US ad tech firm 4INFO has been granted a patent (No. 8,792,909) from the US Patent and Trademark Office for its technology that ties mobile devices to households. The tech powers the company’s AdHaven Bullseye flagship ad platform that has tied 152m mobile devices to 101m US households, without the need for cookies or modelling across wi-fi signals, a process that 4INFO describes as “probabilistic”.

The patent relates to 4INFO’S systems and methods for associating a mobile device to a household. It describes how machine learning facilitates the clustering of latitude-longitude pairs received for a mobile device over time. This method organizes location data into clusters and allows 4INFO to anonymously match all mobile devices, such as a mobile phone or tablet, to a household.

The company says that its ability to match a mobile device to a household allows advertisers to know precisely which household they are targeting with their mobile ad campaigns. This makes it possible to tie ad impressions to sales transaction data for true cross-channel attribution, enabling advertisers to measure the return on their mobile ad spend.

Since the launch of the AdHaven Bullseye platform in March 2013, 4INFO has powered more than 250 mobile ad campaigns for more than 140 national brands, and claims average sales increases of 7.5 per cent; Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) averaging 382 per cent and as high as 823 per cent; and market share increases at the expense of competitors.

“It’s been a significant investment of time and capital to make this unprecedented technology possible,” said 4INFO CEO, Tim Jenkins. “Our core technology allows us to do what our competitors cannot. Because of our proprietary, proven method for accurately tying mobile devices to a unique household ID, national brand marketers are able to unlock repositories of frequent shopper, CRM, demographic and other third party data to precisely target relevant ad campaigns and measure results that matter most: sales lift at the cash register.”