Stuart Corner
Monday, 18 February 2008 03:39
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
In the movie Minority Report, as the hero strides down the street video advertising billboards spring to life and address him by name: all thanks to identifying him by scanning the unique patterns of his irises. Today multimedia cellphones and a new cellphone location technology promise to deliver similar personalisation to advertisers.
Cellphone location is nothing new: it's been possible using base station triangulation for some time and increasingly cellphones are shipping with inbuilt GPS receivers. But base station triangulation is not that accurate, and imposes significant processing load within the cellular network. GPS does not work in areas that don't have clear line of sight to the sky - such as shopping malls where advertisers might be most keen to deliver targeted ads to cellphone users.
This is where technology from Australian company Seeker Wireless comes in.
The solution developed by Seeker Wireless in essence relies on a small application running in the cellphone which is able to determine its location by measuring the relative strengths of all the base stations within range. The company claims it will run on any phone that supports Java.
The technology was developed originally to enable cellular operators to offer 'homezone' tariffs - cheaper calls when the phone is used at or near the subscriber's home - thus enabling them to compete against fixed line operators without cannibalising lucrative mobile service revenues. Now, Seeker Wireless has adapted it to mobile advertising.
The SeekerZone mobile advertising platform was launched at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona earlier this month. It provides the ability to define advertising zones around specific locations, which are used to send targeted advertisements that are location-relevant. The system relies on software in the handset to inform a mobile ad server when a user enters a pre-defined zone, down to tens of metres without the need to regularly poll the handset.
