Freckle IoT, the Toronto-born beacon network and proximity marketing firm, has announced a partnership with AirKast, a U.S.-based app network and solution provider that has carved a niche among audio and radio brands in the U.S.
The partnership announced last week sees AirKast clients given access to geographical shopper data driven by Freckle’s beacon network. AirKast is a network of approximately 2,000 apps (mostly those of radio stations) that the company says are opened a total of 20 million times per month.
AirKast clients can now receive shopper data from to Freckle’s hundreds of thousands of beacons, which track mobile signals within stores and entertainment venues across North America.
“The partnership with Freckle enables AirKast’s clients to participate in pioneering beacon initiatives, which include attribution, analytics, messaging, retargeting and insights,” Freckle said, in a statement.
AirKast’s clients have included CBS Radio News, ESPN, Fox News Radio and Nielsen.
“We saw the emergence of beacons as a critical advertising and data opportunity that could provide our clients with the chance to participate in beacon campaigns that would expose them to new, unique and verifiable customers,” said Larry Leung, CEO of AirKast, in the statement. “As Freckle is the leader in the market, we wanted to partner with them to give our clients the greatest reach possible.”
AirKast becomes “one of our top-three clients,” said Neil Sweeney, Freckle’s founder. “Having one publisher take [Freckle’s service] across 2,000 standalone, individual applications is big for us.”
Sweeney sees partnership like this one with AirKast as key to scaling his business. Rather than relying solely on individual retail partners that may have millions of people downloading their beacon-enabled app – but only a few of which may be active at any given time – teaming with a multi-app publisher increases the chances that someone walking into a beacon-enabled store has at least one active, beacon-ready app.
