Tag: retailers

Why Did Google Scrap Its Location Service?

Reasons Cited Include Privacy, Lack of Retail Support

Kevin Dennehy

Google Here, a proposed beacon-based location service operating within Google Maps, was reportedly cancelled due to a concern by Alphabet CEO Larry Page’s that it would be too invasive by the users of his mapping service. When the location industry has such a dominant player pull out of a nascent, and potentially lucrative, proximity service, does it mean that consumers will now have to wait for a full-scale rollout? Google will remain a major player with its Google Maps app, but where does it go from there?

Citing privacy issues and lack of retail partners for support, Google scraped its Google Here location service that would have used the company’s Maps technology to send notifications to users when they entered a specific location.

In a recent Fortune article, Alphabet CEO Larry Page said the company killed the project because it was too invasive to consumers, and the company was uncertain whether retail partners could have helped to roll out the service. Besides being in conflict with an existing location Here name (such as the former Nokia, and now German consortium, mapping service), the service included partnerships with retailers — and would have been available to more than 350 million Android users earlier this year.

Google makes money off of advertising through its Maps app, but the Fortune article said that the proposed Here location service would have made it even more valuable to advertisers.

So what does the location industry make of one of the largest players not rolling out a location service? To at least one analyst, it’s a “so what” report considering Google in July rolled out a new agnostic beacon service called Eddystone. “Somewhat curiously, the company appears to be moving forward with location-based advertising under the guise of the Eddystone project, so beacons and their use in location-based advertising seem still of interest — just not beacons combined with messaging that might make Google Maps an uncontrollable nag about shopping opportunities,” said Mike Dobson, Telemapics president.

Eddystone, a new format for Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, works with Google’s Android operating system along with Apple’s iOS and other platforms that connect through BLE.

Overall, Dobson believes that Google is approaching middle-age in terms of corporate development. “It is both developing a conscience about how its services really operate, as well as imposing economic constraints limiting how much the company is willing to spend to determine whether a potential market might be a big hit,” he said. “More specifically, it is my opinion that Google is slowly reining in the spending on new innovations for Google Maps, as well as the expenses associated with supporting the lakes in the data reservoir associated with their mapping product. Google may have finally realized that maintaining spatial data is expensive and a cost that is never going to decrease.”

Dobson also said that the Google Here program was going to be an expensive proposition. “My understanding of the Google Here program was that Google would provide the beacons and infrastructure and control delivery of the service through Google Maps. That’s a lot of beacons and associated support — in other words, more money,” he said. “Conversely, Eddystone appears to offer a standardized, industry-supported approach that is beneficial for Google and companies interested in testing the concept.”

Dobson said the name “Here” could have caused problems for Google. “Two other issues crossed my mind when I heard the news of the cancellation. First, who at Google forgot trademark law and thought they could combine the name of the well-known mapping company Here with Google?” he said. “Second, if I owned an application as successful as Google Maps is on mobile phones, I sure would not want to push my users to consider switching to a less-invasive mapping app. You know, that Larry Page guy sure seems to know his Alphabet.”

Big Competitors Getting into Beacons, with Huge Market Expected

Recent Allied Business Intelligence reports indicate that BLE beacon shipments will exceed 400 million units by 2020. While optimistic, and only five years away, ABI said that pure beacon shipment revenues will break $1 billion this year.

Google’s July entry into the location-beacon space is significant, if not surprising, to heat up the location market. However, competition is fierce as Apple, Facebook and Twitter now have dedicated BLE resources.

The location-beacon market is heating up as Gimbal, the Qualcomm spin-off company, installed approximately 1,300 BLE beacons in areas at South by Southwest. Gimbal said it was making its technology available to enable any BLE device to act as a dedicated location beacon.

Google plans to improve its own products and services through the Eddystone beacon technology, according to a company blog. Earlier this year, the company launched beacon-based transit notifications in Portland that enable users to get faster access to schedules for specific locations.

With rise in commercial location-based beacon technology comes a cross-over movement in public safety markets. TeleCommunication Systems, which bought Loctronix in July, is developing the indoor public safety and emergency market, along with Longmont, Colo.-based Intrado.

As detailed in last month’s Wireless LBS Insider column, beacons and Wi-Fi seem to be the lead technologies in use for emergency indoor location. Intrado installed 65 Apple iBeacons at the Washington Convention Center to showcase its developing indoor positioning technology at the APCO trade show.

It’s not all about beacons in this proximity/contextual location market. The analytical data derived from the beacon information will grow into a huge market. As we reported this summer, a new location analytics product is hitting the market in a more and more crowded indoor-positioning field.

Such companies as Cloud4Wi, with its Fogsense product, is tailored to retail outlets, coffee shops, restaurant chains and shopping malls with presence analytics and location-based services.

The device, which contains Broadcom’s WICED chip, features BLE technology in the new version in (the fourth quarter), said Elena Briola, Cloud4Wi’s chief marketing officer. The new BLE version will enable Apple iBeacon and location-aware mobile applications, the company said.

September 14, 2015
Markey Report Concerns Connected Vehicle Industry
Editor’s note: Dennehy is GPS World’s editor for location-based services, writing a monthly column for the LBS Insider newsletter. The views expressed are his own. He will be covering the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for GPS World. Contact him at [email protected] with your news.

Sen. Ed Markey’s new car technology report, released earlier this month, basically says that connected vehicles can be hacked, causing danger to drivers and presenting major privacy concerns. While some critics believe Markey’s report was meant to drive media hysteria, others say it raises serious issues that the industry needs to address. In other location news, I’ll be covering the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for GPS World. What will be the showcased location technology? Wearables? Connected vehicles? Or something new?

Kevin Dennehy

By Kevin Dennehy

A report released by Sen. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) earlier this month says that even though drivers have come to rely on new connected technologies, automakers haven’t done their part to protect them from cyber attacks or privacy invasions

First reported by CBS News’ 60 Minutes, Markey’s report, Tracking & Hacking: Security & Privacy Gaps Put American Drivers at Risk, includes information from 16 automobile manufacturers who were given questions about security and privacy. However, few of the carmakers’ answers included how vehicles may be vulnerable to hackers — and what driver information is collected.

Location industry veteran Kim Fennell, deCarta CEO, said the report should be a real concern to the industry. “But it’s more of an issue for autonomous driving and the security of the car’s electronic control system. Even today, the OnStar service, which was a pioneer in the connected car space, can remotely slow your vehicle down in the event of a theft,” he said. “This feature, if hacked, could definitely create massive problems if the proper security technologies are not implemented.”

Markey’s report raised additional concerns about the use of navigation and other features that record and send location or driving history information.

Fennell said there should be a distinction between the infotainment systems in the vehicle and the on-board control systems of the car.

“We believe that there should be a strict firewall between these systems so that nothing malicious can happen that is initiated from the connected infotainment system. Any data should flow one way — from the control system of the car to the infotainment system,” he said. “This is not to say that the connected infotainment system shouldn’t be secure, it should be. In working with our OEM and Tier One partners, we have implemented strict security protocols between our servers and their apps.”

Markey’s report found that “[automakers] use personal vehicle data in various ways, often vaguely to ‘improve the customer experience’ and usually involving third parties, and retention policies — how long they store information about drivers — vary considerably among manufacturers.”

In addition, the report found that customers are often not made aware of data collection and, when they are, they often cannot opt out without disabling features, such as navigation.

Percentage of Vehicles that can record driving history

Overall, Fennell hopes that the most malicious thing that could happen in the event of a hack of an infotainment system is that a “Pandora station is changed to play nothing but Justin Bieber songs, the traffic information for your route is projected to be ridiculously long or the Yelp rating of the restaurant that you are going to is lowered down to one star.”

Ultimately though, the driver should be in control of the car and nothing in the infotainment system should affect the behavior of the vehicle, Fennell said.

In terms of driver safety, in a recent survey, deCarta found that more than two-thirds of respondents considered dashboard screens that display videos and other Internet content to be the most dangerous types of onboard information systems. Approximately 79 percent of those polled preferred “voice-activated mapping systems that allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road” as an essential safety-enhancing feature.

“There are two things that infotainment systems could do better to prevent driver distraction. First, instead of replicating the stove-piped app store environment of the smartphone, in-car infotainment services could be better integrated,” Fennell said. “If I find a destination on Yelp, I’d like to send that to my navigation system instead of typing in the address. Second, with today’s better automated speech-recognition technology and text-to-speech engines, it’s now possible to make requests of your infotainment system using natural language commands. Voicebox is doing some great things in this area.”

Fennell said that most existing systems are not connected. “But those that are, aren’t predictive enough. Your navigation/infotainment system should almost work as a concierge,” he said. “It should recognize what time it is and realize you are most likely leaving for work and offer up the best route based on traffic conditions. It should recognize that you are going to a destination in an urban area and offer the most convenient parking to your destination.”

Company Rolls out Indoor Positioning Product that Doesn’t Require Retailer Involvement

After testing and demoing the product in San Francisco last year, IndoorAtlas is rolling out a consumer app called GPSindoor, which uses smartphones to locate shoppers inside a mall. The product features product proximity advertising to allow shoppers to see where they are relative to a product for promotion marketing.

The product includes a crowdsourcing function to allow user-generated data to build indoor maps, wayfinding and other options for shopping promotions, said Wibe Wagemans, IndoorAtlas president.

“We don’t need any retailers per se. We need only the shopper and [their] smartphone,” he said. “There is no brand or retailer involvement if you use our app. Unlike Wi-Fi and Bluetooth beacons, since GPSindoor relies on a community of shoppers, it allows for higher accuracy than static maps. That gives us the confidence to take on the giants like Apple Beacons and Google Indoor Maps head on — we are completely independent of retailers and not dependent on them for our success in becoming the GPS of indoors.”

In other location news:
- HERE released a new version of its mapping system for Android, saying it made significant improvements. According to the company’s blog, after more than 3 million downloads, it is shedding the “beta” label with this version. In the beta version, when users asked for a route, the app gave them three car routes. If a user wanted public transit or pedestrian routes, they had to switch to the appropriate tab. This process was slow and inconvenient for people who don’t use a car all the time, HERE said.
- In its recent financial statements, Garmin indicated a growing, and profitable, segment is its wearables/fitness band product line. Mio is also expanding its wearable offerings. This should be a big topic at next months’ Mobile World Congress.
I’ll be covering the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for GPS World. Contact me at [email protected] with your news.
February 26, 2015
GPS Tracking, Robots Key in Heavy Retail Shopping Season

An Amazon employee picks items in the company’s newest generation fulfillment center. (Photo: Business Wire)

It used to be when you expected a home delivery, you could specify morning or afternoon, and hope you were there when the truck showed up. In today’s high-tech retail experience, van deliveries can be slotted specifically in two hour, or even one hour, windows. This is just one development in the battle for speed, as major retailers turn to technology to help Santa get presents under the tree on time.

According to a feature at BBC News, automated route planning and GPS tracking of vans has greatly improved deliveries, along with better warehouse scanning technology, such as the intricate robotic system employed by Amazon in its warehouses.

Last December, Amazon demonstrated its idea of a drone delivery service, but that technology has yet to launch. For now, the increase in speed it taking place on the warehouse floor, which has turned to robots guided by an intricate barcode system. In 10 of Amazon’s U.S. warehouses, an army of 15,000 robots are helping human employees pick, pack, and ship items.

A Kiva robot moves product in Amazon’s eighth generation fulfillment center. (Photo: Business Wire)

The system uses robotics, Kiva technology, vision systems and almost 20 years’ worth of software and mechanical innovations to fulfill holiday orders. Amazon purchased the system in 2012 and tested it in 2013, but this is its first year for full deployment. Instead of having employees go to the shelves to find the items for an order, robots automatically deliver the items to them, hauling seven-foot-tall shelving units on their backs.

The robotic system has made picking products go two to three times faster, employees said.

The need for speed presents is a huge challenge for retailers trying to offer their customers a seamless shopping experience in-store, online and via mobile, the BBC reports. “Speed is the new battleground,” said Craig Sears-Black, UK managing director of Manhattan Associates, a software company specializing in warehouse management systems. “These days orders have to be processed in two hours, not two days. The physical side of selling needs to be optimized.”

In the UK, MetaPack handles the delivery of online transactions for 80 of the UK’s top 100 retailers, integrating about 240 delivery companies worldwide into its system. “These days competition amongst carriers is giving consumers a lot more choice over when and where their parcels are delivered,” said Patrick Wall, MetaPack founder and chief executive.

When a customer selects delivery options, MetaPack works out which are available in which location for which goods. MetaPack then decides which carrier represents best value for the retailer and handles all the tracking data so everyone can know exactly where the parcel is on its journey at any time.

In the U.S., FedEx is using enhanced visibility technology to help customers plan for package deliveries and pickups. At many FedEx ground facilities, high-speed six-sided camera tunnels with real-time package tracking updates scan every side of a package, enhancing the readability of a shipping label and providing visibility to a package’s location at all times.

That tracking technology, coupled with network-wide improvements, will offer customers increased visibility this season, including clarification as to exactly when a package is available for pickup at FedEx locations, FedEx said. It also will offer increased visibility into a package’s journey, from the time FedEx takes possession of the package to its estimated delivery date.

December 2, 2014
Indoor Location Has Major Growing Pains, but Big Upside
A number of factors are holding the proximity marketing/indoor positioning markets back: standardization issues, consumer acceptance/privacy, retailer awareness and the technology itself. However, as one location executive put it, it may be the one way that retailers with brick and mortar stores can compete with Amazon and other online giants.

Indoor location and proximity marketing may be the way large and small brick and mortar stores can compete with online retailers in the future, said panelists at the New York Place conference, held July 22. But all of this indoor location market talk doesn’t mean much if consumers don’t find a need for it.

“I am in an aisle at a grocery store and you sent me a coupon for cat food, and I don’t have a cat, I am not going to be interested. The retailer gets to own the data by providing a great experience to the consumer, not the spontaneous ‘you are in a store — here’s some information,’” said John Dempsey, Datalogix head of mobile and video.

While having a broad picture of a consumer’s “mobile moment” is important, there is something to be said about bombarding a consumer with too many location-based applications, said Doug Kilponen, Wanderful Media chief operating officer. “There are a limited number of apps consumers are willing to have, but not 200 different ones. It’s one thing to have an app for say, Target, but trying to find out what is broadly available during shopping makes shopping too much work,” he said. “Trying to find out what’s available becomes too much work as there are too many options [for the consumer].”

From a retailer’s perspective, they want consumer’s data, and will share it with partners, but they also want control, said Catherine Lindner, Shelfbucks chief marketing and merchant officer, who was an executive at Walgreens. “If you think about your own shopping behavior, there is only a few places you actually go to and spend money — a grocer, drug store. That retailer wants your data, and it makes sense,” she said. “How do we spend the money to grow the business? The idea that there is one bucket of money to transfer is not going to happen.”

One company says that consumers don’t want to be “advertazed” by retailers. “Their job is to show you Calvin Klein, but sometimes there is not enough information or context. They hijack moments, rather than create them,” said Scott Townsend, Urban Airstrip director of agency programs.

Still, retailers are increasingly using indoor location as part of their mobile strategies. Jewelry chain Alex and Ani has three beacons in their Boston and New York stores, said Ryan Bonifacino, Alex and Ani vice president, digital strategy. “We really want to prove that this [indoor location] can really work. We really want to get in front of people who wouldn’t have discovered us,” he said.

Indoor Location Standardization? What Standardization?

Like any new technology and market, industry standardization will have growing pains, and a lot of the problem may be with the retailers, said panel members. “There are issues with standardization. If Walmart puts a [indoor positioning] in to its store — they don’t care if it works anywhere else,” said Don Dodge, Google developer advocate.

Indoor location is the classic chicken-before-the-egg situation, said Chris Goodall, Trusted Positioning founder and CEO. “There currently are no standards for indoor [positioning], maybe we need it. Databases are not standardized,” he said.

A lot of the reason that standardization has not be resolved is that no big application, the old killer app, has appeared. “Indoor is something that has not emerged yet, it’s a long tail story,” said Dan Ryan, ByteLight co-founder and CEO. “Every location company is trying to build a network — and naturally attract developers.”

Making Proximity and Indoor Location Relevant to Retailers

Some retail chains like Walgreens have used indoor positioning technology for years and are considered some of the major early adopters. However, making consumer-purchasing behavior data relevant to retailers is the only way for indoor marketing to take off.

The concept of geofencing each store has been tested in several locations. One company envisions an image of a celebrity greeting consumers in a store with an offer. “Walgreens focused on not invading people’s privacy. But they basically asked users, what’s important to them when they walk into a store,” said aisle411 founder and CEO Nathan Pettyjohn. “[Bluetooth Low Energy] beacons can do this very elegantly. When a consumer walks through a store, perhaps they see a celebrity popping out to greet them.”

In many successful mobile marketing campaigns, all have a common theme — proximity components always enhance sales, said James Smith, Verve chief revenue officer. “Every one of our studies says it drives sales. Sometimes we hear that geofences don’t work — my answer to that is they are in the wrong places,” he said. “A person can go into a place 15 days later and a beacon locks on them — the retailer is happy because it works. Consumers are more empowered because they have a research device in their hand to go where they want to go.”

Case Study: Walkbase

A Finland-based company is delivering market research to retailers that examines consumers’ in-store shopping behavior and loyalty patterns. Walkbase, which signed a deal with Helsinki airport operator Finavia, started in 2007 when it spun off from an indoor location company.

“It’s a retail tool that analyzes indoor performance of marketing campaigns and [sales] conversion. It measures when consumers come into a store — do they bounce out or are they engaged?” said Juha Mattsson, Walkbase vice president, sales and marketing. “A retailer can launch a campaign that is affected by a consumer’s indoor journey. Whether that is through coupons, or not, as some retailers don’t want that.”

Mattsson says that the company is operating primarily in Europe — and is waiting for what indoor technologies will win. “It is just a matter of time before the market takes off. Retailers are very interested in these types of consumer spending analytics,” he said. “We will be launching a U.S. white paper on in-store optimization as it’s all about education. We also are rolling out a version 2.0 of our product in the third quarter.”

In other LBS news:
- According to published reports, Michael Halbherr, CEO of Nokia’s HERE mapping unit, will be stepping down. Halbherr, who is based in Berlin, steps down after eight years at the company. As recently as 2012, HERE, then called Navteq, had been losing money but had stabilized recently. Cliff Fox, HERE senior vice president, will be acting CEO until a replacement is found.
- I will be covering CTIA’s Super Mobility Week in Las Vegas, Sept. 8-11. To arrange an interview with me for Wireless LBS Insider, or to submit press releases, contact me at [email protected].
August 27, 2014
Indoor Positioning Gaining Retail, Advertising Agency Notice
Kevin Dennehy

Proximity and indoor positioning will grow as technology gets better — and consumers value its benefits. Attendees at the recent Place conference in New York had the opportunity to hear from companies who advocated Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and even magnetic positioning technology. In addition, several advertising agencies and retailers attended, showing that the nascent proximity/indoor location niche could be a major market in the next few years.

NEW YORK — The potential for indoor positioning and proximity marketing is huge if even a fraction of overall retail sales are attributed to the information the technology gives to retailers, said panel members at the July 22 Place conference here.

The indoor opportunity is huge as studies have shown that 70 percent to 89 percent of consumers use smartphones in stores to compare prices and shop for coupons, said Greg Sterling, Opus Research senior analyst. “About $20 to $50 billion of purchases were influenced at point-of-sale in stores. $500 billion of retail sales came without any premeditated product selections,” he said. “Even if a small fraction shifts to mobile devices, that’s an enormous amount of money.”

Sterling said that despite consumers’ ambivalence to privacy issues, if they are guaranteed some sort of benefits to being tracked, they will opt-in. “72 percent said they don’t want tracking [without benefits]. That number goes up to 66.4 percent who say ‘yes’ if there are specific benefits — rewards and discounts,” he said. “It is about educating consumers [as to benefits of location-based advertising].”

Technology improvements and retailer awareness in the last two years have made such mobile advertising agencies as Joule interesting in location as a data point beyond geofencing, said Michael Lieberman, company co-president.

“I am biased as we are mobile agency, so for us, most of our clients are using location to identify buyers. Ideally, we see a device in multiple locations, we understand consumers’ behavior,” Lieberman said. “If I see you every morning at a Starbucks, you are a coffee drinker and I should target you that way. However, if you are trying to use location as a national campaign you will only get a percentage of accuracy — you are missing out on other information.”

Right now, retailers have little idea how and why a consumer makes a purchase, Lieberman said. “The [important] point is in [indoor location’s] measurement — what happens in the store environment. You walk in store, make a purchase, right now we have no idea what they did to buy a product,” he said. “We are losing that piece — and it is a big gap in thinking. Everything about consumer path in that store determines a purchase. What’s valuable is the in-store data that gives you the most actionable information.”

Location today is used for targeting, but not for the total consumer measurement that Facebook requires, said Doug Stotland, Facebook product marketing director. “IKEA recently ran a campaign in a local radius, they wanted to see who showed up in their parking lot,” Stotland said. “It’s really compelling when you look at the methodology — you want to see if people actually showed up at the store. The home run is how to tie it to what they actually buy.”

Stotland said Facebook uses location information for targeting, but basically users tell the company where they live and that’s it. “We can do better than that — there is definitely a big opportunity there. The great thing about Facebook is that I am always logged in — there is no value for targeting if I am not.”

In a case study session at Place, Korean telecom provider SK Telecom has been making inroads in indoor positioning markets for several years, said John Kim, SK Telecom senior business development manager. “While we are the number one mobile operator in Korea, like other companies, we were hitting saturation levels,” Kim said. “We found that location-based services for telecos are a key service, basing this on earlier tracking, navigation and security markets.”

SK Telecom ran indoor positioning tests at Seoul National University Hospital, which has 1,360 beds, making it hard to find patients. Kim said younger indoor positioning users liked the service and found it easy to use. “We also found that it was difficult for active marketing — what does a hospital use to promote it? Two-for-one x-rays?” Kim said. “The service was also difficult for remote maintenance and support.

Kim said that SK Telecom is installing the product as a test in a Seoul sports stadium and at the L’Oreal Madrid flagship store. “We are also partnering with [Herndon, Va.-based] APX to work in their Google Glass product to provide location information.”

Overall, the upside of indoor location is huge, said Don Dodge, Google developer advocate. “Imagine if you can look at phone to know exactly what stores your family members are in at the mall. At CES, you have no idea where 15 to 20 of your friends are,” he said. “If my wife gives me a list of groceries, I can find them in certain areas and know what price they are. First responders, fire departments, can find their way around in a burning building — and find a safe way out.”

Privacy: The Attack on Opt-In

In a privacy panel, members put a dark cloud over the ubiquitous answer by many companies that consumer opt-in alleviates all concerns for the location industry.

Amanda Koulousias, a Federal Trade Commission attorney, said Section Five of the FTC Act, which has been expanded to cover tracking users over a certain time, prohibits deceptive practices that are likely to mislead people acting reasonably.

Privacy seems to be a hot topic for reporters. Kate Kaye, a panel member who is a reporter with Advertising Age, said that security issues around beacons and leakages is a story. She also said that the Associated Press recently ran a story critical of the new Verizon rewards program. “The story typifies the balance a lot of marketers are trying to straddle — how much information can we gather, and how do we not [anger] consumers. Verizon Wireless prompts you to join their loyalty rewards program, but you have to opt-in to their location data program,” she said.

Privacy panel moderator Jules Polonetsky, Future of Privacy Forum executive director, said a way some companies get consumers to opt in to being tracked is just to say “download this app.”

The location industry’s privacy issues are not going away — and the path for resolution isn’t clear, said Greg Turetsky, principal engineer in Intel’s wireless communications group. “The privacy issue is so complex legally, economically and socially, that I expect it will not be resolved any time soon,” he said.

In other Place conference news:
- Opus Research, the organizer of the conference, published a report on magnetic positioning, which has a unique footprint. The company contends that magnetic positioning, which can be complimented by other technologies, offers six-foot accuracy with 90 percent precision. In comparison, Bluetooth offers proximity, but not the blue dot solution magnetic positioning currently has. In addition, Opus believes that Wi-Fi positioning, which has 40-foot accuracy, needs too much support and is expensive.
July 28, 2014
Location-Based Advertising Getting Higher Visibility
Airpush

When one talks about the worldwide location industry, mobile resource management — fleets and trucks, for instance — aren’t sexy at all, but they make money. What is supposed to be sexy is location-based advertising. According to many analysts, location-based advertising has been hampered by a few things: education for both consumers and mobile advertisers, privacy issues, and relevant proximity information so folks can use it to make purchases. Another concern could be the expense of rolling out indoor beacons.

BARCELONA—Major consumer privacy concerns aside, companies are starting to see growth in location-based advertising, with new markets emerging in Europe. While the numbers of mobile advertising companies has decreased at the Mobile World Congress, held here in February, from just two years ago, the remaining players are seeing a more mature market.

Mobile advertisers are beginning to realize that location is the Holy Grail for growth, said Cameron Peeples, Airpush vice president of marketing. “People going into New York from Newark during rush hour can receive a different call to action because of a created geo-fence. Advertisers can determine whether the traveler is there on business or looking for a hotel and other travel deals,” he said.

Before Mobile World Congress, Los Angeles-based Airpush partnered with AirX, a large mobile ad exchange company. The majority of the AirX inventory, about 120,000 Android applications, includes highly-sought-after GPS location data, the company said.

There are large differences between the North American and European markets for mobile advertising, Peeples said. “The mobile advertising market [in Europe] is definitely evolving. The European market is key for us, dramatically higher than other markets,” he said. “[The European] market seems to have people connected to a lot of things — they are more mobile, use public transportation more, and always have a phone that is more centric to who they are.”

Making location-based advertising relevant to the consumer is still a major challenge. “Our focus next year is on native advertising. Native advertising combines not only the right message, but the right delivery vehicle,” Peeples said. “No one bicycling enthusiast wants ads tailored for someone who wants flowers.”

Peeples said the privacy issues are a big deal, but his company’s services are opt-in. “A lot of it is loyalty advertising. It’s all opt-in,” he said.

xAd Partners with Waze, Sees UK Growth

Another mobile advertising company, New York-based xAd, is also making inroads in Europe. “We are in the UK right now, which is really WiFi-focused. A lot of our early [location-based] advertising efforts are in education — to educate consumers and the advertising agencies about the power of location and mobile,” said Monica Ho, xAd vice president of marketing. “Not all location is created equal. The real value of [location-based advertising] is the proximity target to market to.”

Right before Mobile World Congress, Waze selected xAd as its third-party provider of search and display mobile ads in the United States. Waze, which was bought by Google in a deal worth more than $1 billion, is a top three map and navigation app in the iTunes store — a ranking that was probably helped by the Apple Maps debacle in 2012.

The companies say the deal will place xAd’s mobile ad targeting technologies into Waze’s location-based advertising platform.

Ho said there are still two areas of concern for location-based advertising: relevancy to the consumer and privacy issues. “There was privacy backlash from Nordstrom collecting consumer information from their Wi-Fi system,” she said, referring to the controversy last year when the retailer was accused of capturing consumer information during an indoor positioning test.

Apple to Roll out Upgraded Maps on iPhone 6

Speaking about Apple Maps, many industry analysts says the company has come a long way since the very public embarrassment nearly two years ago over map inaccuracies and flaws. The company recently released iOS 7.1, but is expected to rollout iOS 8 when the iPhone 6 debuts later this year.

With the debut of the iPhone 6, an updated version of Apple Maps will also be released, according to published reports.

Last year, Apple bought two companies, HopStop and Locationary, to allow the company to entrench itself once more in the location business. How firmly those roots prove to be, and how well they serve the company against archrival Google, remain to be seen.

Apple has been stockpiling companies and mapping software since its introduction of Apple Maps on iOS devices, which had a rough start. GPS World’s LBS Insider reported extensively on the problems Apple encountered with its mapping software. Some of these problems included sending drivers to a wrong location and direction.

After the mapping software problems were made public, Apple CEO Tim Cook apologized for the mapping software’s problems and even suggested that users go to such competitors as Waze, MapQuest, and Microsoft’s Bing.

In other location news:
- A Wall Street Journal reporter basically said there was nothing much new at Mobile World Congress — and that the excitement and action was at the outlying conferences at Fira Montjuic. One of these more interesting conferences, Four Years From Now, or 4YFN, featured start-up companies making pitches and displaying their new products, some of which included location capability.
- The Mobile World Congress final stats. Organizers said MWC had more than 85,000 attendees from 200 countries — an increase of 13,000 from the previous year. It’s now being touted as the biggest and best wireless show.
- In February, GPS World reported that TruePosition had purchased Skyhook for an undisclosed price. Skyhook provided location services to a number of companies including Apple and Samsung. The interesting issue is Skyhook’s lawsuit with Google, which alleged that the Internet giant influenced smartphone manufacturers to abandon the Boston-based company. According to published reports, the legal action still is going forward.
- AT&T Mobility is shuttering its location-based Alerts marketing program. The company said it would release an updated version later this year. AT&T Mobility launched Alerts in late 2012. It featured free opt-in, location-based text message alert service. Participating retailers included Stapes, Gap, Zales, Neiman Marcus, and others.
- I didn’t go to South by Southwest. Is my cool-guy card revoked? One of the reasons I didn’t is because, outside of meetings that were not part of the conference, there was not one location industry announcement made there. Maybe something will change my mind next year, but call me an old fogey — I just didn’t see the need to go to Austin this year.
March 25, 2014
Sonata Advertising Platform Brings Online Customers to Bricks-and-Mortar Stores
Sonata is a self-service advertising platform for the retail world.

Currently, 96 percent of world trade takes place through traditional brick and mortar stores. Add almost 1,000 million smartphones with integrated GPS to that retailing picture and a whole range of advertising opportunities, with high added value for advertisers and consumers, opens up. Sonata was begun l to drive foot traffic to local retailers’ point of sale via potential customers’ smartphones.

Sonata divides the world into 90-square-metre plots. The plots are uploaded with local business adverts, which then appear on smartphones and tablets that come in range of the advertiser according to the smartphone’s geolocation. Sonata has been developed by TAPTAP Networks, a Spanish mobile advertising market leader based in Madrid.

The process of uploading an advertising campaign is very simple for the retailer and takes no more than three minutes, according to Sonata. A retailer doesn’t need a website or even a mobile app; all that’s required is a minimum investment of £50. Advertisers follow three steps:
1. registration using an email address;
2. adding the store details (just one or a whole network);
3. choosing the ad’s geographical area and the design of the ad from one of Sonata’s creative templates (or advertisers can create their own design).
“Any local business, including those without technical know-how, can create an advertising campaign,” says Alvaro del Castillo, CEO of TAPTAP Networks and the developers of Sonata.

“An added attraction of Sonata is that local businesses only pay for actual results-calls, registrations, clicks, purchases in the store… whatever form of contact a customer makes-and can choose how much to pay for them,” says del Castillo.

“The Sonata platform is focused on meeting the need of the local small-business sector, which views the online world as a major threat with the ever-growing pressure it exerts from ‘showrooming’ and the selling of cost price goods by major e-commerce players,” explained de Castillo.
November 11, 2013
Intersec and Alcatel-Lucent in Geo-Targeting Partnership

Intersec, which provides software for mobile and integrated operators, has signed a global partnership agreement with Alcatel-Lucent for the creation of a geo-marketing service that will enable mobile operators to connect brands and retailers to consumers via mobile devices, based on their permission, preferences and location, to drive in-store traffic.

Intersec’s IGLOO collects and aggregates “anonymised” network data (circuit switch, packet switch, Wi-Fi, indoor location) in real time to provide proximity detection of all opt-in subscribers at a defined moment of the day. Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism then gathers and analyzes the location data to provide customers with relevant offers to drive in-store traffic. The companies say the cross-operator solution will enable multiple brands and retailers in several countries to deliver walk-in rewards, location-based targeted coupons and deals and post shopping surveys. Optism is deployed in 10 markets.

“In order to expand to geo-based offers and coupons, we were looking for a device-agnostic solution that was able to aggregate all of the location data that the network was seeing, both passive and active sources, both for in-store as outdoor proximity campaigns,” said Thomas Labarthe of Alcatel-Lucent. “By integrating Intersec IGLOO into Optism, brands and retailers can leverage all the existing Optism tools to define their campaigns including location as qualification criteria.”

January 14, 2013
LandAirSea Systems Trackers Announce Redesigned Online Store

Vehicle-Tracking.com has been redesigned. Vehicle-Tracking.com is the official online e-commerce site of LandAirSea Systems, a provider of consumer and business-to-business GPS tracking devices since 1994.

Vehicle-Tracking.com provides passive and real-time GPS tracking devices and systems designed for a wide-range of applications, including fleet management, law enforcement surveillance, asset monitoring and personal vehicle tracking. Vehicle-Tracking also offers the full-line of accessories, replacement parts, services and software for all of LandAirSea’s tracking systems.

With more than 15 years of experience in the field of GPS tracking, LandAirSea’s support staff is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to assess and assist with any questions or purchases made from Vehicle-Tracking.com.

December 11, 2012
Walgreens Gets Mapped

Walgreens, the largest U.S. drugstore chain, announced a partnership with in-store mapping and search startup aisle411. As a result of this partnership shoppers can use their iPhone or Android smartphones to view maps of any of the 7,907 Walgreens stores and locate products down to a particular section of each aisle. Walgreens is said to be the first U.S. national retailer with all of its stores mapped in a mobile application.

August 15, 2012
Google Buys The Dealmap, Is Social Shopping Market LBS Driver?

Once again, it looks as if Google is taking a giant leap into location-based services with its recent acquisition of The Dealmap. Is this deal a signal that LBS market viability may be tied to the social shopping market? The market is potentially huge, with two big players and a third, Google, quickly developing. But is this the market that will propel LBS to the next level? One analyst says yes…and no.

Technology giant Google is once more trying to corner more of the social shopping market by buying The Dealmap, a 15-month-old company that offers its own location-based daily deal service.

Menlo Park, Calif.-based The Dealmap collects data from hundreds of sources and arranges deals by location, on its website and a smartphone application. The start-up, founded last year, has 15 employees and 2 million users, according to published reports.

Google tried to buy Groupon for as much as $6 billion last year, and decided to launch its own service, Google Offers, in Portland. Google’s service has since expanded to New York and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Google has made many moves into the location business in the last two years. It is trying to grab a large share of the European traffic market by offering real-time services in 13 European companies. Google shook up the navigation market with free navigation service for Android phones in 2009.

At least one analyst said he was intrigued by the acquisition, of which financial details were not disclosed. Mike Dobson, TeleMapics president, said that The Dealmap acts as a deal aggregator and cross-channel distributor for national in-store deals from brand retailers, restaurant chains, and other businesses; local daily deals (from Groupon, Living Social, and more than 200 other sources); and what The Dealmap calls “store window” deals from individual local businesses.

In a recent presentation that The Dealmap made at the Kelsey Deal3D Conference, the company claimed to have grown in its first year to 2 million-plus cross-channel users, including more than 1 million mobile users, said Dobson, who authors a location blog. The volume of monthly deal searches on its network was more than 75 million and the monthly network reach was estimated at 85 million, he said.

The Dealmap and others (Borrell Associates, Needham and Company, and Groupon) have predicted that the projected size of the local daily deal market will be sized at $10 billion by 2015, while the online local ad revenue will be $32 billion by 2013, Dobson said. “The Dealmap claims that its deals provide more than $10 million in savings each day, although it is less clear what earnings it creates in the way of margin/profit for distributors, such as, well, Dealmap,” he said.

Dobson said that the “deal supplier” market appears to be dominated by top sites. Eighty percent of the local deal inventory nationwide is dominated by 20 sources, 69 percent by 10 sources, and 40 percent by two sources, Groupon and Living Social, he said. “The Dealmap claims that its daily ad inventory is supplied at a modest 6.25 deals per source, while half the deal supply sources offer only one-to-two deals a day,” he said.

“Perhaps more disconcerting is the fact that 69 percent of deal suppliers have a presence in from two to nine markets, while 19 percent cover only a single market. Only 4 percent of The Dealmap’s suppliers have a national footprint, which the company defines as 25 or more markets, Dobson said. “While this could suggest that the deal market is inherently local, I think it suggests that local suppliers add the ‘long tail’ that is appended in local markets to the offerings of Groupon and Living Social. In other words, the market appears to be close to a duopoly at a national scope, with numerous smaller players operating as regional and local suppliers. My conclusion is that the market for local deals from individual local suppliers is quite small, and that the major force of deals in all markets are national chains who wish to present deals to draw local users to their shops.”

Dobson says the reason he makes this distinction is that it does not appear likely that “deal-based advertising” is going to be the replacement for local newspaper advertising, or a real-time Yellow pages, at least not as currently configured.

“The Dealmap indicates that in a sample taken from Chicago for one day of deals, the inventory from the two leading providers was split one-quarter each for fitness spas and shopping, while attractions and dining evenly split the last quarter of the pie,” Dobson said. “When all deal suppliers were added, salons and services deals added 10 percent each to the mix, while dental deals (3 percent) and hotel deals (5 percent) rounded out the categories. Who knew that people looking for social shopping deals were looking for an athletic workout and liked to meet in spas, followed by a good meal and a visit to an attraction?”

According to The Dealmap, more than 50 percent of deals searched for nationwide by consumers are related to dining, followed by shopping at 20 percent, while attractions, bars, spas, travel and “things to do” to ranked in the single digits. On mobile devices the search profile is somewhat different, with dining at 40 percent, shopping at 30 percent, spas and travel each at 12 percent, “things to do” at 4 percent (a 5-percent loss compared to deal-search in general), and bars at a measly 1 percent (a 3-percent drop compared to deal-search in general), Dobson said.

“I am not sure how others perceive the message that can be found in the numbers above, but I think it might be hard to find a long-term growth business here. Google acquired The Dealmap because Google needs to buttress its local advertising empire, but clearly this is a small-potatoes business,” Dobson said. “Yes, I understand that Groupon walked away from a $6-billion-dollar offer from Google, but I suspect that they already regret their bristliness during the negotiations. I guess this shows that just because you can market deals, does not mean that you know how to negotiate one for yourself.”

What’s the Big Deal for LBS?

Dobson said that the big deal may be for the LBS industry. “It appears to me that the concept of ‘location’ is in the process of occupying its rightful place in a variety of industries that are clearly location-centric, and were location-centric before any of us thought of using the term location-based services to describe those business services that had a location component,” he said. “Perhaps the only thing that has changed for these industries is that the consumerization of GPS and the inclusion of its functionality in phones, laptops, PNDs, and other navigation devices have allowed these businesses to pinpoint the location of consumers and provide relevant services to mobile users.”

While The Dealmap certainly fits within Dobson’s notion of LBS, he suspects that the company sees itself in the deal-distribution business and has forward integrated into location services to expand its deal-distribution capacity. “Google almost certainly did not acquire The Dealmap because the company had a new, unique, and proprietary location technology. Instead, they acquired The Dealmap for the company’s distribution strength (its distribution network and deal-distribution applications) and their knowledge of how Groupon and Living Social operate,” he said. “It seems to me that the one trend that continues in LBS is that service businesses require strong distribution channels and few companies in this space have capabilities in this respect. For this reason, the action in LBS will continue to be acquisitions by companies who already have the distribution, but need the know-how that will allow them to leverage location as a method of increasing their distribution capability. In short, ours is a market segment in which companies need to innovate, out-perform, and pray that they get noticed by the industry leaders in other market segments.”

There are no potential Google or Facebook success stories in our midst, Dobson said “Our task is to build location engines, use them to solve common but ubiquitous problems involving location — and hope that our efforts get us to the finish line before anyone else,” he said.

August 9, 2011