Is location based marketing a step too far?
There was an interesting debate on location-based mobile marketing at last week’s R/GA event , held in the agency’s New York office. The focus of the event was mobile analytics and the role it plays given that the established web analytics vendors can’t provide mobile tracking.
More on that later. During question time, the topic was raised on whether location-based marketing was taking off. This is the deliver of advertising and offers based on your current location – could we see the day when you’re bombarded with offers as soon as you arrive in the mall?
The view from Steve Siegel at Microsoft Advertising was that its just too expensive to get the necessary data from the mobile carriers and was it what people wanted?
Adam Kerr from Bango emphasised that the advertising should be user-centric with the consumer in charge, pulling down any ads that were relevant to them. The classic case would be seeing ads for nearby restaurants in a Google Maps search.
Google has a significant advantage using its triangulation GPS system which does not rely on information supplied by the carriers. In fact, apps developed for the gPhone using Google Gears will be able to use this GPS information to enhance the functionality of the app. Thankfully, the user can choose whether to opt in so once again, they are in control.
Regarding, the main part of the evening., Adam Kerr from Bango North America explained why the current tools web tools can’t track mobile analytics – predominantly because they rely on JavaScript and cookies which don’t work well on mobile browsers. He also illustrated the detailed metrics available in the site and campaign analysis features within the Bango mobile analytics product.
Thanks to hosts R/GA for a great night. See the photos and get another perspective on the evening on the Web Metrics Guru blog from Marshall Sponder.
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