Mobile Advertising, the location way.....

How many times were you interrupted by a telemarketer while you are engrossed at work or stop by sales on the street while you are rushing to some places? Just like the fact that you usually choose the right moment to approach your boss for a raise, advertisement need to present itself at the right moment to increase the probability of success on their target customers. The intricate relationship between user and their device provides marketing industry with an exciting new form of marketing channel. The portability of a mobile device has made it more personal to an individual than anything else, thus it would seems that the effective utilization of this mobile media will almost for certain, increase the chances of success for any marketing campaign.

The strategy of any marketing campaign typically identifies the general routine of their target customers and then targets them by advertising in the area where it is most likely to draw their attention – be it a billboard sport advert at a football game or TV airing supermarket sales during primetime soap opera. However such WMD approach might serve only to draw negative press to mobile advertising; just like the fact that we do not want to be received tones of spam mail on our private email account, we also would not relish receiving harassing ads on our phone. In reality as consumer, what we want are to have the option to choose the types of ads we received. It will be even better if a few carrots are thrown to reward us for our participation and it will be even more wonderful if we are able to block ads as and when we like.

What we need is smart ads that nudge us at the right moment. We want to be able to voluntarily participate in marketing scheme – which can be tied up with the mobile operators, credit card companies or even online software companies that hand out rebates and free usage. During registration, the user can select the type of advertisement that will interest them – from specified companies, product types etc. They can also select location where you do not wish to be disturbed – say office or home etc. You can block out ads for a day, week, and months but which may result in rebates losses. Cell phone application can then exploit the data link on the network as well as location based technology to provide smart and interactive advertisements to the consumers:

Scenario 1
Say you walk pass a shopping mall, your cell inadvertently starts vibrating, looking at the screen you notice a flashing icon of the mall, clicking on the icon will yield a list of promotion in the mall which you are interested. Drawn by this, you enter the mall, and floor plan of the mall shows up on your display directing you to the location of your interest, you pick you the merchandise and head for the cashier. Flashing your phone on the scanner allows you to enjoy rebates for your purchase.

Scenario 2
You walk into a car show room, your cell phone beeps; looking at the screen you see a flashing icon. You tap on the icon and a menu appears, showing you the car models available. You then choose the car you model you want which reveal the car specification, an audio presentation that provide a walkthrough on the model of your interest.

Sounds amazing? Technologies are already available to make the above examples a reality. The rapid transit of 2G networks to 3, 3.5 and coming 4G will allow packet transfer rate on mobile network increase dramatically in the coming future. Location based services (LBS) are already finding their way in consumer daily life. Having been boosted by emergence of affordable GPS radio receivers – which can now be found in any up to date phone model. The accuracy of GPS mapping which can be accurate up to a range of 2 meters depending on the available GPS MEO SAT in range, the weather, terrain and the obstacle on the background. The drawback of the technology is that it is practically ineffective in indoor environment where SAT emissions are obscured. In order to address this problem, some buildings have installed GPS signal repeater to boost emission power within their premises – the use of repeaters however have been outlawed in many countries, fearing that the repeaters might distort the GPS SAT emission.

Before the pervasive use of GPS, telco generally utilized SS7 signaling protocol to query location of a handset from respective MSC. The accuracy of the location with such approach depends on the footprint of each cell BTS deployment in which the handset is located. Typically Marcro-cells (the largest type) are deployed in rural district where the absence of high rise obstacle allows greater coverage. This is followed by micro, pico femto cell deployment as smaller footprints (up to a room size) are required. Although the use of such methods has been overshadow by the wide spread availability of GPS devices, strategically deployed small footprint BTS may provide better LBS in indoor condition. When a phone crosses from cell to another, BSC manages the handoff (also known as handover in GSM architecture) from one BTS to the other. Primitive on the BTS signal frame to the cell can be embedded with data that can be used to reference cell phone location during the handover such data can then be used by customize software to identify the phone location (say a mall or shopping centre)- in theory user can be tracked when he enter a mall and then to a supermarket in the mall. Such a method will require extensive work to overlay the cells but will be feasible if the economical benefits outweigh the hard work.

The future of mobile advertising will lies on the integration of different technologies so as to enhance user experience. The correct prediction of consumer reaction to innovation will be the key in staying a step ahead of the others.