After three years and more than 100 studies, Emodo research has shown that while marketers say quality and accuracy are their greatest concern when it comes to data, that’s not what they’re getting. Jake Moskowitz from the Emodo Institute shares data accuracy benchmarks that reveal excessive waste in location data and location-based campaigns.

As a part of Ericsson, the global telecommunications company that powers mobile networks and cell towers for all the major carriers in the US, Emodo has unique access to carrier data, from which we can verify the quality of data around the ecosystem. Since we can see which cell towers a device was connected to minutes before and after a data point was collected, we can definitively rule out bad data. For example, if those cell towers are 100 miles away from where a device was supposedly located, we know that data can’t be true.

Across all our studies, only 39% of data points were accurate within one mile. So, for example, if you want location data to build a segment of shoppers who’ve been in your store, more than half that data is likely wrong by more than a mile.

With this kind of waste, it would make sense to lean on filtered data versus raw, but even that is not enough of an improvement. Vendors who specialize in location data only eliminate 28.4% of data inaccuracies, so nearly three-quarters of inaccuracies remain even after filtering.

Claims that data was verified just aren’t enough. We’ve seen a particular vendor score 12% accuracy and 89% accuracy within a one-month period. When it comes to fraud, viewability and brand safety we don’t take a vendor’s word for it. We measure it every time. If we want quality data, we need to apply the same rigorous standards.