Placer.ai, an Israeli startup developing a location analytics intelligence platform, secured $50 million in Series B funding. The round was led by serial investor Josh Buckley, CEO of Product Hunt, who previously invested in Clubhouse. Also participating in the investment were Fifth Wall, Superhuman founder Rahul Vohra; JBV Capital, and Aleph.
Apple updates iOS: No sweat off Placer's back
The Placer.ai platform aggregates data from tens of millions of mobile devices, and from over 500 different mobile apps that use the company’s SDK. The Placer product provides businesses with insight into foot traffic, based on the hour, day, or month; informs of a store’s market cap and popularity among shoppers; learn where customers are coming from, and where they’re going next; additional demographic data (gender, ethnic background) is available, as well as, interests and income; and platform users can learn more about their bounce rate, and how to amend it. On the end customer’s side - they enjoy coupons and customized perks, according to their interests, likes, and needs.
Placer offers two different tools: a SaaS platform that empowers businesses and private users with data-backed insight in real-time. Furthermore, Placer also offers paying customers access to its API. The company launched its Freemium tool back in 2018, which reveals users to limited information, including tracking traffic at predesignated stores.
Considering just last week, Apple updated iOS with a feature that helps users prevent apps from tracking them. So, we asked Placer how this move impacts the company? Chief R&D and GM Israel, Elad Ash, explains that the Placer platform is not based on user data in any way, so the update can’t hurt the company: “We don’t collect any private data, and we don’t make use of IDFA or MAID (Mobile Advertising ID). The system collects and displays the aggregated data, and is not based on private user data,” tells us Ash.
He explains that the data sources Placer works with have been vetted over the last six months, including user location tagging - basically working according to the Apple standard. Ash adds that they haven’t noticed any change in data volume following Apple’s modifications: “So far we haven’t noticed, nor do we expect, any changes in the data’s volume or quality. Even if there is drop, based on our aggregate data, we don’t foresee any impact on our system or in the quality of insight we provide.”
Placer.ai was founded in 2016 by CEO Noam Ben-Zvi, Data Scientist Zohar Bar-Yehuda, CTO Oded Fossfeld, and CPO Ofir Lemel. The company is headquartered out of Los Altos, California, with a R&D center in Tel Aviv. Placer notes that the capital will be used to grow the company’s R&D, expand sales and marketing teams, introduce additional reports and data sets, and grow the recently announced marketplace.
