Foursquare has long held the mission of becoming the world’s leading independent location technology platform, helping top global companies harness location-aware solutions to create better customer experiences and drive smarter business decisions. It’s what led me to want to join forces with Foursquare last year under the Placed acquisition, as Placed’s CEO and founder, and what made me proud to take on the mantle of CEO at Foursquare in December. I’m excited to share the next step in our mission.
Today we are thrilled to announce that Factual is merging with Foursquare, creating the #1 independent leader in location-based technology and data for global brands, advertisers, publishers, and agencies.
The combination of Foursquare and Factual generated more than $150 million in revenue, in more than 20 global markets, and trusted by thousands of companies of all sizes and in various industries, including Microsoft, Uber, Samsung, Snap, Twitter, and more than half of the Fortune 100.
As an industry leader, we don’t just get to build great products and deep customer relationships; we have the responsibility (and privilege) of driving the market forward — from enacting safeguards to protect consumer privacy, to setting the standard for data quality and accuracy, to innovating new possibilities and use cases for location.
But in order to be that leader, we need to do more than just have the most products or the most revenue; we need to have the best products across every solution we provide. It’s what our customers expect and deserve. This is why I’m so excited about the addition of Factual, another category leader, and in particular, one that brings a talented team, a rapidly growing global business, and a legacy of responsible data stewardship.
With Factual, Foursquare is now the undisputed independent leader in location technology and data, with the #1 solution across audiences, point-of-interest, developer tools, and attribution. Foursquare delivers the stack that powers the location layer of the internet. This combination establishes the standard in location for the next decade, allowing our clients to accelerate the adoption of location technology as a must have in their day to day business operations.
Following Foursquare’s acquisition of Placed last year and upon the integration with Factual, together we’ll offer customers a united product portfolio, providing the best in highly scalable audiences, offline attribution, point of interest (POI) data and developer tools that will enable companies to tap into data and insights that optimize their marketing and business decisions.
The new Foursquare will offer unparalleled reach and scale, with datasets spanning:
- More than 500 million devices worldwide
- A panel of 25 million opted-in, always on users and over 14 billion user confirmed check-ins
- More than 105 million points of interest across 190 countries and 50 territories
Foursquare and Factual together offer the most robust and readily available location data and technology, trusted by the world’s most important companies and distributed throughout the ecosystem:
- Thousands of brands—including more than 50% of the Fortune 100— have chosen Foursquare or Factual as a location services partner, including all 50 of the top U.S. national advertisers per AdAge
- 550+ media platforms and publishers use Foursquare to measure campaign performance and provide effective optimizations, including 49 of the 50 largest properties on the internet per Comscore
- Combined, our location data is integrated or accessible within platforms representing more than 80% of all programmatic ad spend.
- A community of 200,000+ leveraging Foursquare’s geo-contextual developer tools
I will remain as Foursquare’s CEO, and Factual founder Gil Elbaz will join Dennis Crowley in serving on the executive team and board. Individually, we’ve each built strong, successful companies that have made significant impacts on the industry. Together, we’ll drive new, market-leading innovation to enable organizations around the world to further tap into the power of location, while continuing to serve as outspoken leaders calling for the responsible collection and use of data.
We’re excited for what’s ahead, for our company, our customers, our partners and for location at large. Our sales and account teams will be reaching out directly with more information. There’s much more to come as we integrate and further innovate together.
