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ASHLAND — Sandra Tunnell, Ashland Main Street’s executive director, told members at the organization’s annual awards that it signed a contract to use Placer.ai in November.
The technology, she said, would allow Ashland Main Street to track data about who’s entering stores and attending events in downtown Ashland.
How it works
According to a video explaining the technology on Placer.ai’s website, it uses “anonymized location data from millions of mobile devices” to help gain an understanding of who’s in what place.
Tunnell said she hasn’t had any further training on the tech yet — a webinar is in the works to help develop her skills — but in her understanding, she won’t have the ability to track individuals.
“My understanding is I can’t go all the way down to say… this phone number was spending $10 on coffee,” Tunnell said. “My understanding is I can say, on this date, there were 50 people from this part of the world.”
Based on already-available cell phone data, she said, Placer.ai provides a more accurate count of how many people went into a shop during a certain time frame, or attended an Ashland Main Street event.
While the organization can guess at those numbers based on indicators like ticket sales or business anecdotes now, it’s never been able to provide “hard data.”
“We think it’ll be great for us as an organization, just to be able to say, ‘look what we’re bringing to the community,'” Tunnell said.
Where’d the idea come from?
The process of bringing the tech to town began with a Heritage Ohio quarterly meeting last year.
Tunnell said a speaker talked about it, and then Heritage Ohio offered more information on the topic at last year’s state conference, which happened in October.
She thought it’d be out of reach, since Placer.ai charges $20,000 or more based on population.
But Heritage Ohio reached out to several Main Street organizations in the state and asked if they’d be interested in a co-op, where they all provide some funding for it and then can access the analytics. Tunnell said seven organizations joined into the co-op.
Ashland Main Street signed on for a tab of $6,600. Explore Ashland and the Ashland County Community Foundation helped provide the funds for the technology, Tunnell said.
Looking toward the future
While Tunnell said she understands privacy concerns, she also said it’s important to embrace new technology.
“We’re not taking this information and doing bad with it,” Tunnell said. “This is not my first step in world domination through your cell phone data.”
Instead, Tunnell said providing accurate analytics for downtown goes toward Ashland Main Street’s future goals.
When the organization first began, Tunnell said it pushed for people to come downtown.
Now that people regularly attend Ashland Main Street’s events, shop and dine downtown, Tunnell said the next step is tracking its impact.
“We don’t mean to be just party planners,” Tunnell said. “I mean, party planning is fun, but downtown is an economic development tool. We’re doing big things down here, and your shopping is helping the entire economy.”
It extends beyond just Ashland, too, in Tunnell’s view. It can track tourism and offer insight about who’s coming to visit Ashland, and where they’re coming from.
“I think we are a hidden gem,” Tunnell said. “I think it’s really exciting for people to explore that.”
This independent, local reporting provided by our Report for America Corps members is brought to you in part by the generous support of the Ashland County Community Foundation.