veracity, velocity and variety of the data it ingests. Next, Pinsight needed to sort through a massive volume of varied
CASE STUDY
Pinsight Media: Leveraging Diverse Datasets Across 65 Million Devices to Derive New Insights Pinsight Media (Pinsight) is the mobile data company that uses verified, network-level data to fuel intelligent brand decisions. Its data management platform (DMP) ingests over 60 terabytes of data from over 30 unique sources, coming from 65 million devices across multiple mobile network operators. Pinsight takes mobile advertising beyond basic audience segments, providing clients with both precision targeting and efficient ad buys. Network-level data provides righttime advertising, capturing those with the highest propensity to respond in an exact moment. For example, Pinsight’s elite mobile data lets brands target the Mobile Mom when she’s most likely to click on an ad for diapers versus an ad for wine.
THE CHALLENGE OF VOLUME, VERACITY, VELOCITY, AND VARIETY
KEY HIGHLIGHTS • Leverages a diverse datasets to derive new insight • Ingests 60+ TB of data daily, from 30 unique sources, and 65 million devices • Partnered with Datameer to accelerate data democratization • Collaborated with Hortonworks Professional Services for architecture optimization, batch and streaming analysis
In order to achieve its market position as the leading mobile data company, Pinsight required an agile, scalable platform that aligned with its commitment to the volume, veracity, velocity and variety of the data it ingests. Next, Pinsight needed to sort through a massive volume of varied data to ensure their ads were personalized, timely, and delivered before users could scroll through a page or close their app. Pinsight recognized that the ability to position itself in the market hinged on its ability to answer three fundamental questions about its raw data: 1
What demographic data can be gleaned from mobile app usage?
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What behavioral data can be detected from particular traffic usage?
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Where are the consumers located at a given time, and how can persistent location data better predict their next action?
Pinsight Media — Joint Customer Case Study • ©2018 Hortonworks • hortonworks.com
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Although these questions might be asked separately, Pinsight understood that only a single view of its consumers could answer all three. Thus they turned to Hortonworks and Datameer.
PREMIUM MOBILE DATA THROUGH PREMIUM SUPPORT Pinsight Media now manages a data lake on Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP®). That lake supplies the ad tech industry with verified, first-party data straight from the network. This offers the most real, up-to-date view of people and their genuine behaviors, enabling precision targeting, minimized waste, and higher campaign ROI. From the beginning of the journey, the Hortonworks professional services team provided its deep subject matter expertise to Pinsight and helped the company launch its HDP cluster. Since then, Hortonworks has helped Pinsight optimize its Lambda architecture for both batch and streaming processing.
BECOMING THE MOBILE DATA COMPANY Pinsight’s market position as the mobile data company is only possible from the behavioral insights gleaned from the mobile data stored in HDP and processed with Datameer. The integration of HDP creates a single view of user behaviors across multiple mobile devices and operating systems, removing data fragmentation while reducing overhead costs for Pinsight. “We ingest over 60 terabytes of data daily from over 30 unique sources across 65 million devices, making us the elite source for network-level data,” said Jason Delker, Chief Technology and Data Officer at Pinsight. “As such, we needed a platform that aligns with our commitment to volume, veracity, velocity, and variety of the data. Only Hortonworks Data Platform provides both the scale and agility we need to let our clients be more precise in their targeting and more efficient with their ad buys.” Pinsight and Hortonworks work together to establish a platform that securely ingests the mobile data while empowering the Pinsight team to run complex analytics on data at rest, via HDP. Hadoop’s current ecosystem offers a seamless integration of Pinsight’s third-party analytics applications, such as Datameer and Tableau, while maintaining the company’s existing business intelligence tools, which enables quick and easy access to even more diverse data sets.
BRINGING DATA TO LIFE Today, Pinsight’s team of experienced data scientists do more than make data matter; they bring it to life. The team uses HDP to perform cutting-edge analysis of mobile data, which leads to the development of new, leading-edge features and technologies used across multiple product lines, giving Pinsight a competitive-edge in the market. For example, Pinsight sees over as many as 30 billion location event records per day. These records are ingested straight from the network, providing a deeper analysis about the day-today travel patterns of mobile users and their varying personas as they move in and out of their day. Without HDP, these insights wouldn’t be possible. Pinsight’s data science team leverages Apache Spark™ on HDP to develop and run a patent pending clustering algorithm which sees on average 900 billion events per month. The output from the algorithm is a rich set of condensed spatial-temporal information that forms the foundation of Pinsight’s Personas and custom audiences. In addition, the team is building the functionality to deliver real-time, location-based notifications, accurate to within 20 meters based on either geo-fencing or WiFi-aware network connectivity. At this time, no other carrier offers a product as precise or real-time as Pinsight’s notification capabilities. The data science team also uses Apache Spark on HDP to develop an app recommendation engine for Pinsight’s Top Apps widget. The widget displays a series of applications that may be relevant to a user. Using application metadata and information about which applications a user has installed, the recommendation engine curates a custom list of applications for each user. This enhances the product experience, increases engagement, and reduces product churn.
Pinsight Media — Joint Customer Case Study • ©2018 Hortonworks • hortonworks.com
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DATAMEER: ACCELERATING DATA DEMOCRATIZATION Pinsight needed an answer for its critical data and analytic challenges. Datameer, a Hortonworks partner, delivers an automated, scalable, and cohesive way to democratize and organize the vast amount of information in its data lake. Delivering curated data in support of all Pinsight’s lines of business helps the company evolve its products and business strategy. Datameer is a key part of Pinsight’s solution stack: • Performs “Course Analytics,” the first-level of data organization and analysis to shape, slice and aggregate data. This enables SMEs to process and interpret the data and build actionable insights. • Processes location signals from the network-level mobile and CRM data. • Smart Execution enables running multiple, large jobs in a more efficient manner. • Increases privacy and security for its cluster. • Delivers post-processed data using Datameer’s unique extensibility and SDK.
“Datameer offers a unified platform that makes it easy to ingest, anonymize, sort and deliver complex data sets. It lets us focus on deriving value from the data, and fuels growth for our customers.” Robert Burcham, Chief Technology Officer, Pinsight Media
• Results in curated data for final consumption by analysts and clients. This result in a normalized data set that is policy and governance compliant, ready for intelligent mining and shovel-ready for innovative business strategies. By partnering with Hortonworks and Datameer, Pinsight creates and curates data, distills and sorts information, and elevates strategic knowledge from its massive data lake. The platform provides significant value, helping clients understand new markets, inform decisions, and reach customers in meaningful ways.
PLANNING FOR THE FUTURE OF DATA Pinsight is currently architecting capabilities to stream analytics and create advertising logs from its partners. Using Hortonworks Connected Data Platforms, with Apache Spark and Hortonworks DataFlow (HDF), Pinsight can collect and aggregate advertising event data from both in-house and third party sources. This capability serves to increase the speed at which Pinsight lands behavioral and persistent location data, reducing data fragmentation, and increasing real-time ad delivery. Pinsight will continue to expand its data sources and technical capabilities, blending the digital and physical world. This increased breadth and depth of the data will give brands a hyper-personal way to connect with their best customers. From real-time engagement and interaction to in-store attribution and beyond, Pinsight’s mobile data serves as the ground truth of people, their genuine behaviors, and their minute-to-minute patterns.
Pinsight Media — Joint Customer Case Study • ©2018 Hortonworks • hortonworks.com
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ABOUT PINSIGHT MEDIA Pinsight Media is the mobile data company that uses verified, network-level data to fuel intelligent brand decisions. Pinsight’s data science experts use a proprietary method to combine first-party data with mobile web, app and location data to understand the persistent behaviors of a brand’s best customer, pinpointing those who have the highest propensity to respond. This results in actionable insights and smarter audience targeting that maximizes spend, minimizes waste, and refines the marketing messages. Mobile is essential to customers, which makes Pinsight essential to brands. For more information, visit www.pinsightmedia.com.
ABOUT DATAMEER Datameer is changing the way companies do business by enabling them to get faster insights and more value from their data to generate more trustworthy decisions that lead to better business outcomes. Leading global organizations such as Citibank, RBC, Optum, Aetna, Anthem, National Instruments, and Vivint use our secure and scalable enterprise-grade platform to streamline and simplify data preparation, integration, exploration and consumption so subject matter experts can leverage trusted data to cultivate innovation and efficiency for competitive advantage. Learn more at www.datameer.com.
About Hortonworks Hortonworks is a leading provider of enterprise-grade, global data management platforms, services and solutions that deliver actionable intelligence from any type of data for over half of the Fortune 100. Hortonworks is committed to driving innovation in open source communities, providing unique value to enterprise customers. Along with its partners, Hortonworks provides technology, expertise and support so that enterprise customers can adopt a modern data architecture. For more information, visit hortonworks.com. THE INFORMATION IN THIS DOCUMENT IS PROVIDED “AS IS” WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING WITHOUT ANY WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND ANY WARRANTY OR CONDITION OF NON-INFRINGEMENT. Contact For further information, visit hortonworks.com
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