AdColony and Lifesight team up to boost location data offerings in APAC

Mobile ad platform AdColony is partnering with Singapore-based consumer intelligence firm Lifesight to try to get a leg-up on giving brand marketers what they want: the ability to target consumers with the right video ads based on the right time, place and context.

AdColony specialises in mobile video advertising and app development, with expertise in creative and behavioural targeting. Lifesight, meanwhile, provides location-based retail footfall data throughout Asia to profile consumers and better track sales attribution.

The partnership will not create a specific product but will give AdColony much more location data than they have access to on their platform previously, creating a location-informed APAC-wide mobile ad platform with physical world data at a scale to what currently is fairly standard in Europe and the US. 

Lifesight gets its mobile user data from apps that are given location-tracking permission by users, like navigational and weather-based apps. They’re able to tell, for instance, if users have visited a car dealership in the past month and then target them with automotive ads. This is not, however, about targeting users near showrooms based on their real-time location. Location is instead used as a proxy to segment and profile users.

User profiles built on location data. Source: Lifesight

More importantly though, the data is able to follow users who view the mobile ads back to the offline stores (or car dealerships in this example) to provide much more transparency around sales attribution for clients. This, says Tom Simpson, AdColony’s vice president of brand and exchange APAC, is key.

“What clients are increasingly asking for is more sophisticated approaches to data, getting more granular and targeted. This partnership enables us to bring that. It’s a massive step up,” Simpson tells Campaign.

For a young Asian-based firm like Lifesight, which works with agencies but has only been in the market for just over a year, a deal of this nature is also significant since it allows them to be a pure tech and data provider to ad platforms that brands are using directly, instead of a services company giving brands information through agencies.

“I think this will really bring a big impact to our business,” Lifesight chief product officer Rohit Maheswaran told Campaign. 

"With the growth of programmatic and video, technology platforms must work together to deliver what new age marketers demand,” said Tobin Thomas, co-founder, and CEO of Lifesight in a release. “One such demand is taking campaign success metrics beyond the click and getting more visibility on how it impacts physical store visits.”