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How do I accurately detect mobile os and city of user? (11)

07-05-2016 11:21 PM #1 rafa161 (Member)
How do I accurately detect mobile os and city of user?

I am trying to get my landing pages to show my visitor's mobile os and city. I was able to show mobile os with php and tried the same for city but using mobile ip is very inaccurate apparently.

What do you guys use to do this? I get the feeling php will slow down my pages a lot as well?

Thanks in advanced.

07-05-2016 11:33 PM #2 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

You need to use some external DB for this and unfortunately, there is NO DB that would be accurate all around the world. Maxmind is the most used one, but that's only somewhat accurate on the city level in USA. There are more accurate solutions but Im sure you wouldn't be happy about their pricing

What do you need this for actually?

07-06-2016 12:01 AM #3 rafa161 (Member)

I wanted to make my landers "personalized" for each visitor as ive read it increases CTR a lot.

I see landing pages getting URL parameters to do this but I cant get my head around how to do this myself, getting the variables from my traffic source and displaying them in my landers. I also dont know how accurate this would be.

07-06-2016 07:03 AM #4 manu_adefy (Veteran Member)

Don't you use any tracker? I think most of them should have at least a decently accurate database and using it is trivial.

07-06-2016 10:46 AM #5 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by manu_adefy View Post
Don't you use any tracker? I think most of them should have at least a decently accurate database and using it is trivial.
Yup, this is an option too, trackers use these DBs and you can pass the variable in the URL, for example Voluum has country, region and even city in the available variables. I didn't actually realize they go as deep as the city level since I'm not using such deep targeting on my LP's, because the accuracy was usually pretty bad. Maybe I should run some tests with them again, their other targeting options are usually pretty accurate.

07-06-2016 11:00 AM #6 manu_adefy (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by matuloo View Post
Yup, this is an option too, trackers use these DBs and you can pass the variable in the URL, for example Voluum has country, region and even city in the available variables. I didn't actually realize they go as deep as the city level since I'm not using such deep targeting on my LP's, because the accuracy was usually pretty bad. Maybe I should run some tests with them again, their other targeting options are usually pretty accurate.
I don't use city either but I read a few months ago that they updated the database to be more accurate. Worth a try perhaps

07-06-2016 11:02 AM #7 rafa161 (Member)

Thanks ill take a look

07-06-2016 11:30 AM #8 yazimedia (Member)

I've been using Voluum's city call-out and split test it against calling out country, region and city and city gave me the highest CTR and ROI by far. So definitely give it a try.

07-06-2016 01:13 PM #9 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by yazimedia View Post
I've been using Voluum's city call-out and split test it against calling out country, region and city and city gave me the highest CTR and ROI by far. So definitely give it a try.
Interesting, would you mind naming the GEO? When I've run similar tests, USA could work pretty well but the DB I had at that time was so inaccurate that it actually hurt my conversions in other GEOs

07-06-2016 02:06 PM #10 yazimedia (Member)

I have two campaigns running, one Australia and one Canada. What I've been doing is making the call-out relatively generic so that if it isn't accurate then it still doesn't throw the user off completely.

Eg. "A new Tesco store is opening in [city] and to celebrate we're giving random Canadians a chance to win..."
Instead of: "As a resident of [city] you have been given a chance to..."

07-06-2016 02:21 PM #11 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by yazimedia View Post
I have two campaigns running, one Australia and one Canada. What I've been doing is making the call-out relatively generic so that if it isn't accurate then it still doesn't throw the user off completely.

Eg. "A new Tesco store is opening in [city] and to celebrate we're giving random Canadians a chance to win..."
Instead of: "As a resident of [city] you have been given a chance to..."
Yup, good way of doing this, I'm also using this approach whenever I try to target something based on location - so words like 50 km within .... close to ... etc

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