By Tian DuBelko
Snap, the parent company of Snapchat, has recently acquired Placed, a location tracking startup based in Seattle, for $200 million.
This is Snap’s biggest purchase to date. And the reason for Snap’s shelling out the big bucks is likely due to one reason: location. Operating out of Seattle, Placed has more than 100 employees that work to measure the offline influence of their mobile ads and gain customer insights into how customers behave in response to advertising.
Placed gathers consumer data through users that have opted in to share their locations. Then, all of that data is then calculated by Placed’s platform, which measures everything from how TV ads impact in-store traffic to how online retailers such as Amazon are affecting brick-and-mortar stores.
A potentially concerning factor of this acquisition is the issue of privacy. Snap will have access to many users’ shopping data. However, the company has said it would enforce data-sharing privacy and security measures to keep advertiser data and Snapchat data separate.
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In keeping trend with consumer analytics, Snap recently came out with Snap to Store. This tool allows advertisers to see how effective their Snapchat campaigns were in bringing customers to physical stores. Snap to Store allows advertisers to see how many users went to their brick-and-mortar store after seeing a sponsored geo-filtered ad.
With this acquisition, it’s evident that Snap is searching out ways to measure the impact of ads on Snapchat. Advertising on social media and on mobile devices have become increasingly important for companies trying to reach younger audiences. Certainly, it won’t be too surprising if other social media giants like Facebook and Twitter soon follow suit.
