Foursquare

Foursquare is a location-based technology platform that provides customer insights for brands based on location intelligence. Firms are able to leverage Foursquare's platform to plan and execute marketing campaigns while identifying its effectiveness in driving customer foot traffic to its locations. Foursquare’s customer targeting and segmentation solution allows marketers to conduct targeted marketing messages to customers, including sending push notifications based on customer location across a variety of channels. 

Foursquare is considered a first mover in the location-based industry and received the first-ever location-based advertising guidelines accreditation from the Media Rating Council (MRC) in August 2020. In May 2022, the firm launched what it claims to be a first-of-its kind closed-loop attribution feature that can measure a customer's exposure to online and offline ads and match  against customer actions such as in-store foot traffic, online shopping, and hybrid purchases to measure campaign success. In March 2023, the company unveiled Store ID, a data enrichment tool that provides unique identifiers that link real-world points of interest (POIs) to corresponding data.

As of September 2021, research by Forrester revealed that Foursquare’s customers had achieved an average return on investment (ROI) of 202% and a 47% reduction in cost per action (CPA) in reaching target audiences.

Key customers and partnerships

More than 1,000 brands make use of Foursquare’s platform (as of September 2021) which includes Snapchat, Twitter, Apple, Uber, and Airbnb.

The firm regularly enters into partnerships in order to broaden and enrich its product offerings. One of the most prominent examples is its partnership with Clear Channel Outdoor (a leading out-of-home (DOOH) advertising provider) in May 2021, to improve measurement and attribution of advertisements making use of this channel. In addition, the company has formed partnerships with Yelp (a crowd-sourced review site), Spotify (an audio streaming service), Constellation Network (a Web3 framework for gathering location-based data on a blockchain) and a number of marketing automation and social media sites including with TikTok to measure in-store visits to support retail businesses.  

Funding and financials

Foursquare has had nine rounds of funding, the most recent being in May 2019 when it raised USD 150 million, primarily to acquire rival ad-tracking attribution tool “Placed” for an undisclosed amount. With the acquisition, Foursquare became the largest independent location attribution platform. Since then, Foursquare has gone on to do two more acquisitions. Most recently (May 2021) it acquired Unfolded, a location-based service that provides data visualization, enrichment, and geospatial data analysis, for an undisclosed amount.