Opera Mediaworks has announced a multi-company partnership of beacon technology firms aimed at helping advertisers improve their mobile-media targeting, audience segmentation and measuring.

The Strategic Beacon Alliance comprises of Signal360, Roximity, Pulsate, Pinpoint Mobile and four other companies. Between the eight beacon platforms developed by the different companies involved, the alliance effectively covers the majority of enterprise beacon activity in the US.

“This alliance will help those who want to move communication from a one-size-fits-all solution to one that leverages data and location to increase personalisation and timeliness,” said Danny Newman, CEO of Roximity.

According to projections by Business Insider, 32 per cent of retail locations operated by the top 100 retailers in the US will have deployed beacon hardware and software by the end of this year, with this figure expected to reach 85 per cent by the end of 2016. However, many advertisers and brands are still unsure about how to get the best out of this new technology.

“Until now, marketers have had to key off of digital signals (like websites that users recently visited) to understand where users sit within the customer journey,” said Scott Swanson, president of global advertising sales for Opera Mediaworks. “With the launch of the Strategic Beacon Alliance, national brands can now leverage the rich data sets delivered by beacon technology to enable a far deeper understanding of their customers, based on a real-world, physical context.”