Location-based advertising
1. Introduction
“A man walks into a store and an interactive billboard recognizes him, refers to him by name, and wants to know how he is enjoying the shirts he bought last week.”1 This scene of Minority Report, a science fiction movie, where Tom Cruise´s character just walks into a GAP store is in fact becoming reality now. The technology to make this work already exists and is being integrated more and more into our daily life, not only through the on-going development of mobile phones but also the need to transfer and connect the internet with our everyday lives. The technology of positioning systems on mobile devices is continuously being improved and by now one can pinpoint a users´ location already within one meter. Companies, stores or service providers are able to offer adverts in real time and to place them just at the point of sale2. In 2010 Andy Lee,
Senior Vice President of Microsoft made a quite striking statement that “there is a unique relationship between people and their phones”3. And due to the very personal and intimate information it is possible to target the adverts much more effectively. One could say that location aware advertisement is kind of an exchange framework for users where private information on the one hand is given away for more personalized service or coupons and special deals4. And on the other hand companies profit of knowing almost exactly what their customers want, being able to offer them a better service and to seduce them into impulse buying. Nowadays targeted Google ads based on search histories are quite normal for internet users, but when “context aware advertising is transported into the physical world it reflects a rather distressing breach of our perceived personal space.” In order to become popular, location- based advertisement needs to be accepted by a bigger crowd of consumers and privacy concerns have to be overcome.
Before a real breakthrough in the market is possible, the question of what
“A man walks into a store and an interactive billboard recognizes him, refers to him by name, and wants to know how he is enjoying the shirts he bought last week.”1 This scene of Minority Report, a science fiction movie, where Tom Cruise´s character just walks into a GAP store is in fact becoming reality now. The technology to make this work already exists and is being integrated more and more into our daily life, not only through the on-going development of mobile phones but also the need to transfer and connect the internet with our everyday lives. The technology of positioning systems on mobile devices is continuously being improved and by now one can pinpoint a users´ location already within one meter. Companies, stores or service providers are able to offer adverts in real time and to place them just at the point of sale2. In 2010 Andy Lee,
Senior Vice President of Microsoft made a quite striking statement that “there is a unique relationship between people and their phones”3. And due to the very personal and intimate information it is possible to target the adverts much more effectively. One could say that location aware advertisement is kind of an exchange framework for users where private information on the one hand is given away for more personalized service or coupons and special deals4. And on the other hand companies profit of knowing almost exactly what their customers want, being able to offer them a better service and to seduce them into impulse buying. Nowadays targeted Google ads based on search histories are quite normal for internet users, but when “context aware advertising is transported into the physical world it reflects a rather distressing breach of our perceived personal space.” In order to become popular, location- based advertisement needs to be accepted by a bigger crowd of consumers and privacy concerns have to be overcome.
Before a real breakthrough in the market is possible, the question of what