BlueZoo Launches Mobile Phone-Sensing Analytics; Enables Opportunity To See Ad Data For DOOH Operators
October 14, 2022 by Dave Haynes
A Silicon Valley firm called BlueZoo has started marketing a solution based on mobile phone detection instead of computer vision to give Digital OOH networks enhanced audience analytics with details down to the minute for individual ad spots.
BlueZoo says its BlueFox solution allows agencies to “accurately report the number of impressions for each ad, allowing billing based on the number of people in the opportunity-to-see range.”
What the company terms “minute-grain impression” data are maintained in a data warehouse, with current and historical data easily retrieved for comparative analytics.
Says PR:
BlueZoo measures the numbers of people in the detection zone by counting mobile phones as a proxy. Neither the phone’s telephone number nor the user’s name is detected or recorded. All BlueZoo products are GDPR compliant and regularly audited by ePrivacy of Hamburg, Germany.
Unlike GPS-based mobile phone tracking solutions, BlueZoo products do not require any mobile app to be installed on the mobile phones of consumers, and no information other than the presence of a mobile phone is collected. Because GPS privileges on the consumer’s mobile phone are not required, the BlueZoo product is not impacted by GPS-usage restrictions (e.g. “only while the application is being used”) introduced by Apple for iOS and Google for Android.
This new BlueFox metric is available now as a beta product. During the beta period, current customers can activate the feature at no-cost by sending a request to BlueZoo’s customer success team. Subscription cost of the Count, High-Frequency Option is $9/month per sensor (paid annually).
Based in the venture capital hub of Menlo Park, BlueZoo says it has also deployed thousands of WiFi and optical sensors to hundreds of customers throughout the world, and that its products are protected by six patents. Its whale customer is JCDecaux, but I wonder how many other media companies are using this, as the client list mentioned is short and includes Cedarville University, a small college in Ohio.
BlueZoo’s website strongly suggests advertising is A vertical market and not THE market for a range of solutions. It has been around for a while and lists technology partnerships (in the context of digital signage) with DART Innovations, Four Winds Interactive and BrightSign.
BlueZoo started out life as BlueFox, a firm with French roots which at one time way back was marketing subscription content in the same manner as Screenfeed, Digichief and Datacall. Then it pivoted into WiFi-sensing and analytics. The assets were acquired by the current team in 2020 and the BlueFox brand will be retired next year.
Thank you for mentioning BlueZoo’s last announcement. JCDecaux was our first major OOH customer and continues to get top-placement in our press releases. We require explicit permission to mention customers by name, and haven’t assigned enough resources to that task. In addition to OOH, we have a strong business in retail. One of our smallest customers is Cedarville University which uses us for retail food service applications. Our two biggest retail customers, both top-five (by-revenue) retailers in the US who use us for in-store signage, haven’t yet given us permission to announce their use. We’re working on it. Stop by our booth at DSE for more details about BlueZoo!