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Apr 4, 2014 2:38:00 PM

3 Questions to Ask About Contextual Location While Developing Your App

Posted by Skyhook

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The world of mobile is all about user context, and that context is constantly changing. Mobile users are accessing apps from a variety of locations at all times of the day. Knowing where users are when they engage with your app provides contextual information on your users’ interests and intentions for you to leverage. Apps that don’t evolve to offer exciting and relevant content to their users will lose engagement. An app should adapt based on user interests and behaviors to stay as relevant as possible.

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If you are managing location based features across your app you should be asking the following questions:

1. Does your location go beyond latitude and longitude and provide context?
Using geofencing to know whether a user enters or exits a particular venue can be a great way to learn about a user’s lifestyle, behavior and interests.  There are many APIs that can tell you about the context of location when the app is open and a user is actively engaging with it. Skyhook’s contextual features are embedded into the app to provide location-based context on users’ behavior even when the specific app isn’t open.  Skyhook monitors in the background to see if a user enters a geofenced location of interest and gather contextual location data. Knowing whether a user enters a drugstore or a movie theater is valuable information in order to deliver relevant messages and content through your app.

2. Can you support unlimited active geofences per device per user?
Standard iOS and Android limitations have limited the utility of geofencing and rendered a number of promising use-cases effectively impossible. We make geofencing thrive at scale, by delivering unlimited numbers of richly categorized geofences to suit all of your business needs.  Skyhook enables you to define targeting options and business rules for geofences and contextual features with simple SDK integration and an online management interface.

3. Does your location allow you to add value to your ad inventory using historical insight?
Deriving user insights based on a history of where users go and when enables you to adapt their experiences based on their real-world interests and behaviors or their real-time context.

Building personas and venue profiles enables you to learn about your users and their interests. Aggregate reports on app users’ age, gender, income, ethnicity and education level are useful to app publishers who are trying to engage users with relevant content and advertisers with premium audiences. Adding contextual awareness to your app improves user engagement and adds value to your ad inventory.

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