Location Based (GPS) Mobile Coupons, Future of Mobile Marketing
When technology is already in place on mobile phones, it baffles me that it’s still under-utilized even after years of widespread adoption. A good example of this, is the GPS locater on basically every single cell phone made (at least in the United States) for use with the E911 location-based system. To me, this is a huge feature that everyone is carrying around with them. Especially for marketing. Imagine walking down the street and being a block away from a hidden sandwich shop that you never knew about. As you get closer, your position is recognized by the GPS sensor in your cell phone, and a coupon is automatically dispatched to you in the form of a text message. You can then walk to the sandwich shop and use your 2 for 1 coupon from your cell phone.
Imagine the benefits of such extremely targeted marketing efforts for the businesses using this technique. They would only have to pay for the dispatched text messages to people that are in a pre-set radius around their business, say everyone that comes within 2 blocks, will get a text message dispatched to them.
A system that could detect GPS-featured cell phones that come within the radius of the business and automatically send the mobile coupon via text message would be all that you need to make this happen. Privacy could become an issue with this technology, so an opt-in system would probably be more effective.
This is probably what Google is banking on with the launch of the alleged gPhone. By utilizing GPS, and Google maps, Google will use the ad revenue from the location based ads to supplement the subscription fees for the user, if not eliminate it all together. We all know that if Google starts doing this, there will be many that follow, and try to emulate. Again, Google will ignite the industry by bringing good ideas to fruition before anyone else.
FWIW, I came to this same conclusion via a totally different route. I really don’t see how Google is going to have any real competition in this market. It looks like they’ve been lining up the pieces for quite some time to create this market themselves.
And wow. They’ve got some serious pieces lined up:
Google AdSense advertising infrastructure, which needs only minor tweaking to go GPS location based.
Google Maps for area imaging and directions.
Google Street View for precise location finding.
GPS now built into every phone. (Not that a phone is required for this. An in-car GPS navigation device or a handheld computer can take on all of these features.)
The gPhone (and less specifically, Android, which will allow people to integrate their software with Google’s stack). (I’m also including the FCC win that will allow any device onto a next generation network, which removes a potential strangehold by the wireless carriers.)
You could probably add in a number of side pieces, like Google Product Search (was Froogle) or YouTube, Picasa, Google Checkout.
They’ve got this game sewed up tight, and the market doesn’t even exist yet!
Anyhow, I referenced this page in a Slashdot posting on Microsoft’s complaint about Google’s monopoly abuse.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=399194&cid=21823736
jmccorm
December 26, 2007 at 2:30 pm
That is… amazing…
As much as I would love something like this it scares me at the same time.
Wil
December 26, 2007 at 6:59 pm
In poland we are still waiting for phones with GPS, there are only few top models on the market.
mobile marketing software
February 24, 2008 at 4:43 am
I am very interested in this topic but am having a hard time finding good solid information on it. GPS is becoming increasingly popular without anybody really noticing it. Driving across the country, I constantly look for hotels and restaurants through GPS.
R.B. Dawson
March 8, 2008 at 4:38 pm
We’ve got some capacity in this area (and a fresh business model to boot). If you’re interested to find out more, feel free to drop me an email – james@knowhere.co.nz
James Chang
June 23, 2008 at 4:42 am