They know where you are....

As touched on in earlier posts, marketers are quite creative when it comes to ways of bringing an ad to your mobile device. One thing that is very appealing to them is the use of technologies that have been previously unavailable to them. One example is the built in GPS present in the majority of smart phones. 

The ad supported app Foursquare is the poster child for location-tracking marketing. The app allows users to "check in" to various locations and share it with other connected networks such as Facebook. This gives marketers a golden opportunity to direct advertising to a mobile device user while the user is in the vicinity of the advertiser. For instance, if someone were to "check in" at a Starbucks, they may receive offers via their mobile device's screen to receive discounts on products at that Starbucks or a nearby store. It's interactive, consumers practically solicit the ads, and it takes away the challenge marketers have of convincing the target to visit their store. They're already there! 

To be clear, geotargeting is not a new concept. Online marketers have been using this technique to filter their messages based on the location of internet users' IP addresses for years. Integrating this same concept with mobile devices just takes it a step further. Marketers can now deliver their message based on your location to within a few feet! 

Recently, Apple and Google have taken heat for recording the locations of mobile devices even when tracking functions were disabled. This has caused somewhat of an uproar as people get a little of the "big brother" scare. While this poses a bit of a roadblock for mobile marketers hoping to cash in on geotargeting, as long as mobile device users are willing to adopt location tracking apps such as Foursquare, this new form of marketing will continue to evolve.


This makes me wonder, how far is too far? Would you continue to use an app that was aware of your location one hundred percent of the time? Perhaps future applications will use geo-predicting technology and make guesses about where you will be at certain times based on past tracking. So if you go to the movies every Friday night, your phone will learn    this and market new releases to you starting on Thursday. This sort of thing might be coming. In fact, if I had to use my own predictive app (my brain), I'd say it is only a matter of time.