Brands may spend $1.8 billion on location-based marketing campaigns
Published September 03, 2010
While consumers have been slow to adopt geo-social platforms, such as foursquare and Gowalla, a recent report from ABI Research predicts advertisers will spend $1.8 billion of their digital marketing dollars on location-based mobile initiatives by 2015.
Many brands will use location-based platforms to cater to mobile on-the-go shoppers. Some may leverage the check-in features offered by Facebook and foursquare, while others could use incentive-based apps, such as Shopkick, to reward consumers for visiting locations.
While some shoppers are concerned about their privacy, ABI's Neil Strother suggests they will use geo-social networks if they are rewarded for it. "Some might be put off by the 'Big Brother' aspects of this," he warns, "but it's really about the value-exchange."
Strother also advises brands to be creative with their implementation of location-based services, as the market is still largely open to experimentation.
With the recent introduction of Facebook Places, some geo-social services have seen increases in traffic. For example, foursquare reported it broke its previous record of new signups the day after Facebook announced the check-in feature.