Comments on: Location-Based Ads Get Opt-In, Geofencing — But Does That Help?

By: Location Based Marketing the Talk Of The Blogs, but Must Prove Skeptics Wrong | Hello Mobile! The Interactive Mediums Blog

Tue, 27 Apr 2010 20:07:40 +0000

[...] However, a very large portion of the feedback on blogs is coming from consumers who say they feel like this is another potential opportunity to be spammed & that it will surely negatively impact their relationship with the brands (see here). [...]

By: Anders Borg

Anders Borg — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 15:31:40 +0000

"Simply delivering better targeted ads is a benefit for marketers, and is not inherently one for customers, too"

Crassly speaking, that applies to all advertising to a certain degree. It's only a matter of when the gray area turns dark enough.

I'm not defending located advertising per se, but to me the rationale for doing located advertising would be to pull in the customer in the moment and vicinity, and with a tangible value proposition. Otherwise there's no point of doing that.

It would be rather distracting getting such messages while driving, and it would be hard to follow them without driving into a ditch. Speech would have solved that, but phone manufacturers have still not realized that's a good way of being in the know while driving.

So for practical reasons it sounds like it applies better to e.g. malls and air ports. When you are at an air port you are primarily worried about catching the flight, so to grab the attention of a passer-by this could be a nifty and very local way of achieving attention. Of course then we are talking Bluetooth rather than cell or GPS location.

Also, if you are a member of a retail brand you could get such messages when you are close to or in such a shop, instead of having to look up what is being rebated right now.

As you say, this could also hurt the brand, but where to draw the line? If you are a rather unknown player, this could be an inexpensive way of creating attention.

By: More on Geofencing and Location-Based Messaging | MobHappy

More on Geofencing and Location-Based Messaging | MobHappy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 19:20:38 +0000

[...] got a couple of responses in via email to my earlier post on geofence-triggered mobile ads. Matt Silk, SVP of mobile messaging company Waterfall Mobile took an interest in the post, as his [...]

By: Adam Rachwal

Adam Rachwal — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:58:30 +0000

Every time I get a txt msg on my phone with an offer, no matter how great the offer and if I decide to take advantage of it, I get ticked off and assign a negative point to the vendor who sent it to me. I don't know what it is but it is and I know I'm not the only one. I'm less irritated when going through an street market and people tap me on the shoulder trying to sell me stuff than I am when I get a txt on my mobile.

By: fred

fred — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 00:41:19 +0000

How long with this hyped “Starbuck's” model be thrown out there as the ultimate game changer? It is not the end all be all answer to every shopper's greatest wish, in fact, it will probably turn people off of a brand quicker than bluespam did in Europe. Trying to engage a shopper into the shopping experience if you're not sure they are in shopping mode is a bad idea and a huge turn off. There are far too many variables to make assumptions that because I am walking by the North Face and I happen to have shopped there before, that I am a ready buyer. This is much different that browsing a skiing website and seeing a North Face ad. The mobile experience is far too personal to ever send something that could be construed as a non-relevant irritant – which this will be, even if someone opts in for it. What might work is if someone enters a mall and maybe 5 texts stream (only once when they first enter) in from their fave merchants, the assumption being that they have arrived at the mall and intend to shop. In the mall example, geofencing should work. I'm still not sure how they do it with non-smartphones. Also, don't underestimate the difficulty of the opt-in process.

By: Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS

Giff Gfroerer, i2SMS — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 13:41:29 +0000

This reminds me of the BlueSpam marketing trial by the bank in the UK where everyone passing by received a message if they had their phone set to receive. This enticed people to come into the bank alright, but not to open an account….it was to complain. This mobile marketing trial was quickly shut down.

What the bank realized was people don’t want to just randomly receive messages on their mobile devices. They want it to have immediate relevance with an offer that is actually worth something.

Starbucks knows this now. The North Face will realize it soon. What will happen is The North Face will spend time and money signing up their most loyal customers. Then, they will start to send out meaningless messages when these most loyal customers are near…resulting in one to many messages eventually. Then, this will cause these most loyal customers to opt out… All that money and time wasted.

What they really need to focus on is meaningful messages that have immediate relevance, regardless of the location of their loyal customers. Loyal customers that have trusted you with their cell numbers will travel for the right offer. No one wants their phones pinging every time they are near your store.

By: Murat

Murat — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 01:38:21 +0000

You can do some awesome stuff with LBS technology, this isn’t really one of them. There isn’t much incentive in that message (yet) but even then how many North Face customers shop there 3 times a week, or even a month?