Allowing the location content providers and location-based application developers to identify a location in various ways, Placecast has announced that they are opening up their Match API for free to the location-based ecosystem. With this, the users can now get rid of time consuming and complex problem of correcting location data, claims Placecast.

The Placecast Match API first disambiguates addresses - identifying all of the different ways to express the address of a location, and verifying that those different expressions refer to the same place. Then, it maps all the relevant IDs from different content providers to that same place.

Allowing LBS companies to focus on improving their services and attracting marketing spend, Placecast's Match API is aimed at resolving the time consuming and complex problem of correcting location data that creates little inherent value. Already, location-based companies such as WCities, Socialight, Urban Mapping, and Buzzd have expressed interest in this solution, says the company.

“Retailers in the U.S. today spend $23 billion a year to drive traffic into their stores, and we believe that 10 percent of this budget belongs in mobile in the next two years. Placecast solved this location referencing problem and is pleased to make it available for free to other companies working on generating revenue from location-based services,” says Alistair Goodman, CEO at Placecast.

According to Placecast, these new services can use Placecast's Match API to translate between different reference systems and correctly identify a location, regardless of the ID system. Also, the first building block to generating revenue from location-based advertising is to allow everyone in the location-based ecosystem to seamlessly identify places on the planet, claims Placecast.

In February 2010, the company introduced ShopAlerts, a new way to bring customers closer to the brands they love. ShopAlerts delivers location-triggered mobile messages when shoppers enter geo-fences that can be created around virtually any area. The service, previously tested in trials, has already demonstrated promising results for retail marketers across the United States. Placecast's ShopAlerts service is a retailer marketing solution.