It has been created a strong connection between data location and the user’s behaviour. The information about location can come from various sources like IP, GPS, WiFi signals, apps and beacon data. These data also come very in handy because the mobile phone in one of the most used devices and widely inserted in our daily activities.

The accuracy of the sources is very important for the interests and preferences that marketers try to envision about their audience. It’s quite a challenge for advertisers to operate with them especially when it comes to location and performing indicators. Here below we’ve listed some of these factors that highly influence the location accuracy:

1.    IP & WiFi

Probably the most important features of determining the accuracy of someone’s location. The IP address easily communicates the location of the individual from the devices that connects to the internet. The accuracy challenge is that IP often changes at a couple of days of months, so an audience filtering by location can be deceiving if a part of the public disappears with the IP change.

2.    GPS data

The geo-location feature also helps a lot when it comes to advertising. WiFi is usually used to send data about location through the mobile phone. But it’s not that easy, because the mobile devices need a clear satellite line of sight to send and receive the correct data. We all struggled with a bad Uber pin location pick-up just because a bad GPS. So the GPS cannot be solely used for clearly identifying the audience.

3. Apps

Many app nowadays use location services and still operate in the background. But the tracking services are not always open because new devices have the option to turn them off while using another app. So here’s another vulnerability for location accuracy.

What marketers should do about all these inaccuracies?

They should find a way to use as many features as they can and filter out the wrong data.  
There are some companies that use data volume from various research departments. Groups of users are reunited into an app or services, and marketers can reach some takeaways from their behaviors. Those devices large-scale disseminated can represent a valuable and accurate source. The diversified sources are another tool, with cross validation as a must. For example, in order to check the location, at least two sources can be interrogated at the same time. Elaborated filters allow marketers to have access to similar data sources but synthetize droves of information.