Factual Launches Engine SDK; Offers Location Data and Intelligence to App Developers

LOS ANGELES, CA--(Marketwired - Nov 1, 2017) - Factual, the leading location data provider that offers accessible data to enterprises, marketers and developers, today announced the release of Engine, a mobile software development kit (SDK) that allows developers to easily incorporate location data and intelligence into mobile apps to increase user engagement, build personalized interactions and better understand users.

Engine combines Factual's industry-leading Global Places data with on-device location information and behavior patterns to help developers understand user context and identify the right moment to engage. Its machine learning algorithm takes into account factors including business operating hours, device usage patterns, speed and direction of travel to determine the specific circumstance of a user, beyond their location or place. By understanding and using these contextual factors, Engine enables apps to take the most accurate and appropriate action, ultimately improving engagement and user experience.

Some of the features and benefits the Engine SDK offers include:

• Place Attachment
  - Engine utilizes Factual's proprietary "Place Attachment" technology, which correlates a device's location to a unique place or point of interest and pairs it with real-world data and attributes. Place Attachment is more accurate than geofencing alone in determining a user's position and context in the real world.
• User journeys
  - Engine notes user's "state" in the physical world (i.e. their place or activity) and how that changes through the day. These events can flow into analytics and mobile engagement platforms allowing developers to gain unique user insight, develop deeper customer understanding, and create powerful user segments -- all based on historical user location and behavior, beyond app usage alone.
• Circumstances
  - Engine allows developers to create targeting rules or "circumstances" based on user location, combined with day, time and specific place attributes, such as business category, chain or hours of operation. Some examples of circumstance include "at Starbucks, near work, during morning commute hours," or "near a coffee shop, at a mall, during lunch hours."
• Context-based actions
  - Actions, including sending a push notification, prompting the user, updating status, invoking a third-party API or any custom action, can be added by developers. Engine will prompt actions to occur when a circumstance rule is triggered to drive interaction with users based on specific context.
• Web-based interface
  - Garage, Engine's web-based user interface, allows product owners, marketers and developers to quickly and easily create and manage circumstance-based targeting rules. Garage taps into Factual's Global Places data for business or point of interest names, categories, chains and other specific attributes so developers can build highly customizable circumstance rules.
• Privacy protections
  - Engine's machine learning algorithm runs against a client-side cache of location data, making it safe for privacy-sensitive applications. User location data can be kept on-device and never sent to a third party server.
• Reliable, efficient functionality
  - Engine's mobile-first architecture means it carries low network dependency and causes minimal battery drain.
• Cross platform
  - Engine is available for iOS and Android.

"The bar for smart and intelligent apps is rising exponentially, and developers demand solutions that help them provide personalized, effortless experiences to end users," said Gil Elbaz, founder and CEO, Factual. "Engine is uniquely able to understand a device's exact location and movement, and using that location intelligence, design customized outcomes for users."

The Engine SDK is already in use within consumer products and applications, including Doppler Labs' Here One Wireless Smart Earbuds and companion app. Powered by Engine, the app detects the location of a device and recommends Noise Filters and Real-World Volume settings most appropriate for the user's environment.

"Factual's Engine mobile SDK provided the most accurate location intelligence we've seen and was the clear choice to power our app," said Bentley Rubinstein, Director of Marketing Doppler Labs. "It's imperative that a device's location is recognized accurately to provide an intuitive and delightful user experience, and as a result we've seen high customer engagement within the app."

Engine can be easily integrated with analytics and marketing platforms including Mixpanel, Oracle Responsys and Segment. This interoperability allows app developers to combine Engine's location data with their existing analytics and push notification solutions. Additional partners are forthcoming.

Factual's Global Places, a proprietary comprehensive dataset including more than 130 million businesses and points of interest in 52 countries around the globe. Factual's data is trusted by the world's largest companies, including Apple, Facebook, Snap and Amazon, to power products and applications.

For more information about Factual and its data and products, please visit www.factual.com.

About Factual
Factual is the neutral data company that makes data accessible to everyone, accelerating innovation and improving our daily lives. Thousands of developers, publishers, advertisers and enterprises use Factual's location data, including some of the world's largest search, mapping and social platforms, leading publishers and advertising technology firms encompassing billions of dollars of ad spend and global leaders in financial services and payments. Factual's core capability is an unmatched ability to build high-quality data, driven by its ever-expanding network of data-sharing partners and its data stack that turns billions of pieces of information into clean, structured factual data.

Factual is headquartered in Los Angeles, CA. For more information, visit http://www.factual.com.