If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
GPS-based advertising is something I touched on last week in my mobile advertising article. Greg Sterling mentioned that geo-targeting would play some part in how we are served ads. CBS is taking a large step in this direction, utilizing Loopt, a social networking service, to serve you ads relevant to your current location. These will appear on CBS Mobile News and CBS Mobile Sports.
So the idea is that when you walk by a retail store — the New York Times uses Starbucks and Barnes & Noble as examples — you’re served ads for those very places.
“Consumers are savvy enough to expect advertising,” said Angela Steele, a director at Starcom USA, an ad-buying agency based in Chicago. “They are accepting of it, but they want it to be relevant. If they are getting something they are interested in, that is great. But if they are sending ads that are not relevant, people won’t want it.”
I’ll preface this by saying that GPS-based advertising is a step in the right direction. However, to blanket this as being “relevant” is a bit misleading. Just because you’re walking by Barnes & Noble doesn’t mean an ad for them is relevant. Walking by a bookstore doesn’t mean I want a book. It does mean, though, that I’m more ripe for an impulse buys.
The only carriers that currently have deals with Loopt are Sprint and Boost, though they’re both the same company. So they’re the only ones who can offer the service at this time. However, we could see this more widespread over the course of the year. Loopt’s CEO Sam Altman:
By the end of 2008, he said, as many as 50 million mobile phones in the United States could be equipped to get location-based ads. “We have been talking about this for a long time,” Mr. Altman said. “Finally everything is aligned.”
Some people might find it frightening to know that companies will know where they are at any given time. However, CBS and Loopt are trying to quell those fears. First, the service is on an opt-in basis, which will certainly lend a degree of relevancy to the ads. Second, ad history is not stored, and they are served anonymously. So you don’t have to fear big corporations culling data from you.
No advertisers are signed up yet, but CBS is optimistic about getting some national corporations lined up in the next few weeks.
Share this Post
Subscribe and Follow
Subscribe to the Going Cellular feed via RSS and follow Going Cellular on Twitter!
{ 1 trackback }
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
Great post! Its important to point out that marketers can get a similar effect with RFID (radio frequency identification) chips embedded in mobile phones, which is becoming more of a common thing.
This way, a store that offers mobile coupons places an rfid reader at their entrance. When an individual with a RFID embedded phone walks by, the reader sees that and automatically sends a coupon.
I figured that with your marketing background you’d appreciate this one. And yes, coupons are one thing. Ads are another. If they’re giving out coupons based on location, well, we’re back to paying people to look at ads (or potentially doing so).