If you have been to New York’s Bryant Park lately and felt a strange feeling like someone is watching it may be because Big Brother has his eye on you and hundreds of thousands of others. Like any other potential advertising space, New York City’s Bryant Park needs information about its visitors in order to attract potential sponsors. To gather that information, the private Bryant Park Corporation, which runs the city-owned park, has announced a new partnership with data analytics firm PlaceIQ allowing the BPC to glean anonymized data from visitors’ mobile phones that can be used to create a generalized picture of the parkgoers and their movement or buying habits.
While visitor numbers are a useful metric for planning park events and estimating foot traffic, PlaceIQ’s platform tracks more than just the size of the crowds. According to PlaceIQ’s handy Bryant Park infographic, the company has already determined that only 19 percent of visitors live in Manhattan, but the average visitor is 50 percent more likely to visit Macy’s and twice as likely to shop at PetSmart or do their banking with Bank of America. CONTINUE
