The National Basketball Association's Phoenix Suns tested the
service last season, and the Portland Trail Blazers are considering
a partnership with the telecom's insights business.
Verizon sought to attract sports teams and venues as early
clients of the service, said Colson Hillier, VP of Verizon
Precision Market Insights, because it's difficult to measure
accountability of sponsorship messages -- just think of the signs
seen along the perimeter of a baseball field or high atop a
basketball court.
"As media becomes more and more accountable to results,
sponsorships are an area where it's been difficult to tie results
to dollars spent," he said.
Real-time data
The Suns are continuing a close relationship with Verizon, getting
Precision Market Insights data in real time, according to Dan
Costello, the team's VP-marketing of partnership sales and
activation. In the past, the team would rely on data reports
generated quarterly.
Mr. Hillier calls the service "a byproduct of being a network
operator." Because they are regularly pinging Verizon's network in
order to operate, Verizon Wireless-enabled devices can be linked
directly to specific locations. "We can tie a device back to the
cell towers which it registers against," said Mr. Hillier.
Verizon uses that granular location data to keep track of which
Verizon Wireless-enabled devices were in a sports arena, or near
it, or at a particular fast food restaurant or car dealership.
Though Verizon holds on to that device-identifiable data, it
provides a more general view to its clients after "hashing" or
anonymizing the data. Clients like the Suns end up with aggregated
data on the types of people who visited a venue and later visited a
sponsor's place of business. Verizon layers on Experian profile data to segment consumers
demographically. For example, it can report which percentage of an
audience segment who attended a game then visited a sponsor's
burger joint at a particular time on a given day afterwards.
The Suns worked with Verizon to measure the effect of
sponsorships from advertisers including Jack in the Box during the
team's trial last year, according to Zaheer Benjamin, the team's
VP-business planning and basketball analytics, who spoke about the
effort during
a panel at the 2013 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference.
"We want to be able to demonstrate the benefit and lift to our
partners so … we're able to track the activity of the folks
who are at the stadium on qualifying events, what they do the day
afterwards," Mr. Benjamin said during the conference panel. "What
we found is a significant lift in in-store activity in those Jack
in the Box stores the day after."
Jack in the Box is no longer a Suns partner.
A Verizon case-study infographic about the Suns trial notes that
an unnamed fast food eatery "experienced an average increase of
8.4% in traffic following promotional games," and states that
Verizon provided the team with demographic and location data,
mobile usage information, and campaign response data.
Could work for retailers
While Verizon has gone after entertainment-venue clients, the
service could work directly for a retailer, said Mr. Hillier.
"There's no reason a retailer couldn't try to understand what's
happening around their location," he said.
The NBA's Trail Blazers have discussed embarking on a similar
initiative with Verizon but nothing is finalized, said Vincent
Ircandia, VP-business analytics with the team. Before anything is
implemented, the team aims to complete installation of around 400
antennas in the Moda Center, its home in Portland, Ore. Indeed,
without these new mobile signal receptors, large arenas like the
Moda Center, which holds around 20,000 people, have such a high
concentration of mobile signals that they create dark spots,
preventing carriers from tracking location data or delivering some
text messages and tweets.
In addition to illuminating consumer response to sponsor
messages, Verizon aims to fill in the blanks for venues on who's
coming to their events. Oftentimes one person buys multiple
tickets, in which case teams and venues don't know who all of the
attendees are. The secondary ticket market only obscures their view
more.
"There's a lot of value in understanding how often a ticket gets
handed off before somebody actually gets here," said Mr.
Costello.
Calling the Suns "leaders in the space," Mr. Ircandia said of
the Precision Market Insights service, "teams are chomping at the
bit for this capability."
Verizon would not reveal how long it stores the data tying
devices to specific locations; however, a company spokeswoman
added, "we keep the information as long as is reasonably necessary
for business purposes."
Slow roll-out
"We've been sitting on this data for a long time," said Stephanie
Bauer Marshall, director of Verizon Precision Market Insights,
during the MIT Sloan conference. "It took us awhile to get people
comfortable -- mainly our executives, and obviously the Hill and
everyone else -- around, 'Could we actually use this data?'" she
continued. "And so we spent a lot of time looking at the privacy
issues and how can we care for our brand in such a way that we're
respecting that relationship with the consumer and do it
responsibly…. Once you get over the privacy hurdle there is
a huge opportunity."
Verizon notifies consumers of its data collection and use in its
terms and conditions, but, according to Mr. Costello, there are no
indications at Phoenix Suns games that the tracking is occurring or
that aggregate information tracing people's locations is provided
to the team or its sponsors.
"This is new data in the marketplace. There's not a whole lot of
infrastructure behind it," said Mr. Hillier. "Right now we're
working to round out that value proposition." As Verizon speaks
with "various" potential Precision Market Insights clients, he
said, the carrier continues working with the Suns.
