New locationbased ad network surfaces

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Answer Financial has announced the launch of Answer Marketplace, a telematics-based advertising network.

Do you have an app that uses GPS or telematics features for tracking and has struggled with a way to monetize?

Answer Marketplace has announced that they will be connecting insurance advertisers with millions of drivers through a network of publishers seeking to enhance their apps. Through their network, advertisers are able to understand drivers’ risk and make smart, personalized offers to reach their ideal customers.

“We’re proud to create an ecosystem that benefits drivers, insurance advertisers and app publishers all at once,” said Darren Howard, senior vice president and chief marketing officer of Answer Financial. “By connecting with a mobile app in the Answer Marketplace network, drivers will be empowered by new driving-based features in the apps they use and provided with insurance offers based on their driving behavior. Meanwhile, insurers can personalize offers based on actual driving, and publishers can enhance their app experiences while monetizing their apps in the competitive app economy.”

For mobile app developers with rich location data, this partnership network provides a unique opportunity for them to craft relevant, revenue-generating customer experiences. Moreover, because users are logged in to the app and have completed a minimum number of trips before an ad is displayed, advertisers can overcome click fraud concerns.

We reached out to Answer Marketplace to ask if app users will know their location data in being shared for advertising purposes, and just how transparent the notice is that developers provide? They responded; "All publishers are required to secure opt-in consent from users to capture and share driving data for advertising purposes. The specific implementation will vary based on the publishers’ user experience."

Advertising, served through Answer Marketplace, will be integrated with app publishers to create a native app experience through which opted-in users can receive relevant offers personalized to their driving behavior. Advertisers are able to reach high-intent customers with micro-targeted messaging and drive engagement of their desired customers, based on granular telematics data on users’ actual driving behavior and risk (rather than general demographics and proxies as most on the market offer). In addition, advertisers can layer in other bidding variables, such as geography and current insurance status, allowing insurers to reap the benefits of UBI, whether or not they currently offer their own UBI programs.

Answer Marketplace is powered by Arity, a data science and analytics company focused on making transportation smarter. Through this engagement, Arity is committing to making transportation more useful for consumers, empowering them to leverage safe driving habits for the most competitive insurance offers available.

The Arity Driving Engine SDK turns mobile devices into powerful sensors, capturing valuable driving data and generating a driving score that insurers can use for efficient bidding, without requiring usage-based insurance devices. The data Arity provides is based on data collected from the various telematics programs powered by the Arity platform.

They also told us that they currently have two partners participating so far, Life360, and Streetwise - though I'm sure other apps such as Chirp GPS, the popular find my friends and family app might soon follow.

They also said they have a number of other mobile app partners in various stages of integration which will be announced in the near future, and are always actively looking for and welcoming new partners in the driving/auto/location-sharing sectors.