The quests themselves are prominently labeled "AR mapping". You don't need to go into the privacy policy to know what they are.

It is not at all clear that the mapping is for purposes other than the AR features in the game itself though. In fact Niantic advertised the scanning field research as helping them make richer experience at PokeStops (which they did).

Niantic was much more upfront about this with Ingress, so people who know the company's history will likely guess that Pokemon Go is serving the same purpose, but for someone coming into the game without that background, there is nothing in the game itself that indicates that data is being collected for other commercial purpose.