Techcrunch is reporting that Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba has made an investment in PlaceIQ.
PlaceIQ Co-founder and CEO Duncan McCall told TechCrunch that this is part of a larger partnership, where Alibaba will be using PlaceIQ’s technology. He was quoted as saying “I don’t want to speak for [Alibaba], but in my mind, they didn’t want to invest in a company — they wanted to find a strategic partner”.
PlaceIQ combines location data with ‘first-party’ data from marketers to provide a fuller understanding of consumer behavior — not just whether someone’s visited a car dealership, for example, but whether they’re actually shopping for a car, and what kinds of TV stations they’re likely to watch.
In the article, McCall said Alibaba could use PlaceIQ’s technology in a variety of ways, including marketing, product recommendations and providing data for broader decision-making.