Finding your way online

This year has seen an explosion in the application of geo-targeted services. Not only do most smart phones have built-in GPS location-finding services, but Google recently unveiled Latitude – a mobile application that works with Google Maps to allow users to share their location with friends.

Suddenly, existing location-based services are being recognised, and technologies ranging from Bluetooth to WiFi and 3G are opening up a plethora of opportunities for businesses to target customers passing by or near their premises.

One such Irish firm, MobaNode, harnesses Bluetooth technology, which can be found on all mobile handsets bar none, to bring information and services to punters at sports and music events and even to those on their travels.

Location, location, location
“MobaNode’s market is all about location: it’s about delivering a message and content at the right time and in the right location, be that a music venue, a festival, a stadium or a shopping centre,” says company founder Shane McAllister.

“If we provide relevant, targeted and location-based content, the opportunity for usefulness is many times higher than the same information delivered elsewhere and via different media.”

MobaNode works with major brands including Heineken, Nokia and Carlsberg. Companies such as these are realising the importance of customer reach through passing traffic, and the concept of time and location as being major factors in engaging with an audience.

The interesting thing, says McAllister, is that traditional mainstream media such as print, radio, TV and outdoor are difficult to measure in terms of metrics. However, when you begin to target via mobile, everything can be measured and tracked, making it more tangible to measure reach and success.

Handshake technology
Although Bluetooth, which MobaNode uses, is an often-overlooked technology due to its ubiquity and association with mobile headsets and hands-free car kits, it is a high-bandwidth technology that can deliver a lot of data in an easy way.

“Bluetooth is a superb handshake technology – we can discover Bluetooth-enabled phones within a given area and ask them to connect,” McAllister explains.

What value does this hold for the retail industry? Well, MobaNode offers location-based mapping, vouchers and advertisement for retail stores and shopping centres, providing all this information directly to shoppers’ mobiles.

“We have worked with a number of well-known retail chains, and are just about to install a system in the largest shopping centre in Ireland outside of Dublin. As well as this, we’ve just secured our first UK client.

“For retailers it means timely, relevant offers that are flexible, tailored and cost effective. No more paper vouchers or flyers that end up in the bin 10 yards up the street,” he adds.

Mobile social networking
Another interesting way of integrating mobile technology and commercial opportunities is through social networking.Imagine you are on holidays and have found the perfect little restaurant or boutique – wouldn’t it be great if you could instantly let others know about this by dropping a digital breadcrumb on its doorstep and even adding your own review?

One such company that has developed this technology is Tagggit, which offers an application for mobile handsets that allows the user, with the press of a button, to literally tag a location on an online map, along with pictures and reviews, for other users or themselves to revisit and use.

Loughlin Spollen, the developer behind Tagggit, came up with the idea while he was bringing his friend to a pub somewhere near Paddington Station in London.

“I watched my friend take out his mobile and voice record directions as he walked along, so as to remember his way back. I thought to myself: ‘There must be a better way of doing this’.

“Then as the idea developed I realised that it could be applied to simple things like remembering where you had parked your car at an event or large shopping centre,” adds Spollen.

While Taggit is about helping yourself and others find their way easily to certain locations, the commercial possibilities for businesses is easy to see, he says.

“A delivery company could use private tags as a method of tracking stock – soon we hope to begin embedding advertising content into the tags.”

Case study: Making business locle
Dublin-based technology firm Locle – one of the winners of Eircom’s 2008 Web Innovation Fund and recent winner of the Docklands Innovation Park Enterprise Award 2009 for Best Investment Proposal – is all about creating a location-aware social-networking experience for users, one that can be compelling from an enterprise and business perspective as well as a consumer one.

Ronan Higgins, co-founder of the mobile social-networking service, says that from a consumer perspective the compelling factors are proximity, detection and location.

“Rather than having to go to an application to find out where your friends are, the application notifies you when somebody comes within a certain distance – a technology we call Serendipity.”

As regards applying this to a business model, Higgins says that this could be used within the growing market of location-aware mobile dating: “When you look at the demographic of those in their mid to late twenties, mobile services are more to do with flirting or dating,” he explains.

According to Higgins, another interesting aspect to services such as Locle is being able to commercially leverage people’s locations.

“The classic way is super-local targeted advertising or highly geo-targeted advertising.

“For example, when an enterprise or consumer-level customer is at a specific location and interacts with the application, bringing up a map of where their friends or co-workers are, they see an advertisement.

“It might for example say: ‘You are in Blackrock – did you know that there is a Starbucks 50 metres away and here areits business hours’.”

Higgins says that this can be taken one step further than just an advertisement for businesses in the area: it could be integrated with a company’s promotion system and state, for example, that Starbucks is running a two-for-the-price-of-one offer in the next hour.

There are already successful business models like this, including Texas-based firm NearbyNow, which works with shopping malls and brands to provide location and time-based coupons, explains Higgins.

“This is not mainstream yet but it’s coming: there are people like ourselves developing the technology to support it and building the audience to whom they can deliver these promotions. However, right now this is an emerging space so there are not enough merchants on board.

“The end goal is a company that can deliver very large volumes in both directions: for example, Google could build this into its AdWords system where a small business could log on and, through AdWords, send a promotion code to anyone in the locality.

“A company like us would take those promotions that Google aggregate and embed it into our application, so that users can receive the code.”

The benefit of time-sensitive and location-sensitive promotions is that their value is very high because of the contextual nature, says Higgins.

This aspect of geo-commerce, it seems, will mean the end of useless paper flyers through our letterbox and finally the promotion on what we want, when we want it as we’re shopping in situ.

By Marie Boran

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