4INFO Inc. is an American

targeted advertising Targeted advertising or data-driven marketing is a form of advertising, including online advertising, that is directed towards an audience with certain traits, based on the product or person the advertiser is promoting. These traits can either ...

corporation. The company was owned by

Nielsen Holdings Nielsen Holdings plc (or Nielsen) is an American media audience measurement firm. Nielsen operates in over 100 countries and employs approximately 15,000 people worldwide. For most of its history, the company was known for its two subsidiarie ...

. It was acquired by Cadent in 2020.

History

4Info was founded in 2004 by Pankaj Shah and Zaw Thet. It originally focused on text-based SMS advertising,

SMS Short Message Service, commonly abbreviated as SMS, is a text messaging service component of most telephone, Internet and mobile device systems. It uses standardized communication protocols that let mobile phones exchange short text messages, t ...

publishing Publishing is the activities of making information, literature, music, software, and other content, physical or digital, available to the public for sale or free of charge. Traditionally, the term publishing refers to the creation and distribu ...

and mobile search. In 2008, the company was estimated to be the largest provider of business-to-consumer SMS content in

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

, claiming to send 80 million text messages a month in early 2009 and 200 million text messages a month in early 2010. Nielsen rated 4Info the fourth largest SMS

U.S. The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 contiguous ...

Network Network, networking and networked may refer to: Science and technology * Network theory, the study of graphs as a representation of relations between discrete objects * Network science, an academic field that studies complex networks Mathematics ...

. In 2010, the company was the largest provider of free text message alerts and information in the United States., and the largest American SMS Network. The company began providing mobile display advertising in 2010, based on connecting American households to

IP addresses An Internet Protocol address (IP address) is a numerical label such as that is assigned to a device connected to a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. IP addresses serve two main functions: network interface id ...

. In 2010, 4Info acquired Butter, a company which created ad campaigns for the

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

and Android platform. The company is headquartered in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially the City of San José ( ; ), is a cultural, commercial, and political center within Silicon Valley and the San Francisco Bay Area. With a city population of 997,368 and a metropolitan area population of 1.95 million, it is ...

with other offices in the United States. As of 2015, it employed 45 people. In 2015, the company was included on the Inc. 5000 list of America's fastest-growing private companies. In May 2015,

MBlox Sinch AB, formerly CLX Communications, is a communications platform as a service (Communications platform as a service, CPaaS) company which powers messaging, voice, and email communications between businesses and their customers. Headquartered in ...

, an independent SMS provider, acquired 4Info's SMS business line. In March 2016, 4Info and Crossix formed a

strategic alliance A strategic alliance is an agreement between two or more Legal party, parties to pursue a set of agreed upon objectives needed while remaining independent organizations. The alliance is a cooperation or collaboration which aims for a synergy wh ...

for targeted advertising of pharmaceutical products in the United States.

Software and services

The company purchases anonymous data from

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides a myriad of services related to accessing, using, managing, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, no ...

mobile network operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a mobile network provider, mobile network carrier, mobile , wireless service provider, wireless carrier, wireless operator, wireless telco, or cellular company, is a telecommunications provider of se ...

s, and other information aggregate sources, then uses

marketing mix modeling Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) is a forecasting methodology used to estimate the impact of various marketing tactic scenarios on product sales. MMMs use statistical models, such as multivariate regressions, and use sales and marketing time-seri ...

to send targeted advertisements from their clients. The company then cross references with CPG data to look at actual purchases made by those who viewed ads. In 2014, the company added multiscreen functionality that identifies PC and

laptop A laptop computer or notebook computer, also known as a laptop or notebook, is a small, portable personal computer (PC). Laptops typically have a Clamshell design, clamshell form factor (design), form factor with a flat-panel computer scree ...

activity, enabling cross-device

retargeting In software engineering, retargeting is an attribute of software development tools that have been specifically designed to generate code for more than one computing platform. Compilers A retargetable compiler is a compiler that has been designed ...

and

multichannel retailing Omnichannel is a neologism describing a business strategy. According to ''Frost & Sullivan'', omnichannel is defined as "seamless and effortless, high-quality customer experiences that occur within and between contact channels". History "Omnis" i ...

. The company also offered

geotargeting In geomarketing and internet marketing, geotargeting is the method of delivering different content to visitors based on their geolocation. This includes country, region/state, city, metro code/ zip code, organization, IP address, ISP, or other c ...

and

geofencing A geofence is a Virtuality, virtual "perimeter" or "fence" around a given geographic feature. A geofence can be dynamically generated (as in a radius around a point location) or match a predefined set of boundaries (such as school zones or nei ...

. In August 2014, the company was awarded a

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an sufficiency of disclosure, enabling discl ...

for "Systems and methods for statistically associating mobile devices to households" claiming they can link 95% of mobile users to their IP address and other devices. The company has provided advertising data to companies such as

AOL AOL (formerly a company known as AOL Inc. and originally known as America Online) is an American web portal and online service provider based in New York City, and a brand marketed by Yahoo! Inc. The service traces its history to an online ...

, Acxiom,

Catalist Catalist is a for-profit corporation based in Washington, D.C., that operates a voter database and works for progressive causes. History Catalist was founded as Data Warehouse, LLC. The founding team of Catalist included Harold M. Ickes, Laura ...

, Datalogix, and

Experian Experian plc is a multinational corporation, multinational data broker and consumer credit reporting company headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. Experian collects and aggregates information on more than 1 billion people and businesses including ...

References

{{Portal bar, Business and economics, Companies, Internet, Telecommunication, San Francisco Bay Area 2004 establishments in California Companies based in San Mateo, California Digital marketing companies of the United States Internet properties established in 2004 Software companies based in the San Francisco Bay Area Software companies of the United States