Going Green with Mobile Proximity Advertising and  (LaaS) Platforms

Mobile location advertising has been discussed and executed for more than a decade – since the heyday of the eCommerce boom. Companies engaged in the discourse then included E*Trade, Gap, Exxon, NTT DoCoMo, Dentsu, Active Sky, and SmartRotuaari. It was Japan, Korea, Finland, and Belgium that took the lead in commercial deployment, while United States advanced in incremental pilot testing.

Today’s leaders, including Placecast, Gloto, Ogilvy, Layar, and Mobile Dreams Factory, have launched successful solutions. They recognize their predecessors – where they faltered and how they succeeded – as they open the commercial market to location services that will inspire Ad agencies, retailers, and wireless application developers. The distinction between proximity services and location services reside in the applied use. The services encompass a wide variety of retail industries including fashion, travel, banking, food and beverage, and services such as cobblers, dry cleaners, and auto.

Proximity services use Bluetooth, WiFi, NFC, and RFID technologies over unlicensed spectrum while location services use carrier supported geo-positioning technologies over licensed spectrum. Both services are utilized to drive traffic into street-level businesses. Proximity services take the next step of providing the location of specific objects.Location-aware technology is now built into most mobile phones – smart phones and feature phones. This technology powers mobile local search and its tyro – mobile social search. Depending on the mobile social solution, various technologies are employed including but not limited to Geographic Positioning Systems (GPS), Assisted GPS (A-GPS), Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), Bluetooth, Cell ID, and 802.11A/B and 802.16 (WiFi).

According to the USPS, in the United States, $19B is spent annually in direct mail as supplied by advertising agencies and households receive 85B pieces of direct marketing. The key question is – how many of those pieces of marketing delivered the Post Office are opened, read, and acted upon? The answer is gut-level knowledge – a very small percentage.

More than profit is wasted in unopened marketing, ecologists and brand owners can agree too many trees are sacrificed. So, who might be the greenest marketers? In the digital era, mobile proximity and location-based advertisers are possibly the greenest – certainly when measured in terms of advertising effectiveness compared to material waste.

The global report – Mobile Proximity and Location Based Advertising published by The Mind Commerce – provides a deep dive into NAVTEQ, Gloto, Layar, Placecast, Ogilvy, The Cimarron Group, Acuity and more so that the readers may gain insight into the operational and financial levers of management. Further, activities that catapulted each company forward are highlighted in context of their business model.

The report shines a spot light on seasoned thought-leaders from within the executive teams of each company. They provide their expertise to detail a vivid picture of what it takes to succeed today and what technologies will provide unique value to the industry in 2012.

Application Developers

How can application developers jump into the booming and profitable location services market? The fastest route is through location-as-a-service (LaaS). Application developers can plug-in LaaS and play. Location as a Service is a complex derivative of the cloud services concept while being a natural business extension for corporations that have built their operating foundations on GIS, mapping, and navigation. Many developers are using REST to give consumers a web-browser experience over that achieved through a downloadable application. Developers also choose REST when they want and need a grand back-end for their location service, particularly if the data is for GIS.

In 2010, wireless carriers made available to 3rd-party application developers the APIs needed for location, messaging and cloud services through their networks. There are several architectural frameworks for building applications in operator, browser, and terminal driven structures. Which is more useful for location applications? The research report – Location as a Service published by The Mind Commerce – elucidates these challenges and considerations in two parts:

Section one presents a holistic review of a Location as a Service solution as viewed through a micro-ecosystem of strategic alliances formed among an LaaS provider, a wireless carrier, several software builders, and industry organizations along with an understanding of several technologies leveraged in the solution development. Section two covers platform and service variations, then supplies a SWOT analysis of key LaaS vendors.

To learn more about leveraging LaaS and proximity and location-based advertising – and to access the tools to evaluate these synergistic solutions, read both reports.

The Mind Commerce® mission is to provide customized research, consulting, training, and writing services for the telecommunications and IT industry. Clients include manufacturers, developers, service providers, industry organizations, and government. The Mind Commerce differentiates itself from its competition by meeting the unique needs of its clients through customized product development and service delivery.

Mobile Proximity and Location Based Advertising. The URL for the Report: http://www.mobilelocation.com/images/Mobile_Proximity_and_Location_Based_Advertising_Brochure.pdf

Location as a Service. The URL for the Report: http://www.mobilelocation.com/images/Location_as_a_Service_Brochure_November_2010.pdf