Advertising is a constantly changing world. There’s always something new and exciting right around the corner.
Today, over and above what is considered “traditional” media, advertisers have a plethora of options in the digital space at home, in the office, or on the go. Advertisers can connect with people in real life with experiential marketing and good old word of mouth advertising is making a big come back with the increased use of social networking.
The changes seem unending and sometimes a little overwhelming, but I have to admit that, as a consumer, I am starting to look forward to some of the new technologies that have to be getting very close.
For example, I carry an iPhone. This handy device, and most of the smartphones on the market today, have built in GPS capabilities, internet access, and an ability to be constantly connected. Today, almost nobody is taking advantage of the fact that I am carrying around a device that could be providing me with location based opportunities.
I think the game Foursquare is just the beginning of location-based marketing. I think in a few short years the company who figures out the best way to get users to announce their presence and request opportunities to receive location-based advertising will be the next big player.
For those who are not familiar with Foursquare, it is a very simple game: you “check-in” whenever you go somewhere, and you earn “points” and “badges” for every activity that you complete. You get a few points for doing the same things every day and you get bonus points for going to new places, adding in locations to the Foursquare database, or for random fun stuff such as the Bender badge for going out to bars four nights in a row.
Where it gets interesting is when you start to add a few “friends”. Once you have a network, you start to get their locations pushed to your device when they check in. And when you go to a location that a friend has been, you can receive “tips” about that location as you arrive. Sometimes the tip is a point of interest, but sometimes the tip is a recommendation that might even be relevent to you, such as “try the chicken wings, best in the city”.
Now imagine that businesses can tap into users as they volunteer to announce that they are arriving with some sort of beacon. I would love to “check in” at a restaurant and be sent a message telling me what the specials are for the evening. Or walk into a movie theatre and be sent a message of how many open seats are availabe in each theatre when I am choosing which movie to watch.
All of a sudden opportunites are tailored to me at a time and place where I can take advantage of them.
Now let’s take it a step further. I imagine Google coming up with the next part simply because they are the only company that I trust enough to be able to pull it off. Imagine being able to cut out some of the advertising noise that we are bombarded with every day. Depending on which source you choose to believe, North Americans are exposed to 3,000 to 5,000 ad impressions per day across all media that we are exposed to as we live our lives.
I would love to be able to give information about myself to a company like Google and have them truly tailor my digital and mobile experience to my interests. This would inherently need to be a multi pronged approach:
1) Let me tell advertisers who I am (age, sex, life stage, job function, demography, etc), what I am interested in, what types of decisions I make, and what my attitudes are towards a useful set of parameters.
2) Let me choose to share my location when I am willing
3) Track my search behaviour to predict changes to my status (e.g. If I search for baby strollers, I’m either about to have a baby or want to be able to be a resource to someone else who needs that information)
4) Serve me up with ads that are extremely relevant, wherever I am and from whatever device I choose to consume media.
5) Allow me to override any information that I do not find useful and refine the relevance of what is being served to me as frequently as I wish. Ideally, the more feedback I give, the more relevant the advertising to me could be.
6) Keep my information, both shared and derived, private so that no individual, corporation, or government can possibly access that information.
The privacy piece is the biggest concern with this coming to fruition, but I feel confident that Canada is on the forefront when it comes to privacy issues and that the right company (ahem… Google) could actually pull something like this off.
I predict that the combination of voluntary user participation in the consumption of advertising, combined with an increased prominence of location-based marketing will be absolutely huge once someone figures out how to do it properly.
