Inaccurate and fraudulent data is a significant issue across the advertising industry. Inaccurate or fraudulent data causes wasted spending that impact the accuracy and effectiveness of both ad inventory and audience targeting in advertising campaigns. In fact, poor data quality is now one of the greatest causes of waste in advertising – more than brand safety and viewability issues combined.

Emodo is on a mission to address that issue.

As we focus on addressing data quality across the ad ecosystem, we also recognize that transparency is essential. So, here’s a little overview on how we use, and do not use, data.

So what’s under the hood?

Emodo delivers media and audience solutions to advertisers and powerful insights to business leaders. At the core of Emodo is our Carrier Intelligence technology, a proprietary deep machine learning platform that utilizes aggregated and anonymized mobile operator data to validate other data in the ad ecosystem. Carrier verification ensures that data coming through the ad ecosystem is actually human-directed and improves the quality of ad inventory, audiences and insights we provide.

How and why does Emodo use mobile carrier data?

According to Forrester, 21 cents of every media dollar spent by marketers in the last year was wasted due to poor data quality. Another study found that consumer brands waste nearly $52 billion each year due to campaign inefficiencies, poor targeting, and fraud. Data inaccuracy is a costly issue that results in ineffective campaigns that impact both brand image and return on investment.

The data from mobile carriers is the most accurate mobile data available. Emodo applies aggregated privacy-compliant, anonymized carrier data as a truth set to train machine learning models. The training happens inside the operator’s environment using only consented data. The output is a really accurate predictive model which can then be applied to things like a bid request. Once the model is built, it does not require any user data to deliver a score and can be applied in a myriad of ways. For example, by using historical location data that contains no identifiers, we can verify the location accuracy of audiences and geo-targeted campaigns. We also apply models to detect mobile ad fraud and predict the highest performing ad inventory, pre-bid.

What data does Emodo collect?

Emodo uses data that has been consented by data subjects and users from sources that are common in ad ecosystem, like both generalized and precise location data, and advertising identifiers. Emodo also sources other data that are not personal data from geographic Points of Interest such as a railway station, museums, or other urban hubs.

More specifically, we process many types of data to deliver targeted advertising solutions, including demographic data (pseudonymized by Advertising ID), CRM data (such as attributes that the data subject has given consent) and location data (GPS signal enabled by Apps, Wi-Fi networks and Cellular networks). Location data typically includes attributes such as latitude, longitude, horizontal accuracy and timestamp. For any of the Personal Data in those categories, especially Location data, Emodo ensures subject’s consent is disclosed and obtained, not only in the collection of the data, but throughout all of our data purposes and uses.

Outside of advertising, Emodo also provides Insights services that illustrate overall mobility trends. These solutions utilize data in large groupings. The data is anonymized (nonreversible elimination of any identification) and aggregated making individual identification of devices or persons impossible.

What does Emodo not do?

There are often questions and misconceptions about the compliance of data privacy standards and regulation and the workings of digital advertising. So, sometimes it’s more clarifying to point out what we don’t do.

Emodo doesn’t “track” any devices nor collect any location data in real time.

When we shape our audiences and present clients with Insights about location visits, we use only aggregate counts of the presence of devices within key points of interest for our analysis. This analysis never tracks individual devices and determines groupings of devices within a more generalized area. We analyze the number of devices seen in a generalized location over a period of time and the average dwell time in that location. We then use statistical models to estimate from there.

For Insights, Emodo provides analyses of trends based on the presence of multiple devices in a given coarse location at a given time, without the ability to identify devices nor people individually. Our models are based on historical data (typically several days old in age) removing the identifiers and mapping to generalized locations that cannot be specifically determined.

Are Emodo solutions and processes compliant with privacy regulations, like GDPR?

Yes. From start to finish, Emodo data is managed and applied using processes that observe privacy-by-design and are entirely compliant with GDPR, CCPA and other privacy initiatives, including the guidance and data principles set forth by UK ICO and the European Data Protection Board for the use of anonymized data and generalized locations (for community insights). 

Is carrier verification compliant with those privacy regulations?

Yes. Emodo carrier verification is deployed at the mobile operator, which then runs that model against all of its opt-in and fully-consented users. The output that Emodo receives is a score based on aggregated data, at the publisher level.

Other questions?

Our main mission at Emodo is to provide our customers with inventory and audiences of the highest quality to ensure that their campaigns are as impactful as possible. In fact, we go to great lengths to make that possible. Transparency is an important part of that effort.

For further information, see our GDPR and privacy policies. If you have any other questions about how we do what we do, please drop us a note. We’d be happy to address your inquiry.

info@emodoincst.wpengine.com