The advertising industry is constantly working to target ads more precisely to reach their intended audiences. Traditionally, this effort has focused on low-granularity measures such as focus groups to fine-tune ad content, venue, and geographical region. With greater digitization and pervasive mobile phone use, ads are becoming increasingly tailored to specific users and situations.
This enhanced targeting draws on the ability to recognize individuals as well as their locations in near real-time. Thus, a driver can be notified of a nearby shop in a coffee chain that they frequent, or a retailer could tailor pricing or promotions to a specific customer with recognizable behavior over time.
The advertising intelligence (ADINT) that makes this personalization possible is driven by a Mobile Advertising ID (MAID) that is unique to every individual handset. Unlike cookies, this single identifier is browser and app agnostic, spanning every application on the phone for a unified dataset. The mobile operating system ties specific user actions such as web searches, social media posts, and downloads to the MAID to form the basis of targeted advertising. If the application used is authorized to collect it, location information is also tied to the event and the MAID. Because of the financial value of this information, popular applications are designed to encourage users to opt-in to share their location information. The ecosystem involved in collecting, buying, and selling this data provides a rich source of investigative data for law enforcement agencies (LEAs).
How the ADINT Market Operates
Mobile operating system vendors including Google and Apple, as well as Meta and some other large application makers, operate marketplaces for selling ads using ADINT, allowing smaller application makers to monetize their data via location-based advertising. Such marketplaces sell ad space targeted to individual devices associated with a specific MAID. For example, a furniture retailer might want to push out an ad to a user who just searched for couches and is located near one of its stores.
The offer, purchase, and ad placement are all completed automatically and nearly instantaneously. In addition to real-time usage, historical location information is also sold in bulk to aggregators who combine data from multiple marketplaces. Since large companies such as Google, Apple, and Meta tend not to sell their ADINT, these aggregators increase the pool of information available to the public.
Bulk ADINT supports a variety of use cases from optimizing public transportation to analyzing foot traffic in a shopping mall. Aggregators selling bulk ADINT also provide the primary means for investigators and other third parties to access this data. While anonymized and therefore available without a warrant or other legal authorization, such records include the MAIDs and latitude/longitude coordinates of the corresponding devices at a known time, at a minimum.
Incorporating ADINT into the Broader Scope of Lawful Intelligence
ADINT may provide a lead in an investigation; and in some cases, it may be the only lead. For example, a mobile advertising data aggregator was instrumental in solving a real-world case where a person’s body was discovered after disappearing while jogging in a rural area. Using aggregated mobile advertising data, investigators found that a vehicle had passed by the jogger and turned around right before the victim disappeared. This lead helped locate a pickup truck and traces of blood which led to a confession and conviction.
This is a relatively simple, but tragic, example where the information needed to identify a suspect and make an arrest was all available within the aggregator’s ADINT platform. More often, ADINT is just one component of the investigation, which may also rely on call detail records, social wires, messaging platforms, and more. Unfortunately, each additional source requires an intimate understanding of the underlying data and a separate tool to analyze it – this quickly becomes untenable.
In these cases, the SS8 platform ingests all the available information and fuses it for a single, holistic view that helps investigators draw insights. A geofence around the location of a bank robbery will identify many IDs, for example. However, when combined with the location of the getaway car or other robberies, the number of IDs is greatly reduced. Examining the mobile advertising information for these leads over a period of time can reveal a pattern of life which could possibly identify their work and home addresses. With this information, record checks can provide identities, unmasking the anonymized IDs, and additional searches or surveillances can further strengthen the case for prosecutors. All of this analysis can be performed in SS8’s powerful Intellego XT data monitoring platform.
About Kevin McTiernan
Kevin has over 20 years of extensive experience in the telecommunications and network security industries. At SS8, Kevin is the VP of Government Solutions and is responsible for leading the vision, design, and delivery of SS8’s government solutions, including the Xcipio® compliance portfolio. You can learn more about Kevin on his LinkedIn profile by clicking here.
About SS8 Networks
As a leader in Lawful and Location Intelligence, SS8 helps make societies safer. Our commitment is to extract, analyze, and visualize the critical intelligence that gives law enforcement, intelligence agencies, and emergency services the real-time insights that help save lives. Our high performance, flexible, and future-proof solutions also enable mobile network operators to achieve regulatory compliance with minimum disruption, time, and cost. SS8 is trusted by the largest government agencies, communications providers, and systems integrators globally.
Intellego® XT monitoring and data analytics portfolio is optimized for Law Enforcement Agencies to capture, analyze, and visualize complex data sets for real-time investigative intelligence.
LocationWise delivers the highest audited network location accuracy worldwide, providing active and passive location intelligence for emergency services, law enforcement, and mobile network operators.
Xcipio® mediation platform meets the demands of lawful intercept in any network type and provides the ability to transcode (convert) between lawful intercept handover versions and standard families.
To learn more, contact us at info@ss8.com.
