BlueZoo product family overview

BlueZoo offers a cloud-based analytics service that delivers real time and historical analytics that describe the presence and movement of people. BlueZoo customers access analytics via BlueZoo APIs, the BlueZoo web dashboard, and BlueZoo reporting. BlueZoo customers deploy and manage BlueZoo sensors using the BlueZoo mobile app and dashboard.

Because smartphones are ubiquitous, we can use smartphones as an excellent proxy for people. BlueZoo passively collects Wi-Fi probes spontaneously broadcast by smartphones using either BlueZoo proprietary sensors or third-party hardware (e.g. BrightSign media players).

BlueZoo receives Wi-Fi probes and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) advertisements that are spontaneously sent by smartphones. For Wi-Fi, BlueZoo filters out non-smartphone probes and accounts for probes that deliver either “global” (unique) or “local” (aka randomized) MAC addresses. For BLE, BlueZoo accounts for the very low share of Android phones that broadcast BLE advertisements. See our technology pages for more details.

BlueZoo respects the privacy of smartphone owners. While we passively listen for broadcasts from smartphones, we know nothing else about the phone: not the phone number, not the mobile advertising ID (MAID), or who owns the phone. We pseudonymize (aka encrypt) the device addresses within milliseconds of receipt and retain these pseudonymized addresses no longer than 5 minutes on average.

Processed data is then made available via our Dashboard and APIs. The Dashboard allows you to get up-to-date occupancy for each sensor, alongside interactive analytics providing in-depth information about how long people remained (dwell time) at each sensor. These analytics can also be customized and shared with others using our Reporting functionality.

The Dashboard also allows you to easily manage and monitor the status of your sensors. Combined with our mobile apps, you can rapidly deploy & configure new sensors, as well as guarantee the most accurate data delivery by auditing & calibrating their detection settings.

BlueZoo measures the presence of people in a target “detection zone”. The shape of the detection zone is defined by the antenna pattern of the microwave antenna. The size of the detection zone is determined by calibrating the BlueZoo sensor. Learn more about detection zones and antennas here.

BlueZoo uses three different terms to describe the presence of people, and each defines strictly different concepts:

• Occupancy (aka “visitors”) reports the number of persons present in the target detection zone at an instant in time. Over a period of time, occupancy is reported as an average occupancy with minimum and maximum values.
• Impressions (aka “visits”) report the number of distinct people who enter the target detection zone over a period of time. There is no concept of an instantaneous impressions count.
• Unique visitors is the count of unique persons who are present in the target detection zone and is reported with the number of times that person has been present (“recurrence”) in the detection zone, or the detection zone of associated

The following chart illustrates 7 visits by 5 unique visitors into a “detection zone” from 1:00 to 3:15 pm. Arrivals and departures into/from the detection zone happen only at quarter-hour boundaries to keep the math simple. The unique visitors are color-coded: two unique visitors leave the detection zone and return later. The number of persons present (occupancy) is recorded for each 15-minute period. Average occupancy is calculated as the mean of the occupancy across the 2.5 hour period. (In this example the mean is 1.9 persons.)

Dwell time can be easily calculated for this period from 1:00 to 3:30pm by calculating the dwell times of each of the seven visits, which range from 15 minutes to 75 minutes in the graphic above.

Flow is a measurement of movement by people from the detection zone of one sensor to other sensors, but is not visualized in the graphic above. Flow is useful, for example, for tracking shopper journeys in retail environments.

Following is a brief description of the four products. Click on the product name to see pages dedicated to each product.

BlueZoo Count+

BlueZoo Count measures how many people are in a sensor’s detection zone (occupancy) and people enter a sensor’s detection zone (impressions). We accumulate historical measurements at a grain of either 1- or 15-minutes in our data warehouse and share via our web dashboard and APIs. For BLE we can report counts of impressions paired exactly to video plays to the grain of one second.

Count

Measure impressions and occupancy in real time

BlueZoo Dwell Time+

BlueZoo Dwell time measures how long people remain in a sensor’s detection zone. Shares of the number of visits by people to the detection zone are reported in bins for Wi-Fi (0-1 minute, 1-2 minutes, 2-3 minutes, etc) and for BLE (0-1 second, 1-2 seconds, 2-3 seconds, etc). We share this data via our web dashboard and our APIs.

Dwell Time

Quantify visitor persistence, not just presence

BlueZoo Unique Visitors+

BlueZoo Unique visitors reports a count of the number of unique people who enter a sensor’s detection zone, and the frequency at which these unique visitors return (aka recurrence) on a daily basis. BlueZoo doesn’t retain any individual data, even the pseudonymized MAC addresses, and is certified GDPR compliant. Inter-day unique visitor measurement is a capability only available with BlueZoo’s passive Wi-Fi product.

Unique Visitors

Determine the number of unique people who visit & how often they return

BlueZoo Flow+

BlueZoo Flow measures how people move among multiple sensors over the course of each day to report customer journeys in venues like airports or shopping malls. Flow aggregates the journeys to understand how people travel among locations and how much time they spend at each location. Flow makes possible shopper journey mapping in retail because local MAC addresses rotate slowly.

Flow

Uncover how people move among multiple sensors