Monetizing Your Device Location Data With LotaData

There are a lot of people making money off of the acquisition, organization, and providing access to data in our digital world. While I quietly tune into what the data monetization trends are, I am also actively looking for interesting approaches to generating revenue from data but, specifically, with an eye on revenue sharing opportunities for the owners or stewards of that data. This can be done as opposed to just the exploitation of people’s data and the generation of revenue without them knowing or including them in the conversation. To help counteract this negative aspect of the data economy, I’m always looking to highlight (potentially) more positive outcomes when it comes to making money from data.

I was recently profiling the API of the people intelligence platform LotaData, and I came across their data monetization program, which provides an interesting look at how platforms can help data stewards generate revenue from data, but, in a way, that makes it accessible to individuals looking to monetize their own data as well. “LotaData’s AI platform transforms raw location signals into ‘People Intelligence’ for monetization, usually based upon the following key attributes: latitude, longitude, timestamp, deviceID, and accuracy.”

Representing activity at a location and/or point in time allows LotaData to understand what is happening at specific places at scale and develop meaningful insights and behavioral segments that other companies and government agencies will want to buy into. Some of the examples they provide are:

LotaData’s location-based insights and segments are entirely inferred from raw location signals, emphasizing that they do not access or collect any personally identifiable information (PII) from mobile phones, stating that they “do not and never will collect PII such as name, email, phone number, date of birth, national identifier, credit cards, or other sensitive information.” Essentially, this means walking on the light side of the whole data acquisition and monetization game, playing the honest card when it comes to the data economy.