June 22, 2010
Location and the Local Ad Market Opportunity
As check-in and other location apps and services get a lot of press, once again the possibility of successfully tapping the $23 billion local ad market using mobile is becoming a very real opportunity. Location is emerging as the key to relevance on mobile, but as both consumers and small businesses are finding, location relevance at scale is much more difficult than a simple click to check in. Just because a smartphone has a GPS on it doesn’t mean that whatever marketing a user receives on it is automatically relevant (not to mention trying to run these programs with the 193 million Americans using feature phones).
Consistently delivering location relevance at scale on mobile requires the ability to solve for several different challenges simultaneously, most notably:
• Correct location data – as our prior post points out, this is a somewhat arcane plumbing issue, but one that is the first critical piece in being able to return relevant content and offers to a user based on place and time. And on mobile, nothing is worse than having your phone point you to something nearby, only to find that the business no longer exists or has moved.
• Manage content attached to locations – making decisions on the fly about what relevant content or advertising to send a consumer based on place and time requires having the updated content to deliver. A robust content management system specifically focused on managing locations can pull user reviews and pictures, venue information, events nearby, discount or coupon codes tied to a specific location, check-ins and even traffic or weather to make the experience relevant.
• Campaign management for location – for any mobile marketing program to be relevant, it must deliver authenticated geo-targeting (to ensure that a consumer doesn’t check-in from across town), frequency capping (so that a user never sees the same ad twice), and even CRM or behavioral targeting data dynamically mapped into a marketing message or ad unit (think of adding the nearest retail location or a favorite product category automatically to a message sent by a brand) – as part of each and every program.
When any one (or more) of these pieces are missing from a solution, location relevance falls apart. And while an irrelevant Starbucks ad may simply be annoying, for a sole proprietor with a small marketing budget, the inability to correctly attach and delivery their marketing dollars to a nearby user who is interested is a non-starter.
The good news is that small businesses are more rapidly embracing location-based tools, and the potential is very real. Lots of recent data indicates that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are crafting location-oriented offerings: more than 90% are also on Facebook and Twitter, 80% have claimed their Google Place Page, 40% use Yahoo Local, and almost 20% use Microsoft’s Bing Maps for marketing outreach. And Google has certainly taken note, rebranding its local business center as Places and offering small businesses $25 fixed price listings. Can Twitter be far behind, now that they are publishing venues with each tweet? Certainly, there is an opportunity for them to copy Google’s Place Pages and aggregate location-based inventory for both monetization and search capabilities.
From a consumer perspective, there is no doubt that that the interest level is high. Some of Yelp’s iPhone stats are astonishing when it comes to location, including half a million calls and a million point-to-point directions to local businesses generated directly from the iPhone App. A next major move we can expect to see is mobile developers aggregating continuously-updated and correct location content from many different sources to create a genuinely relevant experience for consumers. This and the tools described above create the tipping point for local marketing dollars to flow into the location-based space.
For more interesting reading on this topic, check out:
Twitter: The Local Monetization Strategy
Foursquare’s Starbucks Mistake: Five Ways Foursquare Advertising Is Getting Less Interesting
Only 10% of Businesses Would Pay for Foursquare: Survey
Yelp Stats Show iPhone App Usage Staggeringly Deeper Than Website
June 9, 2010
Location Silos and Open Databases of Places: The Buzz Around Location Data Management
The tech trades are beginning to fill with treatises and musings on the topic of location data. From the emerging silos between location data providers (Location 2012: Death Of The Information Silos) to calls for an Open Database of Places, what’s clear is that making the mobile experience relevant for where a consumer is and when they are there is vastly more difficult than just getting a GPS fix from a phone.
Take for example the silos problem – in essence, the creation of walled location data-gardens with no interoperability across location-based services. “Why doesn’t Plancast know that I’ve been to Starbucks on Tripit…” and other more humorous views on the topic highlight the problems that result from attempting to aggregate different location-based services into a unified consumer experience in the physical world. While it should be simple, the many different ways of expressing places in the world make this a very complicated problem.
Reviews on Yelp!, social plans on Plancast, rewards on Foursquare, my fan pages on Facebook and the folks I’m following on Twitter—all referring loosely to the same places (but with different ways of referring to those places)—should be brought together in a way that works seamlessly and is updated in real time on my phone… Yet a simple example from New York City highlights one of the many problems with location data and actually doing this: “1 Bryant Park”, “1095 Avenue of the Americas,” and “Aureole Restaurant – 135 W. 42nd Street” are all in the same building, but which one do I check-into? Alternatively, if Starbucks wants to attach a mobile coupon or offer to a store in this building, they need to associate it correctly with that store location, regardless of how it is referred to across many different applications (from Foursquare to Facebook to Plancast), which may all have a different ways of identifying this particular location.
The oft-touted solution to this problem is the creation of a universal database of places to which all LBS companies can contribute. While this altruistic approach makes sense in theory, unfortunately location data is not like open-source software: not everyone participating in the location ecosystem will benefit. Smaller companies with unique location data do not get anything out of sharing it—and the ambition of some of the larger players in our space pushing their unique ID systems is an attempt at locking developers into their content so that we all have to work through them for monetization.
So until the ideal universal database emerges, Placecast has taken a different approach. We’ve opened access to our platform to share tools for cleaning and managing location data (which solve the 1 Bryant Park and Starbucks problems described above) through our free MatchAPI solution. As part of MatchAPI, publishers and developers can share their location data with one another by simply matching their IDs—not giving away their unique content.
At the end of the day, what we should all be focused on is building great experiences and monetizing them—not hoarding location data. The way to achieve this is by reducing the friction that stands in the way of sharing location data, so that advertisers from large brands to neighborhood stores can deliver marketing to their customers on their phones. Sharing IDs is a simple first step.
For more interesting reading on this topic, check out:
Why check-ins and like buttons will change the local landscape by Tyler Bell
http://radar.oreilly.com/2010/05/check-ins-like-buttons-will-ch.html
Location 2012: Death Of The Information Silos by Robert Scoble in Techcrunch:
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/03/location-2012/
It’s Time For An Open Database Of Places by Erik Schoenfeld also in Techcrunch
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/17/open-database-places/
Eddy’s Sofa And The Nightmare Of A Single Global Places Register posted by Gary Gale
http://opengeodata.org/eddys-sofa-and-the-nightmare-of-a-single-glob
May 4, 2010
Placecast’s ShopAlerts Picks Up Fifth Award Distinction of the Year: Official Honoree of 2010 Webby Awards
Placecast is excited to announce that the company has been named a Webby Award Official Honoree. The 14th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from all 50 states and over 60 countries worldwide. The Webby Awards are considered the Internet’s most respected symbol of success. As an Honoree in the “Best Use of GPS or Location Technology” category, Placecast remains a leader in the field, a company whose work has included creating the concept and phrase “geo-fence marketing.”
Webby Award winners are chosen by the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences, a global organization whose members include David Bowie, Harvey Weinstein, Arianna Huffington, Matt Groening, Internet inventor Vinton Cerf, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone, Virgin Group Chairman Richard Branson, and R/GA Chairman and CEO Bob Greenberg.
Past Webby Award Winners have included industry leaders such as Amazon.com, eBay, Yahoo!, iTunes, Google, FedEx, BBC News, CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, NPR, Salon Magazine, Facebook, Meetup, Wikipedia, Flickr, ESPN, Comedy Central, PBS and The Onion News Network.
“Retailers are looking for innovative ways to use emerging forms of technology to drive in-store traffic. Our ShopAlerts service is an excellent example of mobile marketing and advertising driving ROI in an innovative and relevant way for consumers and the brands they love,” says Alistair Goodman, CEO of Placecast.
Being named a Webby Award Official Honoree is the fifth award distinction that Placecast has won this year.
The company won The BIG Minute of Innovation, led by the San Francisco Bay Area Interactive Group (SFBIG), a non-profit professional association dedicated to championing innovation in digital marketing, and sponsored by dmg world media. Placecast was selected as number one out of fifteen companies presenting for their location-based mobile marketing service.
Placecast’s ShopAlerts service took home the top prize for innovation given by the National Retail Federation, the 2010 RACie award, as the company showed that consumers and brands like the North Face, Sonic and American Eagle are embracing opt-in location-based mobile marketing.
Additionally, ShopAlerts was selected as a finalist in the 2010 Global Mobile Awards announced at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain earlier this year. Most recently, Placecast was named a CTIA E-Tech Award finalist in the category of Enterprise & Vertical Market Solution – Mobile Marketing or Advertising.
April 14, 2010
Research Report: Retail Goes Mobile
Today, we announced the release of a report titled “Retail Goes Mobile: Finding New Consumer Connections Through Mobile Devices” by Kathryn Koegel, President of Primary Impact Research. The report focuses on the latest research on mobile marketing within the retail sector.
This report reflects the next installment of our research, focused on helping marketers navigate the mobile landscape and develop strategies for connecting with consumers. This report which pulls together a cross-section of insights from the Harris Poll, Nielsen, comScore and TNS, as well as research from our own mobile programs, paints an exciting picture about the opportunity for mobile marketing in 2010.
With Apple’s recent announcements of the iPad and iAd, marketers everywhere are now more focused than ever on mobile. For retailers in particular, 2010 is clearly the year that they are universally testing this medium because of the uniquely personal, always on characteristics of the phone. From location-based SMS, WAP banners and text links, branded apps or ads in applications, retailers are now recognizing the power that the mobile device can have in driving traffic into physical stores.
We’ve been learning through our experience with brands and our consumer research, that place and time are a powerful predictor of consumer intent. As consumers, where we are and when we’re there says a lot about what we are interested in. Combining mobile and location can enable marketers to deliver a message when the consumer is in the mindset to take action: in research we conducted through the holiday season with three brands, 65% of consumers that opted-in to follow a brand made a purchase as a result of receiving messages based on place and time. In essence, location and time are the physical manifestation of purchase intent.
With 224 million mobile users engaged in texting, SMS has emerged as “the only form of mobile marketing to reach the entire mobile universe.” According to a Harris Poll consumer survey conducted on behalf of Placecast, 45% of 18-34 year-olds and 35% of 35-44 year olds were interested in receiving opt-in mobile alerts.
“Mobile phones now have consumer penetration rates that surpass the Internet, and marketers need to grasp the implications of ‘go-anywhere media,’ which is what mobile phones represent,” says Kathryn Koegel, who lead this research project. “Consumers use their phones to do everything from research products to check competitor retail pricing – even from within store locations,” she continues.
The full “Retail Goes Mobile” report is available here.
April 1, 2010
Opening the Placecast Match API
Placecast has spent nearly five years building a platform that resolves the problems of delivering location-based programs at scale, and introducing ways to monetize them. Yesterday we opened up some of that functionality for free to the LBS ecosystem - our MatchAPI - in the hopes that everyone working on the challenges of location-based offerings can focus on generating revenue from location-based services as we will all benefit from attracting marketing spend to the space.
The explosive adoption of smartphones over the past year (Thank you, Steve Jobs) has kicked-off a wave of innovation in the area of location-based offerings, specifically in mobile. We are so excited at the prospects for everyone in the ecosystem to bring new products and services to consumers and brands – 2010 really is “The year of mobile…” in that we are finally seeing mainstream adoption by marketers, even if it is still in its infancy.
One of the first building blocks – part of the plumbing – of generating revenue from location-based offerings is the ability for everyone in the ecosystem to seamlessly identify places on the planet. While on the surface this appears to be a pretty straightforward exercise, when you dig deeper, you discover (as many of the LBS start-ups are learning) that it can actually be a frustrating, time-consuming problem because there are so many different ways to refer to a place.
One approach to solving this problem is to try and establish a standard referencing scheme. At Placecast, we took a different approach, realizing that standards are hard to achieve in a newly emerging industry. The reality is that different companies will want to keep their different ways of referencing locations – and that should be OK.
The Placecast Match API is a free tool that enables location content providers and location-based application developers to refer to a location in any number of ways, and validate that those references resolve to one true location on the planet. It resolves two basic problems of working with large location-based data sets:
- First, it disambiguates addresses - identifying all of the different ways to express the address of a location, and verifying that those different expressions refer to the same place on the planet. So a social check-in app, for example, can de-duplicate the many different ways their users might refer to the places where they are spending time.
- Second, it maps all the relevant IDs from different content providers to that same place on the planet, so that it is always referred to correctly by any other system. Here, a content provider aggregating from many different sources can reconcile the different references to the same places in their system.
Best of all, LBS companies do not need to adopt a new location referencing system – they can keep whatever they have. We’ve been using this system for over a year now and pressure-tested it with millions of records worldwide. We hope anyone who uses it will find this a valuable contribution towards the goal of all of us monetizing our location-based offerings.
March 18, 2010
Retail Goes Mobile: Finding New Consumer Connections through Mobile Devices
Today, Kathryn Koegel, President of Primary Impact Research, presented the latest research on mobile marketing within the retail sector. The webinar, hosted by Placecast, gives insights into purchase behavior, media consumption, and consumer receptivity to retailers currently leveraging the always-on mobile device. The session also includes a location-based mobile case study providing data and key learning for retailers seeking to drive in-store foot traffic and sales.
View the webinar:
Retail Goes Mobile: Finding New Consumer Connections through Mobile Devices
March 11, 2010
“Retail Goes Mobile: Finding New Consumer Connections through Mobile Devices,” Free Webinar Hosted by Placecast
Retailers are constantly looking for ways to leverage the unprecedented access they have through an always-on device and Placecast is proud to host Kathryn Koegel, President of Primary Impact Research, as she shares valuable perspectives on how marketers can increase brand loyalty and sales with innovative mobile solutions thought a webinar open to the public.
The webinar, entitled “Retail Goes Mobile: Finding New Consumer Connections Through Mobile Devices,” focuses on the latest research on mobile marketing within the retail sector. The Placecast-hosted event is aimed at further educating retailers on how to drive in-store foot traffic and sales through mobile marketing.
“Mobile phones now have consumer penetration rates that surpass the Internet – the media force that revolutionized retail behavior in the last decade,” says Koegel. “Marketers need to grasp the implications of ‘go-anywhere media,’ which is what mobile phones represent. Consumers are using their phones to do everything from research products to check competitor retail pricing – even from within store locations,” continued Koegel. “New techniques have been developed that enable retailers to use location to increase the relevance of marketing communications. But this is also the most permission-based of all marketing disciplines, and marketers need to learn mobile best practices to ensure ongoing consumer engagement.”
“Retail Goes Mobile: Finding New Consumer Connections through Mobile Devices” will cover:
• Consumer Purchase Behavior Trends
• Media Consumption Changes: The growing shift from print to digital media with wireless access
• The Mobile Device Revolution: Is it a smartphone or a multi-media device?
• Reaching Key Demographics Through Mobile
• The Implication of Anywhere Media Driving Retail Results through Location- based Mobile Tactics
Kathryn Koegel is a noted expert in digital marketing, and has created work accepted and published by The ARF and ESOMAR. Her company, Primary Impact Research, focuses on data insight development for agencies and marketers. She is currently at work on a whitepaper called The State of Mobile Marketing: Benchmarks & Best Practices, which will be published in May.
The webinar will take place on March 18th at 12noon ET/9 am PT. Learn more at http://www.placecastwebinar.com/
January 27, 2010
Placecast Announced as Global Mobile Awards Nominee
Unless you have been living under a rock, you most likely know that the Mobile World Congress is happening in Barcelona next month. This congress is the forum for mobile leaders to gather, collaborate, conduct business and learn about the most cutting edge innovations of our industry. Placecast is honoured to be a part of this year’s event and we proudly announce that the SONICsignals™ program has made the shortlist in the Best Mobile Location Based Advertising Campaign category with our partner Alcatel-Lucent.
The SONICsignals™ program is a location-based mobile program powered by Placecast’s location-triggered messaging platform in conjunction with Alcatel-Lucent’s geo-fencing technology. The program enables customers to opt in to follow SONIC® and receive mobile alters containing valuable information when they are near a point of interest for the brand or an actual SONIC® location. Combining location and geo-fencing technologies with marketing intelligence creates a 1:1 relationship with customers and builds context relevancy between place and time.
The winners will be announced at the Mobile Word Congress in Barcelona, on Tuesday February 16 and we appreciate the sentiments of Rob Conway, CEO and Memeber of the Board of the GSMA:
“Our congratulations to all nominees for the Global Mobile Awards 2010. Competition for these awards is fierce, with more than 500 entries - including many of an exceptional standard - and a highly discerning independent judging panel to impress; to be shortlisted is quite and achievement. We look forward to the unveiling of the winners at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next month.”
December 18, 2009
Placecast Webinar: “Innovations in Retail: Using Mobile Technology to Drive Foot Traffic and Sales”
On Tuesday December 15, Placecast hosted a webinar aimed at finding new approaches that are working for retailers to increase brand affinity and drive repeat traffic into their stores. Moderate by Janye O’Donnell, the retail reporter for USA Today and co-author of the book, Gen BuY: How Tweens, Teens and Twenty-somethings are Revolutionizing Retail, the discussion provided insights for retail marketers, agencies and mobile vendors alike.
It’s fairly safe to say that the “year of mobile” was slated to be 2007/2008/2009 and now, we’re looking to 2010. Outside of the ever-changing forecast, it remains that mobile is becoming increasingly important and to frame the discussion of the webinar, panelists where asked: WHY? Jeff Montgomery, Chief Revenue Officer of 1020 Placecast, notes that retailers want to know how they can leverage the unprecedented access they have with consumers via the mobile device. One of the general themes throughout the discussion is the power in the relationship based and medium that such a personal deceive holds.
As for how do consumers view mobile marketing and what appeals vs. detracts from the experience, Kathryn Koegel, President of Primary Impact Research, shared some of her extensive research on the subject. Koegel’s observations have found that consumers are open to mobile marketing as long as two key elements are present: relevancy and opt-in. A powerful way to create relevancy is by combining the concept of location to the mix, as pointed out by Dustin Jacobsen, Technical Director for Barkley.
One of the issues with tying the power of location to mobile is scale. When asked what mobile marketing options are working at scale for retailers, right now SMS is the only channel that is doing this effectively. The cost effective medium allows you to, as Jacobsen mentioned, “start basic and utilize key learnings (that can be rolled out to additional initiatives); test, test, test!”
To hear the entire discussion, including topics such as how mobile fits into your overall marketing mix as well as what retailers are doing this well today, listen in by downloading the recording here.
December 1, 2009
Final Installment of the Alert Shopper Series 6
Timed with the official kickoff of the retail industry’s most critical period and the climax of holiday season offerings, this week marks the wrap-up of our six-part investigative series.
With our Alert Shopper in-person interviews and third-party studies, we pioneered research in retail as it relates to understanding the role of mobile in commerce and mobile advertising. Over the last few months, you met Karyn M., 52-year-old mother who depends on a few select stores to make finding same-day sales and deals easy; Anthony C., 39-year-old early adopter who researches gadget specs online before making purchases; Garrick L., 16-year-old student who doesn’t mind being interrupted to receive messages about a good sale going on; and Joni, 46-year-old mother who brings her phone with her while she’s out shopping and checks her messages throughout the shopping trip.
Our final video clip will highlight significant trends uncovered throughout our interview series: mobile devices are an integral part of consumers’ daily lifestyle, not only for everyday communication, but for research on sales and deals at stores like Levi’s, Jamba Juice, Target and Best Buy.
We also underscore precedential data from our recent Harris Interactive survey. After surveying more than 2,000 consumers, we learned there is a high interest in receiving mobile messages from consumers’ favorite establishments, especially among young consumers, ages 18 – 44. We also learned there is a strong interest among both men and women to receive opt-in mobile alerts from consumers’ favorite establishments. Among these establishments, food, entertainment and fashion top the list.
This comes as no surprise to the National Retail Federation, who reported shoppers’ destination of choice as department stores, with nearly half of shoppers over the Black Friday weekend visiting at least one department store, an approximate 13 percent increase from 2008. Electronics was a popular category this last weekend, with Best Buy reporting an increase in foot traffic over last year. Overall, 195 million consumers visited stores and websites over the weekend, 23 million more shoppers than last year.
Indeed, economic recovery is on the rise, as the four-day weekend totaled $41.2 billion, up slightly from $41 billion last year. These figures show why some retailers such as J. Crew are noticing improving demand heading into their holiday shopping season. J.Crew reported higher profit on a 14% sales increase for Q3 and American Eagle recently posted a higher quarterly profit.
A recent survey conducted by Deloitte shows mobile devices will be used more than ever this holiday shopping season. Fifty-five percent of consumers plan to use their mobile phones to search store locations; 45 percent will use their phone to research prices; 40 percent will use their phone to locate product information; and 32 percent will find discounts and coupons on their mobile phone this holiday season. Among young consumers, ages 18 to 29, mobile usage for shopping is expected to increase even more, with 4 out of 10 (39 percent) planning to use their mobile phone for holiday shopping.
Now that we know mobile devices improve consumers’ shopping experience, do consumers feel their cell phones will become even more important to them in the future? This is what we’ll explore in our final video here:
As illustrated throughout our Alert Shopper series, location and relevancy tied to place and time are become increasingly important to consumers. Mobile marketing as a service rather than an intrusion can connect consumers with the brands they love. Stay tuned for Placecast powered ShopAlerts, a service coming soon to your phone…and stores near you.
