Advertising & Marketing
Ads based on your location are expected to appear in more and more applications. This form of advertising uses GPS information to target users with location-specific advertising on their mobile devices. In the past year, Google has acquired AdMob and Apple has acquired Quattro Wireless. Both are big moves into the spaces of location-based advertising.
Paid search ads, based on your location, will likely appear on Google’s mobile search results in the near future. The augmented reality app Layar includes paid content, for example, such as Google ads based on your location. There are a wide variety of advertising networks, such as Placecast, working to offer ads based on your location. There are also apps that send or show you coupons based on your location.
Businesses and institutions are experimenting more with these services by offering deals to those who check-in or become mayor and creating loyalty badges. These range from “the mayor eats free at Golden Coral” to the National Geographic trips feature on Gowalla Trips, a branded services that help travelers explore destinations. There are also attempts to use check-in services to create a collective experience. For example, St. Edwards University used Whrrl to create a mass check-in at its graduation ceremony, aggregating the photos and thoughts of graduates and attendees.
Gap recently offered 25 percent discounts on clothing in the retails stores to customers who checked in on Foursquare during a one-day deal. All of the location-based apps are competing for businesses’ involvement because getting businesses to pay for sponsorships, advertising and partnerships is how these applications expect to make money. “Each location-based application, in the end, is attempting to leverage business and brand partnerships to make their app the more compelling choice.”
Foursquare is considering deals with the major search engines in which they’d share check-in data, which would be used to enhance search by showing people where is trending instead of what is trending. Similarly, Bing Maps and Foursquare have struck a deal in which Bing Maps will be able to integrate users’ check-ins. The move is meant to “give customers a real time sense of what’s going on as they plan activities in their own neighborhoods or while on the road.” If users search for certain keywords or venues, the comments, check-ins and tips from networks like Foursquare could populate those search results. These search results could also be valuable when searching from a mobile phone.
Obviously, this is a form of data mining with both positive and negative consequences. In an extreme example, a Brazilian company recently executed an advertising scheme in which GPS devices are hidden in 50 detergent boxes around the country; the family fortunate enough to bring home the GPS device is rewarded with a video camera as a prize. “In a big web component, the site experimentealgonovo.com.br (Portuguese for “try something new”) goes live in August, and will include a map showing roughly where the winners live, pictures of each winner and footage of the Bullet-Omo teams hunting down the GPS-enabled detergent boxes, knocking on doors and surprising consumers (italics mine).” It should go without saying that this kind of exposure will potentially anger the recipients of the prize. But data mining about location trends may also benefit the consumer, who could receive coupons and discounts for frequently visited places.
