Tribune News Service — With many of the events hosted by Greenville being outdoors and free to attend, the city’s Department of Community Development has experienced difficulty when it comes to getting accurate head counts of those in attendance.
To help with this, the Greenville City Council on Tuesday approved the department’s subscription to Placer.ai, an AI tool that collects data — with permission — from cellphones within an area and provides that data to its paid users.
“It’s kind of amazing and horrifying at the same time, because it tracks our phones,” said Micah McBay, Greenville’s director of community engagement, of Placer.ai at a budget work session in June. “So, for example, we could mark off an area (using geofencing technology) and find out how many of these people came from Caddo Mills and how many of these people came from Dallas … and if they went to our restaurants when they left or if they stay in one of our hotels, since the phone tracks all of that information. So, it’s very useful data for what we do.”
Paid for out of the city’s tourism budget, a year’s subscription to the service costs $18,000.
© 2025 The Herald Banner. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
