one of many things an e-merchant can check in the fraud cycle. Knowing your enemy is the start to fighting any battle, and online, the e-merchant’s enemy is anyone out to order goods or services with stolen credit card numbers or to hack into a customer’s account.