NinthDecimal buys MoLOGIQ for tools, talent and massive device reach

NinthDecimal has acquired MoLOGIQ, a platform that uses physical location and other consumer data to identify and target audiences. In conjunction with the acquisition, NinthDecimal is launching NinthDecimal Labs to develop advanced solutions for customers.

NinthDecimal CEO Michael Fordyce told me on the phone that after being introduced to MoLOGIQ roughly six months ago, he saw the teams and their capabilities as highly complementary. NinthDecimal liked the self-serve, audience creation and visualization tools MoLOGIQ had developed.

Fordyce says that, following the acquisition, NinthDecimal’s audience reach will increase to approximately 230 million mobile devices and offer the largest audience reach in the segment. Another benefit of the deal, the majority of the company’s location data will no longer be from exchanges. It will come directly from SDKs (software development kits) and direct publisher integrations.

Why that matters is because location data sourced from the exchanges is often of dubious quality. Much of the location data being passed by the exchanges has been shown to be insufficiently precise for many use cases — i.e., audience segmentation and offline attribution.

Location data accuracy and quality are major topics of discussion among companies in the segment. However, insiders debate the quality of “first-party” vs. “third-party” data, with PlaceIQ’s Duncan McCall arguing that third-party data can often be analyzed and utilized more effectively than first-party data.

NinthDecimal is increasingly making its location data available without any corresponding media buy. GroundTruth (formerly xAd), PlaceIQ and others have also recently decoupled ad-buying from location data. Indeed, the uses of this data go well beyond media buying into things like benchmarking stores, site selection and so forth.

MoLOGIQ CTO Partha Roy Chowdhury will lead NinthDecimal Labs. The unit will have a staff of approximately 15 people. In addition to location and store visitation data, NinthDecimal Labs will integrate purchase data for attribution and targeting. Other companies, including Google, are also doing this with credit card data. Facebook offers a version of this capability today as well.

Location intelligence is one of the most important developments in digital marketing. And one of the most interesting things going on in location is the way in which mobile data is reinvigorating or adding new capabilities to traditional media such as out-of-home and TV. Location intelligence is now at the center of digital media efforts to better understand audience behavior holistically, as well as getting a more accurate sense of what’s actually working.