LSAI.L Regulatory News (LSAI)

3 March 2020

Location Sciences Group PLC("Location Sciences" or the "Company")

Global Master Service Agreement

 and

Partnership with Horizon Media Inc.

Location Sciences (AIM: LSAI), the leading location data verification company, is pleased to announce that it has entered into a global master service agreement with one of the largest global advertising holding companies. This follows the recent signing by the Company of a framework agreement with Horizon Media Inc. ("Horizon Media"), the world's largest independent media agency, which represents another significant step towards increased market adoption of location verification software.

The signing of the global master service agreement follows multiple tests carried out in Q4 2019 by certain advertising agencies within the advertising holding company's group using Verify, Location Sciences' location verification platform. The Company's Directors believe that signing the master service agreement supports its strategy of pilot arrangements with advertising agencies thereby allowing customers to see the value of the Verify data and the significant improvements that can be made to performance.

Across the market, the Company continues to see over 50% of inaccuracies and fraud in location advertising campaign data, which its platform is helping to clean up and improve.

Mark Slade, CEO of Location Sciences, commented:

"These agreements are pivotal for us as we operate in an emerging market. Furthermore, they demonstrate that the relevant stakeholders in these large multi-national agencies recognise the potential of, and back, our technology and capabilities. While we are still relatively early in our journey as a business, these agreements give us access to a large pool of location advertising spend.

The key for us now is to keep building awareness of the benefits of location verification with brands by leveraging these new agency agreements. The Board remains focused on demonstrating how our technology solves a global problem in the digital advertising industry thereby driving performance and therefore ROI to advertisers."

Horizon Media partnership

Horizon Media is testing the Company's verification technology to take a leading position in the industry in tackling the transparency and accuracy of location data. Using Verify, Horizon Media can now access in-depth campaign insights through a self-service dashboard. This enables it to validate the quality, compliance and accuracy of the location data it acquires. By using verified location data, Horizon Media can reduce wasted ad spend, improve the value of the purchased media and increase the overall efficiency of its media investments.

With the rising cost of ad tech and a move to more performance-based compensation models, Horizon Media has continued to seek solutions that improve the quality of data and drive improved business outcomes for its clients.

Although its partnership with Location Sciences is still at an early stage, Horizon Media has already seen improved results across locally targeted test campaigns. In these campaigns, it recently looked to validate the presence of 100% GPS data and uncovered that approximately 25% of the initial campaign impressions were being delivered to customers 300+ miles away from the targeted locations. The data also identified impression delivery to fraudulent IP addresses from outside the US.

With these campaign insights, Horizon Media was able to deliver significantly improved data quality and transparency. By working with supplier partners to optimise the campaign media investment, Horizon Media was able to reinvest over 30% of the budget into working media.

Horizon Media is now looking to expand its partnership with Location Sciences across all location-based campaigns and provide all of its clients with this level of insight, transparency and improvement in campaign effectiveness.

Eric Warburton, VP Campaign Management & Advertising Operations at Horizon Media commented:

"We are committed to improving business outcomes continuously for our clients who need to execute campaigns built on the highest quality data. Questioning and disrupting the industry standard is critical to improving campaign effectiveness. However, any technology investment we make must increase efficiency and drive better outcomes. Our partnership with Location Sciences leans into our desire to test new platforms and bring greater scale, transparency and trust to this critical area of digital advertising." 

"Brands and agencies are finding that, despite the enormous volume of third-party data inventory on the market, the data is often not contributing as planned to their marketing goals," said Jason Smith, Chief Business Officer at Location Sciences. "Media investments are not being optimised and improved outcomes are not being realised. The pressure is on to deliver results and, by exploring the depth of the services we can provide, Horizon Media is setting itself apart in the market as a true disruptor."

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About Horizon Media

Horizon Media, Inc. is the largest independent media agency in the world. It was founded in 1989, is headquartered in New York, and has offices in Los Angeles and Toronto. With estimated billings of $8.7 billion and over 2,300 employees, Horizon is the third largest U.S. media agency according to COMvergence data.

Recognized as one of the world's ten most innovative marketing and advertising companies by Fast Company, Horizon Media has been named Media Agency of the Year by MediaPost, Adweek and AdAge and is known for its highly personal approach to client service. Renowned for its culture, Horizon Media is also consistently named in all the prestigious annual Best Places to Work lists published by Fortune, Forbes, AdAge, Crain's New York Business and Los Angeles Business Journal; including "Best Workplaces for Diversity," "Best Workplaces for Women," and "Best Workplaces for Millennials" honours.

Earning the industry's highest honour, Bill Koenigsberg, President, CEO and Founder of Horizon Media, was inducted into the American Advertising Federation (AAF) Hall of Fame in 2019.

About Location Sciences

Location Sciences is the pre-eminent global location verification provider to the $160 billion digital advertising industry. Working in partnership with brands, media agencies and suppliers to reduce ad-wastage and improve the effectiveness of location-based advertising campaigns. 

The digital advertising marketplace remains unregulated and unmonitored, with an estimated $19 billion wasted on ad-fraud in 2018. Location Sciences has developed Verify, the world's first independent location verification product. Utilising sophisticated machine learning and pattern recognition technologies, Verify detects location ad-fraud and shines a light on location data inaccuracy with the aim of bringing back integrity, transparency and trust to the market place.