Get in the Zone
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Lot’s of talk out there about location and how to reach users with advertising. Proximity based, location based and now zonal markting takes center stage. As the location based services market continues to evolve day by day, we see constant shifts as both mobile operators, mobile applications and web based location based services struggle to find the heady mix that captures what is at stake: money.
Zonal marketing is different. In this recent article we read about Vodfone’s new zonal marketing campaign launching in Czech Republic and Germany, oddly early adopters for this type of advertising. Instead of traditional location-based services which essentially identifies the current location of the user (s) to process location-dependent information, zonal marketing, according to the article states that “people on your friends list are automatically logged into a zone as soon as they enter it. A zone-based service doesn’t first have to locate your friends for you because in theory it already knows where they all are.”
The article also goes on to say that the technical differences between normal and zonal LBS may be subtle and highly technical. And the big kicker is this — zone-based technology promises to make location-based services and advertising slicker. Does slicker mean more targeted? In a recent Read Write Web article, users have indicated that they are willing to accept ads if they are targeted to their very specific interests and current location. So there is hope, but this would mean that the whole system has to change – that the mobile/advertising/location ecosystem has to get to know their users and where they are, what they are doing when they get there and what is around them. It’s a whole new world out thre and the user will decide what they want in to enter their world, not the advertiser. -- JLH
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