The data team at Urban Airship has a simple objective: to empower our customers to understand the behavior of users within their app, especially as it relates to the success of their messaging campaigns. An issue arose with timestamps though — we see a lot of events that claim to have happened before Urban Airship was founded, and a non-trivial number that claim to come from the future. Sorting this out has been (and continues to be) an adventure, to say the least. Let us explain!

We’ve all experienced a marketing message that doesn’t hit the mark. Perhaps it was a direct-mail piece about cellular service from a telecommunications provider, but you’re already a customer. Or an email marketing offer from a children’s retailer, but you don’t have kids. These one-to-many marketing gaffes have sabotaged relationships between consumers and brands, but they have been what’s available. That’s why personalized, one-to-one marketing has long been the holy grail of marketers.