Foursquare To Share Check-in Data With 3rd Parties

Foursquare began pitching digital agencies on a new advertising product that would utilize Foursquare’s location and behavioral data to contextualize ads on other platforms. The product itself is still in development, but it will eventually allow advertisers to use Foursquare data to target ads purchased through ad exchanges or networks. This will mark Foursquare’s first attempt to generate revenue outside of its trademark app. Prior ad efforts only netted the company $2 million, and with heightened pressure on the now-burgeoning startup, the race is on to prove it can generate enough revenue to justify its sky-high valuations. These new developments mesh with the update released on Wednesday that aims to make local discovery, not check-ins, its primary function. It seems as though many agencies are willing to pay for this sort of data for targeted ads, and with the company positioning itself as, “the location layer for the Internet,” more than 40,000 developers have integrated Foursquare’s location database into their apps.