How does the patented geotagging system of proxistore work ?
21 November 2017
Communicate online in a geolocalized and hyper precise way thanks to our cascading geolocation system.
When a surfer is in front of one of our partner’s websites on the Proxistore network, we verify his location in order to provide him with a targeted ad, based on his geolocation.
If the surfer already has a Proxistore locating-cookie saved on his device, Proxistore checks to see if it has an ad to show corresponding to the location of the surfer. If this is the case, Proxistore will send the corresponding announcement to the surfer.
If the surfer does not have a locating-cookie, Proxistrore will locate him through various ways. There are two ways of locating a surfer:
- Via the html5 capacity of the browser
- Via the IP
1. The HTML5 and the location service:
The location is identified through the browser and the location service. If the surfer does not have the geotagging cookie saved on his device, Proxistore, with the help of a pop-up, asks the surfer if he wishes to share his location :
If the surfer accepts, the browser will go through a location service (Google Service Location, Microsoft Service Location or Apple Location Service or other “locating service”) to provide the Service Set Identifier (SSID). The SSID is the name of a wireless network that identifies a Wi-Fi (Hotspot) or a connection.
- • Chrome, Firefox and Opera browsers use the Google Location service
- • Internet Explorer uses the Microsoft Location service,
- • Safari uses the Apple Location service,
- • Other browsers can use these or other services.
The html5 mechanism does not only use the SSID. At a minimum the browser has the IP at its disposal. If it has one or more SSIDs, it will transmit them. If it has info on the 3G towers (mobile browser) it will transmit them. If it has the exact coordinates (GPS on a mobile browser for example) it will also transmit them.
The location HTML5 / Location Service can therefore be more or less accurate depending on whether the browser transmits more or less information than it possesses. Of course, the more the browser provides useful information thereby more information will be accurate.
(Warning, our pop-up system cannot function without the html5 or higher technology. If the surfer has a device of an older generation, HTML4 for example, the surfer will be geolocalized by the IP address only).
The cookie saved, after acceptance of geolocation sharing by the surfer, will have a lifetime of one year.
2.IP :
If the device does not have HTML5 capability, it cannot ask the surfer to share his location and we will then geolocate the surfer directly by his IP address. Similarly, if the surfer has a device with HTML5 capability but denies or ignores the request for geolocation sharing.
The IP location is currently via an IP Maxmind corresponding Data Base.
The IP address is dead, long live Proxistore:
We have improved our geolocation cascading by adding an IP filter.
IP information is not in itself accurate information. Sometimes several surfers and their different IP addresses are aggregated on a single geographical point (latitude x, longitude y). This comes from the management policy of the Internet Service Provider of the surfers who unfortunately does not always correspond to the reality and that we cannot always control. We thus find ourselves faced with false information about the geographical position of the surfers located by IP address.
On a sample of more than 30,000 surfers in Belgium and France who agreed to be located by Proxistore, the comparison between the actual position (found via 3G / 4G, WIFI, GPS) and the geographical position of the IP address indicates distance differences (source subject to the control of our external auditor BDO).
70% of individuals are located within 5km of their actual position. By relying only on the IP address to geotag the surfer, the advertiser may lose many potential local consumers.
We aim to improve the quality of location information of the IP addresses collected. To do so we developed a technology able to qualify the IP addresses of our surfers.
In short, we compare the surfers located by their IP address and surfers who agreed to be localized (through the html5 technology) and having IP addresses associated to their geographical position.
To avoid leaving the majority of Internet users on the same geographical position, we have decided to QUALIFY these IP locations by comparison to the location of other surfers correctly localized by HTML5. Qualify means that we redispatch, at random but harmoniously, these surfer’s IP addresses within a zone more accurate than a single latitude and longitude point.
When the possible re-dispatch zone covers too large an area and in the interest of broadcasting quality information, we have decided neither to use these geolocations nor to broadcast anything to these surfers due to the imprecise geolocalization. At this point, we leave it up to the publisher to distribute one of his national advertisements.
The lifetime of the geolocation cookie will be 7 days if the surfer has ignored or has not agreed to share his location.
Manual geotagging:
When the surfer is on his device and surfs on a Proxistore network partner’s websites, Proxistore will check his location to provide targeted advertising based on his geolocation.
It is possible, for the surfer located by Proxistore via HTML5 or IP, at a place he does not want, to modify this information. The surfer can modify his location either from the start of the announcement itself which will return him to the Proxistore relocation page or by going directly to the Proxistore relocation page to encode the desired location.
The manual relocation is a ‘backdoor’ alternative to modify the location of the surfer (referring to relocation).
The lifespan of the manual relocation cookie will be 1 year.
Diagram:
Proxistore gelolocalizes approximately 90% of surfers (100% at the base but 10% voluntarily not used due to imprecise data in our opinion). At a minimum, the surfer will be located by his IP address. Depending on his connection and the compatibility of HTML5 on his device, if the surfer accepts the geolocation request, Proxistore will get much more accurate geolocation information. Finally, once the surfer is located by Proxistore, the latter can always modify his location by relocating manually. At this time, the old cookie is deleted from his device and a new cookie specified by the surfer is registered on the device.
Press contact
- julie.dambly@proxistore.com
- +32 479 67 81 96
