AMES, Iowa — With the investigation into gambling at Iowa State and Iowa, it was revealed that information was gleaned through something called geofencing. That technology isn’t just used by law enforcement agencies, the marketing field also uses it to send ads to people nearby, in a precise designated spot.
“Geofencing is when somebody goes down and they target anybody who’s been in this location,” said Benjamin Bouslog of Adcellerant, a Denver-based digital marketing firm working with geofencing. “I can draw it out, geofences can be a radius, so you put like a center point and a radius, a 50 foot radius, 100 foot radius like that, or you can draw a polygon.”
The geofencing can be drawn over any area, and even as small the front seat of a car. The data gathered is used to place ads in the feeds in various apps who are using social media in the area. It can even reach people 12 months after they’ve been in the geo fenced area.
“If there’s anybody doing anything on a device you have to know every device. It’s tracked. It’s recorded somewhere,” said Bouslog. “If somebody like the DCI, or anybody else wants to try and find out what you were doing on that device they’ll be able to do that.”
Click here to learn more about Bouslog’s company, Adcellerant.