The Swiss Knife of Location Services: Meet the Warsaw Marketing Startup that Turns Offline into Online Conversions

Data mining is one of the fastest growing fields in the IT industry, especially mobile. Apps and platforms that efficiently use and analyse large datasets are in high demand, particularly among B2C companies. One Polish startup has found a smart way to apply data mining in marketing by looking into the way smartphone owners use their apps.

Justtag Group, set up in Warsaw in 2015, has developed a tool that creates detailed psychological profiles of mobile app users and predicts their interests, behaviours and intents based on their location. The technology called KoalaMetrics uses location-based data collected from places where there is Wi Fi to analyse how well online adverts can convert into offline purchases. According to its creators, by combining thousands of data points about cross-app usage, it reaches 93.7% accuracy rate in its predictions.

Thomas Chłodecki, CEO and Co-Founder of Justtag Group, describes KoalaMetrics as “the Swiss knife of location services. “Koala Metrics isn’t a simple geo-location service, but a hyper location service —we can deliver much more precise profiles and analysis of offline behaviors, so, for example, we can explain how people move around particular stores; if they’re loyal consumers or new clients, if they visit competitor’s stores or outline the consumer’s path to the stores they visit”, he said.

In Bulgaria, KoalaMetrics works in partnership with Netinfo, the largest digital group in the country, to offer its customers tailor-made drive-to-store campaigns. In January 2021, Netinfo became part of United Group, the biggest media group in SEE. Netinfo reaches over 80% of Bulgaria’s active internet users through its websites including Аbv.bg, Nova.bg, Vesti.bg, Dariknews.bg, Sinoptik.bg, etc.

In an interview with Trending Topics SEE, Chłodeckiexplains how KoalaMetrics works in detail.

TT: How can marketers improve their targeting and personalization strategies by using data about offline behaviour of the users?

Chłodecki: Offline data accurately describes our profiles or purchasing intentions. A visit to a BMW showroom does more than scroll through the BMW website.

Thanks to the partnership between NetInfo and Justtag, our affiliate advertisers can reach consumers who shop offline – in key stores for advertisers such as their stores, competitors’ stores, stores offering their products, etc. In addition, our technology allows advertisers to check the effectiveness of these activities – we measure how many users visited a brick-and-mortar store after seeing an online advertisement.

TT: Justtag Group has innovative tool which profiles users based on their offline habits. Tell us more about the technology – how does KoalaMetrics work?

Chłodecki: The purpose of KoalaMetrics technology is to identify offline visits by users in a manner consistent with the GDPR and user privacy preferences.

Thanks to integration with mobile applications, we analyze, among others Wi-Fi networks registered by mobile phones. To provide users with anonymity, our analysis is based on the mobile advertising ID of the phone, which the user can reset or disable at any time.

Having information about Wi-Fi networks seen by the mobile phones and their parameters, we can build an offline visit database that helps us create audience segments and measure offline conversion.

TT: What are the benefits of this type of advertising over traditional digital methods? Why is programmatic the future of advertising?

Chłodecki: We reach exactly those users who are our potential or current consumers. We significantly increase our chances of generating both online and offline conversions. Programmatic is the future because it is effective – it allows us to reach the precise group of consumers at the best possible price and ensures the speed – we can execute the campaign for various services in a short time.

TT: How can you measure the impact of digital campaigns on offline behavior? And what is the return on investment?

Chłodecki: We compare the raw campaign data with our offline visit database – so we can accurately determine who saw the ad on the web and then visited the offline store. We analyze which store our consumers visited at what time. But we also want to show to our advertisers the results of the entire market. In other words – what was their competitors’ offline performance during the campaign. It provides a crucial context to analyze the offline attribution. The technology gives the opportunity to calculate a detailed ROI, meaning a cost of every single offline visit generated by a digital campaign.

TT: You recently announced a partnership with the Netinfo. What is it about and how will KoalaMetrics technology be integrated?

Chłodecki: NetInfo is a super important partner, the largest digital group in the country, with an excellent background for innovation. NetInfo will use our technology to offer its customers drive to store campaigns with reports analyzing online to offline conversion. Exactly the product many advertisers need and expect. We will support them in terms of technology, but also in the implementation of campaigns and reports.

TT: How does technology ensure the security of personal data?

Chłodecki: We process data and collect consents in accordance with the GDPR.

We base our analysis on anonymous identifiers, we never know who the users are and we do not take into account names, phone numbers or e-mails. The ID can be reset or disabled by the user at any time. We also aggregate data but we never analyze a single ID, yet always a group of identifiers (cohort).