Phunware Data Archives - Phunware

GDPR, PhunCoin and the Evolution of Data Protection

Phunware — Fri, 18 May 2018 14:30:31 +0000

As you may have gathered from the flurry of privacy policy notices likely hitting your inbox, the European Union has enacted a General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that will apply across all EU countries starting May 25, 2018. Businesses of a certain size whose operations or customers touch the EU are required to update their data protection practices or face steep fines (as in, millions of dollars.)

In addition to establishing rules and expectations for businesses, GDPR codifies a set of rights for “data subjects”—i.e., you and me, the people whose personal data is used by Facebook and many other publishers, marketers and advertisers. This “Bill of Rights” for data subjects / people includes things like the right to access your data, the right to restrict data processing and even the right to be forgotten and have your data deleted.

Because Phunware is of a certain size and does business in the EU, we are required to update our policies and procedures to comply with GDPR. For us, however, going through the process of becoming GDPR-compliant was not just about avoiding fines. It was one step in a much larger data-focused strategic initiative that encompasses our policies, products and company culture—and that we hope will one day impact the way all consumer data is accessed, consumed and managed.

Here’s a look at what we’ve done for GDPR and how it fits into our strategic vision.

Data Protection at Phunware

Knowing that GDPR was on the horizon, our team began working towards GDPR compliance in the second half of 2017. We partnered with TrustArc, an industry leader in privacy compliance and risk management solutions, to proactively audit policies and procedures companywide and make recommendations to help us achieve compliance. As a result of that monumental integrated effort, all of our processes and systems will be GDPR compliant as scheduled.

Here are some examples of just a few of the changes we made through this process:

Created an extensive employee privacy training program and employee privacy pledge
Updated all relevant company policies and procedures to reflect GDPR priorities
Updated our existing and planned product capabilities to incorporate data subject rights
Created a Privacy Team focused on maintaining, enforcing and responding to user privacy needs and proactively updating privacy practices as regulations evolve
Contracted with a Data Protection Officer (DPO) to provide breadth and depth to our privacy expertise

To learn more about this initiative, visit https://www.phunware.com/trust.

Going Above and Beyond GDPR with PhunCoin

While complying with GDPR is important for obvious reasons, the spirit of the law is driving more than privacy policy updates. At its core, GDPR is about giving consumers the right to have a say in how—or whether—their data is stored, accessed and used.

At Phunware, this same core idea forms the foundation for PhunCoin, the cryptonetworking token we are preparing to launch later this year. And in addition to the right to know how your data is being used and the right to be forgotten, we believe you are entitled to an additional, very important right—the right to be compensated for the use of your data.

Blockchain technology makes direct microtransactions (like exchanging cryptocurrency for the use of individual data) possible and affordable. Built on blockchain, PhunCoin will enable consumers to be compensated for the use of their data by brands, publishers or marketers. PhunCoin tokens will be redeemable for digital goods and services within the PhunCoin publisher ecosystem, and users will be able to opt out of the use of their data at any time.

Maximum Value for the Entire Ecosystem

Digital business is growing up. We now have the technology and the systems in place to give brands and application developers access to the user data they need to deliver more personalized and more relevant experiences. And we can do it all while giving end users control of their personal data and fair compensation for its use.

We can’t wait to bring it to you.

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The Future of Data and Blockchain, As Heard at SXSW 2018

Phunware — Mon, 26 Mar 2018 15:00:59 +0000

As it approaches its third decade of existence, the internet is experiencing an identity crisis. More people are using it for more purposes than ever before, and it’s under far more scrutiny. Governments and other regulatory bodies are beginning to take a hard look at the laws and protocols that govern web and data use. The EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), for example, will establish a new code of digital human rights covering everything from identity access to the right to data erasure when it goes into effect in May. At the same time, consumers are operating with splintered identities, forced to choose whether to protect their data from or share their data with the world.

At this year’s SXSW Interactive conference, the question of where our data travels and for what purpose took center stage. A two-day programming block called The Blockchain Rises was the centerpiece of the Interactive track, featuring dozens of blockchain-focused sessions and who-knows-how-many parties.

This focus on distributed ledger technology is evidence that as a society, we are reckoning with an unforeseen scale of globalization. We generate an unprecedented amount of data and feel collective fear and distrust of far-reaching global powers. The result is a climate where solutions like blockchain are born and applied in impressively creative ways. Here are some of the most interesting blockchain applications from SXSW Interactive 2018.

Blockchain, Your Data and You

We spent as much time as possible at SXSW 2018 hearing from experts and innovators in the blockchain space. From a discussion on rights management at “What Blockchain Means for Media & Entertainment” to an example of P2P solar energy distribution courtesy of Sandra Ro of Power Ledger, the use cases of distributed ledger technology explored at the Interactive sessions ran the gamut. Here are a few of the most compelling:

Recordkeeping. In an era of mass displacement, human rights groups are turning toward blockchain for the future of identity records. Years of civil war in Syria have displaced millions of refugees. Exacerbating this crisis, the Syrian government has lost control of many of its fundamental government entities and organizations, including those that maintain records of citizenship. A 2015 UNHCR survey of 2,500 refugee families found that 68% were unable to register with the UN, a process that requires presentation and verification of a birth certificate. With almost 70,000 children born to registered Syrian refugees alone since 2011, this breakdown in records could have long-term implications. Not only would blockchain ledger of records would be indestructible, it would be immediately accessible to any pertinent party in case of emergency.
Combating fraud. Hand in-hand with record-keeping is accountability. Almost a decade after the earthquake in Haiti, relief efforts are tainted by reports of dubious spending and pitiful results. In a SXSW mentorship session, Rachel Pipan of Bitfury posited that a blockchain ledger of transaction data and allocations is the obvious solution to financial malfeasance in disaster response. Whether for government aid, local construction projects or corporate audits, the ability to access a complete and time-stamped record of the path of allocated funds could do wonders for donor confidence, not to mention relief recipients. In the same session, Pipan underscored the theme of transparency: we have the power to instill trust in bureaucracy like we’ve never been able to before.
Land rights management. In the Republic of Georgia, land titles are registered on the blockchain, marking the first time a national government has used the technology for civil validation. At their SXSW session “Blockchain: A Trust Crisis,” the Bitfury Group discussed the ambitious project and its importance. According to Bitfury CEO Valery Vavilov, the “big goal is to move… to smartphones, so people can [access their records] 24/7 and all transactions are secured, transferrable and accountable.” The result is a truly citizen-owned land ownership system: if you’re a citizen with land, you have access to that record along with the Georgian government, any interested buyer, your next of kin, etc. For any disputes, the ledger is the master truth, and by nature, it’s not held by an attackable central authority.
Online identity. Phunware’s own Randall Crowder also spoke about blockchain technology at SXSW Interactive in a session about creative approaches to startup funding. In his session, Randall explored how Phunware plans to overlay its mobile application platform with cryptonetworking technology and release a PhunCoin token. The goal of PhunCoin is to leverage the data collected by Phunware applications to create an ecosystem where consumers, app developers and brands can consume, share and be compensated for the use of data. View this Austin Business Journal article for more information and subscribe to our newsletter for updates.
Finance. Mobile payment systems are now mainstream, but users of Venmo, PayPal and others are still chained to their bank accounts. A true P2P solution could take the form of a blockchain; in fact Boston-based startup Circle has already created the first blockchain-powered P2P payment app that functions in iMessage. Eventually, blockchain could form the basis of a new kind of banking authority, governed by each of us and free from the security pitfalls of a traditional bank. Payments over blockchain could also work the other way: app developers could use a blockchain to manage in-app payments and bypass Apple or Google’s regulatory structure for easier and quicker refunds, larger profit margins and emancipation from the walled garden of today’s app store, at least in terms of audience monetization.
Supply Chain. The opioid epidemic claimed over 37,000 American lives in 2016 alone. Many of those fatalities could have been prevented (or at least better understood) with more comprehensive and accessible drug supply chain information. Tomicah Tillemann, co-founder and chairman at Blockchain Trust Accelerator, spoke in his SXSW session about the potential for transparent and decentralized patient records to reform healthcare from the ground up. Using blockchain to record supply-chain and care delivery information, patients, providers and—if it came to it—regulators could access information about the source of drugs as well as how and by whom they are prescribed. Increasing transparency and accountability in healthcare is just one use case—from source and distribution tracking in the burgeoning cannabis industry to creating a non-invasive firearm registry, supply chains have significant potential to benefit from distributed ledger technology.

Where Do We Go from Here?

The next era of the web is taking shape, and data is its cornerstone. As Dustin Byington noted in Austin Blockchain Collective’s SXSW session, blockchain-powered data democratization can be a perfect balm for a world struggling to keep up with the pace of its own innovation and consumers grappling with just how much of ourselves we expose to algorithms.

Blockchain technology is far more than a buzzword within the cryptocurrency hype machine: it’s a sleeping dragon. As we begin to reassess how we want to interact with our governments, brands and world via the internet, we’ll establish new paradigms. The value of decentralized personal data is the potential to take back control of our data, our identities and ultimately our world.

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DMPs and You: Phunware Sits Down with Lotame CEO Andy Monfried

Phunware — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 16:11:55 +0000

At Phunware, as you may already know, we are big fans of data because of how it can help us understand our audiences better and deliver more relevant and authentically mobile experiences to people everywhere. We’re also big believers in partnering with other industry leaders to help marketers unlock the power of user data.

That’s why Phunware chose to partner with Lotame®, the leading independent data management platform (DMP). A DMP is essentially a data warehouse that, as Gartner for Marketers puts it, does three things:

imports and unifies structured consumer data from various different systems,
finds audiences as defined by advertisers or publishers across multiple data sources and data vendors, and
sends instructions about who to target, with what message and where (i.e., which channel or device)—in effect, it activates all that data.

In other words, according to Martech Today, “a DMP offers a central location for marketers to access and manage data like mobile identifiers and cookie IDs to create targeting segments for their digital advertising campaigns.”

Through this partnership, Phunware’s data will be available to marketers in the Lotame DMP. This is fantastic news for marketers as it expands the Lotame DMP with access to Phunware’s deep and unique contextual mobile data. Consider:

Phunware reaches one in every ten mobile consumers globally
Phunware’s platform touches more than 700 million devices and 40 billion mobile user events every month
We capture more than 70 unique types of event data—think of events as “moments”—like whether a user opens one of our apps, taps on an ad, appears around certain locations, etc.

Recently, we sat down with Lotame’s CEO and founder, Andy Monfried, to talk about trends in the DMP space and what makes the Phunware / Lotame partnership so exciting. Check out our conversation below.

PW: How is growth in mobile adoption (smartphones, 4G, 5G) changing the DMP landscape?
AM: Consumers are “always on” today—and marketers need to be able to grab their attention on any screen, anytime. Before someone even leaves the house in the morning, they are checking their phone for the weather, getting status updates from their social circles, looking at their bank statement or ordering a cup of coffee from Starbucks. These moments have become an integral part of our lifestyle and, in turn, have a huge impact on how marketers reach their target audiences across screens.
Because mobile devices are always on, marketers can collect a wealth of intelligence about users’ interests and actions, which is now vital to a successful integrated marketing strategy. DMPs like Lotame empower marketers by aggregating all this information (from desktop, mobile, offline, social, search, etc.) into one centralized platform.
Lotame is leading the charge to help our customers put this valuable mobile data to work. Five years ago, audiences were built and campaigns were served to online and mobile audiences through separate platforms—without any clear understanding of audience overlap and without the ability to deliver sequential messages. Lotame’s cross-device technology determines the relationships that exist between billions of signals across platforms, so marketers can understand which ad to send to what audience at the right time.
PW: How are brands using DMPs as part of their mobile strategy?
AM: The most basic uses include audience insights and analytics, targeting, and campaign optimization. The ability to link different devices together gives advertisers and publishers significant opportunities to target the right person on the right device.
The more fluid the user experience across devices, the more likely the customer is to convert. To help enable this fluidity, marketers use Lotame’s DMP to improve their cross-screen targeting efforts (which also reduces their overall advertising spend).
Frequency capping, for example, enables a marketer to limit the number of advertisements to any one person during a certain campaign. If an individual person uses two different devices every day (laptop and smartphone), cross-device frequency capping allows marketers to limit the number of ads that consumer sees. No one wants to send repeated messages to an audience that isn’t interested or isn’t responding—it’s wasteful for the marketer’s budget and for the consumer’s patience.
PW: Why are some marketers slow to fully adopt DMPs, and what are they risking with their failure to launch?
AM: Many marketers have jumped on the DMP bandwagon, but there is a significant difference between a beginner and an advanced DMP user. I think one of the biggest challenges is education—more marketers need to fully understand what a DMP is and how it can be used effectively.
For so long, marketers have made huge campaign decisions based on judgment or gut instinct. Working with a DMP would give them additional data points that could either back up or disprove these opinions. Analytics, campaign optimization, content personalization and retargeting capabilities are just a few of the many things a data management platform can do, but it takes education and experience to understand the advanced use cases of a DMP.
Bottom line: the marketers who fail to keep up and adopt a DMP will be left in the dust.
PW: Many people who are aware of DMPs think they’re just for ad buying. What other applications are there that execs need to know?
AM: Behaviorally targeted ads are the first basic business case, but we work with hundreds of companies who are using DMPs for so much more. Publishers use their audiences to customize content on their websites or serve personalized ads to specific audiences, which leads to increased engagement and time on site. Many brands and marketers use the DMP to learn more about their consumers through audience insights and analytics, then feed these insights back into their marketing plans to make sure they are effectively communicating with their targets. You can also use a DMP to optimize campaigns or simply for buying and selling second- or third-party data. The possibilities are varied and limitless.
PW: How important is cross-device functionality with a DMP?
AM: Cross-device functionality is not an option anymore—it’s a requirement for successful data-driven marketers. When you understand consumer behavior across devices, you can target more accurately and improve campaign performance. Combining laptop, tablet, and cell phones via a device graph such as Lotame’s enables marketers to send consistent messages to one user on whichever device they are using at the time. Ultimately, this empowers marketers to target consumers across all devices in a productive, cost-effective way.
PW: How does a relationship with Phunware enhance Lotame’s offering to brands?
AM: We’re excited about this partnership because Phunware brings a massive new mobile data set to our device graph. Phunware’s mobile reach is huge, gathering powerful data from hundreds of millions of devices. This will add another level of depth to the amount of information we know about each mobile device, which will help marketers know who they are sending ads to and when they are ready to buy.

Thanks, Andy! Everybody at Phunware is excited about this partnership as well. We can’t wait to get busy helping marketers build smarter engagements. To learn more about Phunware’s partnership with Lotame, view the press release: Phunware Partners with Lotame to Help Marketers Better Target and Convert Mobile Users.

Still curious about how data can help you achieve your business goals? Download our eBook to learn more about how you to harness the power of mobile data and turn it into smart strategy.

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4 Huge Takeaways from Big Data’s Big Event

Phunware — Thu, 08 Dec 2016 17:43:18 +0000

When it comes to big data, Strata + Hadoop World is the big time. It’s the world’s largest conference of its kind, where the big data community comes together to explore everything from data science and the latest innovations to the Internet of Things, legal issues, business impact and more.

Recently, the 2016 conference was held in New York City. I was lucky enough to attend, along with about 7,000 other big data enthusiasts.

Most of the big companies came forward and spoke about how they are catching up on big data. The keynote talks and sessions were really entertaining and interesting—here are some of my highlights.

1. Big data is transforming the way we see people—and the world.

In one session, Accordion Health’s president (and University of Texas at Austin professor) Sriram Vishwanath discussed several myths and facts about the impact of data science on healthcare. At another, Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of the Data Group at Microsoft, shared multiple stories about how machine learning, population data and the cloud are coming together to fundamentally reshape eye care and the future of human vision. Sirosh gave some fascinating examples of how Microsoft is working with eye care providers in India to successfully predict the outcome of LASIK, corneal transplant, cataract replacement and other critical eye surgeries. And that’s only the beginning!

2. Big data unlocks innovation.

In her keynote session, author Pagan Kennedy spoke about serendipity and how we can discover what we’re not looking for, comparing accidental inventions in the drug industry to innovations in big data world. There was a great quote in her deck: “The combination of quirky human creativity and data analytics can open up new paths into the unknown.” Yes!

Learn more in this eBook: Mobile Data: The Missing Link in Your User Acquisition and Engagement Strategies.

3. Big data takes us across boundaries.

Another fascinating session featured Giannina Segnini, Director of the Data Concentration program at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. Segnini talked about how the The International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) uses big data to investigate and report on critical multinational stories. She has been part of the ICIJ’s Panama Papers project, an investigation of more than 11.5 million leaked financial and legal records that expose a corrupt system of secret offshore companies. (Segnini even solicited more help from the big data community to parse and understand the remaining gigabytes of Panama Papers data.)

4. Big data is for everybody.

One of my favorite talks was the Ask me Anything with DJ Patil, Chief Data Scientist and Deputy CTO for Data Policy at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Patil mentioned the tremendous expansion in open data sets during the Obama administration—from about 10 when he first started to roughly 2,000 today. As Forbes contributor Bernard Marr summarized it, this openness “…means that anyone from major corporations to armchair data scientists can now use data to develop new strategies and technologies to harness it.”

Patil also stressed openness, transparency and responsibility. ComputerWorld’s Katherine Noyes captured this telling quote from Patil: “Always focus on the individual. If you do, you’ll always be right, and we can really transform this country in an unbelievably awesome way.”

What do you think is the next big thing in big data? Let us know in the comments below.

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How Big Is Your Data? Glimpsing the Future of Audience Targeting

Phunware — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 22:16:54 +0000

There’s a funny TV commercial for Esurance in which a tiara-wearing, gown-clad beauty queen operates a backhoe at a construction site to the dismay of the panicked foreman, who exclaims, “You’re not Marge!” (Marge is presumably the usual backhoe operator.) “I’m sorta Marge,” the beauty queen says, and then goes on to recount the ways she’s like Marge, with perfect stage presence and a pageant-ready smile. This absurd scenario is used to illustrate Esurance’s message of the importance of custom pricing for insurance, and punctuated with the tagline “Sorta you isn’t you.” It’s brilliant.

View video on YouTube here.

Insurance isn’t the only place first-party data is important. It’s critical for audience targeting in mobile advertising as well. Lots of ad networks use the same third-party data sources (like BlueKai, Datalogix and others) to find and target the audience segments their clients are after. These data sources are rich and can improve campaign performance, but imagine how much more effective you could target your audience if you leveraged deeper insights that got at the core of a user. After all, sorta your audience isn’t your audience.

The First-Party Data Difference

Over the years, Phunware has built thousands of apps that have amassed over a hundred million downloads worldwide. As users interact with those apps and Phunware’s platform, they create what we call “events.” Events include app installs and opens, content viewed, alerts set, beacons interacted with, even Wi-Fi networks devices connect to. Phunware’s big data infrastructure does not directly associate these events with the users creating them; it merely records that the events happened—for each of the 625 million monthly active device IDs on Phunware’s platform. (Side note: Here at Phunware, we make sure that our data gathering methods are 100% compliant with industry standard guidelines, and we are certified with TRUSTe who has a rigorous data/opt-out review process. So rest assured, everything is kept kosher!)

In fact, each device ID on our platform creates over 70 unique Phunware-specific events per month—which means that the platform is continually getting smarter about who users are and what they want. Our team is constantly extracting useful information and building valuable audiences that our customers can target with their mobile advertising campaigns. For example, if a user has an app that was either built by Phunware or leverages Phunware’s mobile analytics tools, the platform is able to see what Wi-Fi networks that device connects to over time. By gathering the device IDs that have connected to Starbucks’ free Wi-Fi at least 1-2 times a week, we can build a set of device IDs that represent Starbucks brand loyalists. Those users will probably convert better for Starbucks mobile ads than other audience groups segmented because they “look like” Starbucks customers based on demographics or other data.

There are infinite possible segments like this, and they don’t just benefit advertisers. Yes, advertisers see better campaign performance when their ads reach the right consumers, but consumers also have happier mobile experiences when the advertising they see contains products and offers that are relevant to them.

For more information about how you can start leveraging Phunware’s proprietary data from the biggest mobile apps, contact our Audience Engagement team.

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