Location-based advertising is still a nascent industry, but I’m convinced that it will soon become mainstream. One of the better known players, 1020 Placecast, a provider of an LBS ad platform, has teamed up with Alcatel-Lucent to offer mobile operators and advertisers an LBS service that delivers ads based on location.
The service, which will be opt-in for end users, will leverage Alcatel’s Geographic Services Messaging Platform to track users’ location and set up territorial geofences. If a user passes into an area where a message can be targeted, Alcatel’s servers pull the relevant ad information from 1020 Placecast and push it to the user.
Users who opt-in will be able to choose specific brands from which they’d like to receive ads, likely in the form of text-messaged deals, so they’re not constantly plastered with irrelevant advertisements.
As far as I know, there hasn’t been a committment by any wireless carrier to use the new service yet.
Read