4INFO is an American

corporation A corporation is an organization—usually a group of people or a company—authorized by the state to act as a single entity (a legal entity recognized by private and public law "born out of statute"; a legal person in legal context) and ...

that measures and tracks media audiences for the targeting of audiences. The company also displays targeted advertisements on mobile devices. The company is currently owned by Nielsen Holdings.

History

The company was founded in 2004 by Pankaj Shah and Zaw Thet. It originally focused on text-based SMS advertising. The company worked in

mobile search Mobile may refer to: Places * Mobile, Alabama, a U.S. port city * Mobile County, Alabama * Mobile, Arizona, a small town near Phoenix, U.S. * Mobile, Newfoundland and Labrador Arts, entertainment, and media Music Groups and labels * Mobile ...

and in

SMS Short Message/Messaging 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 devices exchange short text ...

publishing and

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

. In May 2015

MBlox Sinch, formerly CLX Communications, is a telecommunications and cloud communications platform as a service (PaaS) company. Headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden, Sinch also has offices in over 30 cities worldwide, including Atlanta, London, Madrid ...

, an independent application-to-person (A2P) SMS provider, acquired 4INFO's SMS business line. In 2006 4INFO won an Emerging Technology Award. In 2008 4INFO was estimated to be the largest provider of business-to-consumer SMS content in North America by

Nielsen Nielsen may refer to: Business * Nielsen Gallery, an American commercial art gallery * Nielsen Holdings, global information, data, and measurement company ** Nielsen Corporation, a marketing research firm ** Nielsen Audio, formerly Arbitron, whic ...

, 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 (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territor ...

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 4INFO was the largest provider of free text message

alerts Alert messaging (or alert notification) is machine-to-person communication that is important or time sensitive. An alert may be a calendar reminder or a notification of a new message. Alert messaging emerged from the study of personal information ...

and information in the

U.S The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territor ...

., and the largest SMS U.S. Network. In 2010 it was rated the second largest Mobile Advertising U.S. Network. 4INFO was named a 2007 and a 2014 AO100 Top Private Company winner. 4INFO is ranked 1742 on the 2015 Inc. 5000 as one of America's fastest-growing private companies. The company moved into mobile display advertising in 2010, creating a full-service mobile media advertising platform, leveraging its patented matching method, based on connecting U.S. households to IP address . The company is headquartered in

San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...

with other offices in the U.S.; in total, it employs 45 people.

Software and services

4INFO claims their

database In computing, a database is an organized collection of data stored and accessed electronically. Small databases can be stored on a file system, while large databases are hosted on computer clusters or cloud storage. The design of databases spa ...

has connected 152 million

mobile device A mobile device (or handheld computer) is a computer small enough to hold and operate in the hand. Mobile devices typically have a flat LCD or OLED screen, a touchscreen interface, and digital or physical buttons. They may also have a physical ...

s to 101 million U.S.

households A household consists of two or more persons who live in the same dwelling. It may be of a single family or another type of person group. The household is the basic unit of analysis in many social, microeconomic and government models, and is impo ...

. In April 2014, the company added multiscreen functionality that identifies PC and laptop activity, enabling cross-device targeting,

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" is ...

that by July 2014 also includes

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

ads. They offer

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 ...

and

geofencing A geofence is a Virtuality, virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. A geofence could be dynamically generated (as in a radius around a point location) or match a predefined set of boundaries (such as school zones or neighborhood bound ...

. In August 2014, 4INFO 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 disclo ...

for “Systems and methods for statistically associating mobile devices to households“ claiming they can link 95% of mobile users to their address and their other devices. 4INFO can directly match with third-party data sources as well as a retailer's own

customer In sales, commerce, and economics, a customer (sometimes known as a client, buyer, or purchaser) is the recipient of a good, service, product or an idea - obtained from a seller, vendor, or supplier via a financial transaction or exchange f ...

data. The company purchases anonymous data from

internet service provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privatel ...

mobile network operator A mobile network operator (MNO), also known as a wireless service provider, wireless carrier, cellular company, or mobile network carrier, is a provider of wireless communications services that owns or controls all the elements necessary to sel ...

s, and other information

aggregate Aggregate or aggregates may refer to: Computing and mathematics * collection of objects that are bound together by a root entity, otherwise known as an aggregate root. The aggregate root guarantees the consistency of changes being made within the ...

sources, then uses Media Mix Modeling to send targeted advertisements from their clients. 4INFO then cross references with

CPG CpG can be: * CpG site - methylated sequences of DNA significant in gene regulation * CpG Oligodeoxynucleotide - unmethylated sequences of DNA that have immunostimulatory properties *CpG island The CpG sites or CG sites are regions of DNA wher ...

data to look at actual purchases made by those who saw the ad. Partners 4INFO and Catalina's June 2015 study reveals how mobile advertising is affecting in-store

sales Sales are activities related to selling or the number of goods sold in a given targeted time period. The delivery of a service for a cost is also considered a sale. The seller, or the provider of the goods or services, completes a sale in ...

. The study looked at 83 mobile

campaigns Campaign or The Campaign may refer to: Types of campaigns * Campaign, in agriculture, the period during which sugar beets are harvested and processed *Advertising campaign, a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme *Bli ...

across a variety of CPG categories for 59 different brands; campaign durations ranged from four to 38 weeks, with 12 weeks on average. They claim mobile advertising generates more than double the sales of its desktop counterparts. The Benchmarking was performed using 4INFO partner Nielsen Catalina Solutions.

AOL AOL (stylized as 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. It is a brand marketed by the current incarnation of Yahoo! Inc. ...

Acxiom Acxiom (pronounced "ax-ee-um") is a Conway, Arkansas-based database marketing company. The company collects, analyzes and sells customer and business information used for targeted advertising campaigns. The company was formed in 2018 when Acxio ...

, App Annie, Catalina Marketing,

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. Catalist's first CEO was Laura Quinn, a former economic policy a ...

Datalogix Oracle Advertising, formerly Datalogix, is a cloud-based consumer data collection, activation, and measurement platform for use by digital advertisers. Datalogix was a consumer data collection company based in Westminster, Colorado that provided ...

Experian Experian is an American–Irish multinational data analytics and consumer credit reporting company. Experian collects and aggregates information on over 1 billion people and businesses including 235 million individual U.S. consumers and more ...

Millennial Media One by AOL, formerly known as Millennial Media, is an advertising company that places display ads on mobile devices ( mobile marketing). History One by AOL was founded as Millennial Media in May 2006 by Paul Palmieri Paul Palmieri may refer ...

and others leverage 4INFO's mobile technology. In-store visitation measurement company Placed partnered with online-to-offline sales analyst 4INFO June 2015 enabling both companies to offer clients omnichannel retailing path-to-purchase insights. In June 2015, 4INFO and DMG Solutions announced a

strategic alliance A strategic alliance (also see strategic partnership) is an agreement between two or more parties to pursue a set of agreed upon objectives needed while remaining independent organizations. The alliance is a cooperation or collaboration which aim ...

creating solutions for

multicultural marketing Multicultural marketing (also known as ethnic marketing) is the practice of marketing to one or more audiences of specific ethnicities—typically an ethnicity outside of a country's majority culture, which is sometimes called the "general market." ...

in the United States and targeting specific audiences. In March 2016, 4INFO and Crossix formed a

for Household-Level

Pharmaceutical Marketing Many countries have measures in place to limit advertising by pharmaceutical companies. Pharmaceutical company spending on marketing generally exceeds that of its research budget. In Canada, $1.7 billion was spent in 2004 to market drugs to physi ...

Ad Targeting in the United States. 4INFO claims they did a six-month set-up process that doesn't allow personally-identifiable data touch the partners' systems in order to comply with

HIPAA The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA or the Kennedy– Kassebaum Act) is a United States Act of Congress enacted by the 104th United States Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton on August 21, ...

. Data broker and services firm

sits in between Crossix and 4INFO.

Acquisitions

2010 4INFO acquired Butter, a company specializing in creating customized mobile solutions and ad campaigns for the iPhone and

Android Android may refer to: Science and technology * Android (robot), a humanoid robot or synthetic organism designed to imitate a human * Android (operating system), Google's mobile operating system ** Bugdroid, a Google mascot sometimes referred to ...

platform.

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 California Citation overkill Software companies of the United States