Inside Mobile Marketing

Whew! Recently returned from sunny Las Vegas … lots to discuss, but I figured I would start out with LBS (location based services) since I seemed to stumble on a different version of Mobile LBS at every corner of the show floor. Plus - ABI Research recently announced that Mobile LBS revenues would hit $13.3 Billion on worldwide basis by 2013. That’s a pretty big number and ABI’s press release on their forthcoming LBS report mentions the bulk of these revenues will come from Personal Navigation and Enterprise applications. That said, I can’t wait to see how revenue from LBS-based ADVERTISING will factor into the mix.

Here’s some of the Mobile Vendors that caught my attention at the Show.  Note that none of them had commercial advertising applications in the market yet.

Traffic.com (part of Navteq/Nokia):  they were displaying an advertising concept in which an in-car navigation unit was displaying icons of well known food retailers (e.g. McDonald’s and Starbucks) along the simulated driving route. The company representative and I discussed the idea of pushing ads and/or coupons to a user’s handset based on location and he said the company is working on various related ideas.  The company appears to really “get” mobile as they have a slick looking J2ME application developed by Skyward Mobile, a .mobi mobile site and SMS alerts for traffic. Good Stuff.

Networks In Motion: (known for VZ Navigator product) -  they claimed to have advertising component launching in the near future for their mobile solution. Unfortunately the product manager was unavailable for comment.  I’ll reach out to them in the near future to see what they have up their sleeve.

Wayfinder:  while Wayfinder’s booth was not specifically showing off any LBS advertising concept - the company representative hinted that the company might be announcing something along these lines in the coming Summer months. - Stay tuned.

Whrrl:  a new social networking LBS application that allows users to “tag” places they are located at.  The service could be used to target ads to users based on “check-in” profile. (e.g. user checks in at Walmart, the retailer then sends mobile coupon).  The booth representative stated the company has a patent-pending location method, but I don’t recall the exact term he used for it.  The company has a web component and an application for a couple of Blackberry models, but I was most interested in the SMS component.

I think LBS-powered advertising has the potential to be big. Why? Well, most of the Tier 1 U.S. Carriers are warming up to the idea of shipping their handsets with a GPS-powered Navigation solution readily available either promoted prominently on-deck for download or pre-installed. - SEE AT&T and recent Navigator product .  Just this alone will be a HUGE help since one of biggest obstacles to consumer adoption of mobile applications is discovery and download.  It isn’t the smoothest of processes  Another reason is that GPS isn’t a hard requirement to make LBS ads work.  Companies like WapFly in the U.K. are using radiowave triangulation techniques to identify where you are once you’ve sent MO to their shortcode.  Nearby Now pushes location relevant promotions via SMS once a user has indicated their location next to a particular shopping center. Let’s not forget about those companies that leverage Cell (tower) ID location and/or Wifi methods to identify your whereabouts (SEE Google Maps - Speaking of Google, I betcha anything you will be seeing Google ads on your mobile maps in the near future.   And last, but not least - Bluetooth/NFC also have potential to serve up location based ads… More on Proximity marketing in future posts.

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