In an announcement made on April 6, Foursquare and Factual said that they were merging. Although terms weren’t disclosed, the companies reported that their combined revenue would be $150 million. A majority of that would probably be Foursquare’s.
This new merger will have over 400 employees, although there will be a small reduction in force due to redundancy.
The merged entity of Foursquare and Factual will be known as Foursquare Labs, which will be led by David Shim, the current CEO of Foursquare.
Both companies offers similar capabilities and services, although Factual’s underlying audience data is better than Foursquares, said Shim. This admission is pretty rare in an area where people claims equivalent reach and data accuracy.
During an interview in the Wall Street Journal, Shim said, “When it comes to audience segments, Factual is No. 1; we’re not No. 1 . . . Foursquare is No. 1 when it comes to attribution and ad effectiveness, when it comes to app developer tools.”
Before the COVID-19 outbreak, audience segmentation and offline attribution was the main use of location data, but it’s now being used to help determine whether social distancing is working and to track the spread of the virus.
Once the outbreak finally resides, the normal marketing cases of location will come back and return to normal. Location data is a leading candidate to replace cookies after they disappear. Offline visitation patterns are also intent signals.
Ultimately, location data will be woven into almost every non-search campaign in one way or another, whether it be for targeting, attribution, or both.
CEO of Factual, Gil Elbaz will become a board member and a member of the Foursquare executive team. Elbaz told WSJ that he’d also be personally investing in the combined entity.