Starbucks LBS Myth Well And Truly Busted; Advertising? Ask, Don’t Assume » mobilegroove

IIR’s LBS 2008 is drawing to a close following 3 days of intense debate and discussion over the role of location in the mobile industry. And the participants didn’t disappoint with a raft of myths about location blown away by some serious straight talking. Top myth busting relating to the Starbucks location based couponing scenario was shot down by regular contributor and MSG friend, Andrew Grill from the very start. Starbucks aren’t going to give coupons out and they are everywhere – you don’t need to find them, they will find you!

And David Wasser, Co-Founder of SharpMind (a software development and LBS product development firm) delivered a raft of decisive messages to the LBS industry at large. According to David, LBS scenarios are invented by techies for situations where no need actually exists. In David’s words “There are no LBS scenarios left.” For example, the oft mooted search on mobile for a hotel when you are travelling in a foreign city scenario – who actually arrives in a foreign city without having accommodation already organised? Certainly no-one with a suitable data roaming tariff. David’s advice for the industry – build apps with the widest possible audience.

Which apps are out there at the moment? Well, gpsii is performing well in the Far East, Visibilly has added location to Blogg.se in Sweden with great results and location enabled gaming is here and happening (loyal, engaged users that the gaming market can deliver are an absolute must for brands wanting to dip their toes in the location market – check out Orbster and GPS Mission).

In terms of mobile advertising there are of course many challenges still facing the industry. How can advertising cease to be advertising and become a service, relevant information, or just ’stuff’ that individuals want to engage with? Well that’s simple. Ask them. Don’t assume anything, just ask them. The most powerful algorithms and technologies are no match for communication and dialogue, two attributes at the very core of mobile telephony. As Jonathan MacDonald pointed out in his presentation, our perception of advertising needs to be re-defined. Mobile is not a broadcast channel but a communication medium and serving ads based on assumptions is the road to ruin. (I’d also like to say a big thank you to Jonathan once again for his outstanding performance as chair on Tuesday).

Another core discussion point at the event is the role of the operator and in particular the question of location look-up charging. Operators have been reluctant to drop the price of network based location requests due to the increased costs they would incur, but many believe that by dropping their prices (maybe even offering them for free) it would give operators the opportunity to earn a big slice of revenues from the services that location would enable. After all, location is actually an enabler for existing services, not a service in itself.

And with Skyhook Wireless and Google mapping the cells independently of the operators, there will come a time when network based location has no value.

There will be plenty of time to deep dive into the intricacies of this market at upcoming events, particularly with Future of Mobile and Mobile Content 2008 both in London during the week beginning 17^th November. If you’re in mobile and you want to meet the movers and shakers in the industry then this is the week to be in London. MSG of course will be at both events and we will report back with some core analysis.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Location-Based Services, Mobile Marketing, Mobile Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.