With all the excitement (check out this recent report on CNN) around location-based advertising, it’s a given that coverage of this trend will have a top-notch spot in both research projects I outlined above, as well as MSG analysis going forward. (A great example is an upcoming column from Nate Janewit, computer scientist, location expert, and frequent contributor to thinking spaces and websites such as ReadWriteWeb. I just went over the draft with Nate yesterday and greatly look forward to the industry discussion it will spark when I post it later this month.) Another indication of how big location is: MetaPlaces 09: How to monetize location data and services (September 22-23 in San Jose, CA), an exciting industry event that will discuss context-enabled content and the service models that will benefit advertisers. MSG is proud to be a premium media and marketing partner and will circle back with exclusive pre-event promotion content, such as podcasts with keynote speakers and in-depth Q&As with key players.

A company that has caught my attention, with a potentially path-breaking approach to location-based advertising, is BipBip, the brainchild of Lasse Larsen, Chairman of the Board, WIS  International. (Wireless Information Services). The company – headquartered in Riga, Latvia – has an impressive stockpile of patents around the service, and ambitious plans to  launch BipBip worldwide (including the U.S., China, India, and 21 cities across Europe) following a successful pilot in Denmark last month. (My personal thanks to Lasse for contacting me on Twitter (@peggyanne) and for giving MSG the exclusive.)

What is BipBip? On paper the ad-funded service fulfills the criteria mobile advertising evangelists Andrew Grill and Jonathan MacDonald would no doubt agree are essential to delivering effective advertising services. I’m thinking here of the 3Ps: Permission (people will decide what brand messages they interact with); Privacy (people will decide where their data is collected and how it is used); and Preference (people will decide what content they find relevant).

The permission-based BipBip advertising scheme requires users to log onto the service via their mobile or PCs to provide personal data (gender, location – zip code), but there’s a twist. It also collects information from consumers (Preference) who sign up for the service on what products they are interested in (a sort of combination shopping list/wish list), and the price range that would make them buy, and a proximity that would clinch the deal. (Privacy, because users decide what happens to the data. It is passed on to retailers, who can only deliver a coupon discount on the wish list item when it matches the conditions (price and proximity) the user said they would accept.

At the other end of the spectrum, BipBip has pulled together retailers and advertisers that have the goods/services and discounts to make consumers an offer they are likely to appreciate. The back-end system makes a match, and location technology closes the loop, alerting consumers via free SMS to when they are in the vicinity of an item on their list at a price they are willing to pay.

But the real differentiator is an even cleverer feature that turns greed-is-good bargain hunting into a mission to make the world a better place.

This is because BipBip donates up to 50 percent of its profits (what it earns when a user agrees to receive a text ad/coupon) to a good cause that the user has chosen (as part of the opt-in process).

Do the numbers add up? Lasse tells me they do. Because BipBip has cut deals to buy text messages in bulk at good prices (and developed IP that prompts the SMS gateway to send cheap texts (from advertisers) to users on the move. With no mobile operator to feed in the value chain (even payment is outside the operator with transactions handled by PayPal and credit card companies), the company only spends 5 percent of its income (from advertising) on sending SMS advertising and coupons on behalf of the advertiser. Plenty left over to donate to the user’s favorite cause, organization, or local soccer league.

My take: Give consumers what they want? It’s possible because BipBip plays the role of an honest broker, bringing people together with the nearby offers they want most (otherwise they wouldn’t have put them on their wish list). Supply and demand are in synch, and BipBip makes its money in the middle. What’s more, BipBip doesn’t pay lip-service to the causes and concerns that motivate a large number of today’s empowered and socially responsible consumers. It pledges to spend real money on real non-profit organizations (in fact, no user can sign up for the free service without naming the organizations that should benefit from them accepting text advertising and coupons). I’ll reserve judgment until the service is live. However, a mobile advertising model that allows consumers to do good while they do their shopping sounds like a good deal all around.

Today marks the debut of these new segments on the MSG video jukebox (located in the right-hand sidebar). This week’s focus, and feature video in the player, is my interview with Shane Lennon, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development at GyPSii, a must-watch company leading in the race to deliver connected and cool experiences combining information, entertainment, social networks,  and location/navigation. In our interview we connect the dots in the recent string of announcements and discuss the significance for brands and advertisers.

By way of background, I have followed the company – which is a business unit of GeoCentric, a company that provides a geo-integration platform for mobile phones, personal navigation devices, web browsers, and Internet-connected devices, including PCs and set-top boxes – since it broke on the scene last year. Unlike many companies that focus on social networking or enable location-relevant mobile marketing, GyPSii stands out as a company that connects people to people, places, and stuff across all platforms, devices and networks.

Indeed, it’s the raft of announcements over the last weeks — including a partnership to embed GyPSii’s app on a range of LG mobile phones; the tie-up with Nokia and RIM (blackberry) to make the app available on a wide variety of their devices; and a wise decision launch an open API (allowing partners to call the shots on how they integrate GyPSii into their mobile strategy and devices) – that speaks volumes about the company’s new and stronger focus. My take: GyPSii has both the ideas and the impetus to impact our mobile lifestyles.

In addition to the interview and my analysis (below), I also encourage you to read more about GyPSii in my regular column for the bnetTV newsletter, which counts some 10,000 readers. For all my coverage and columns in one place, check out this page on the bnetTV site dedicated to MSG news and views. Thanks again to bnetTV’s Michelle and Tony Sklar for promoting MSG to their growing audience of  industry executives and professionals, and to Nicole Scott for bringing it all together in some great brainstorming sessions!

An excerpt from my weekly column:

Web 2.0 was all about the tools and technologies allowing users to freely create, share, and connect around content with members of a larger mobile community; Web 3.0 places location at the core of this exchange, empowering users to make their experiences personal, relevant, and much more compelling.

The jury is out on whether location – on its own – is a service consumers will pay for. But there is no question that location brings value to a variety of everyday mobile experiences, ranging from social networking to mobile search/shopping services,  to more relevant and engaging mobile marketing campaigns. Indeed, the race is on to offer connected and cool experiences combining information, entertainment, social networks and location/navigation. And companies that deliver products and services that connect people to places and networks, from work to play to home,  across all platforms, devices and networks, will likely lead the pack.

GyPSii stands out as a company that covers all the bases with a suite of applications that seamlessly combine location, social networking, search, and Web 2.0 technologies. I caught up with Shane Lennon, GyPSii Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development, during Mobile World Congress to connect the dots in the recent string of announcements and discuss the significance for brands and advertisers. We covered all the key questions, and then some. A special highlight: An explanation of GyPSii’s Open Experience API (called OEx).

Unlike other mobile social networking platforms such as Facebook, which offer a subset of desktop functionality, GyPSii has effectively given its partners the last word in how GyPSii is integrated into their devices and apps – and how much of the functionality they want in the first place. Put another way, GyPSii allows its partners to do more than location-enable/community-enable their apps and devices; it gives them control of the UI and with it the user experience they deliver to their customer base. Partners can integrate anything from a single app (create a piece of geo-tagged content) to a feature (find a friend) to full-blown social network.

By way of background, features/services include: User-Gen Content (create and share geo-tagged content); Friends (create and manage relationships with GyPSii members); Explore (find places, people and stuff nearby); Communication (keep in touch using messages, email and more); Profile (tell the community who you are and what you’re doing/feeling); and Advertising (integrating GyPSii’s location-based and contextually-tuned advertising service). To round out the offer, partners leverage GyPSii’s infrastructure to get streamline delivery of services to their customers.

As Shane put it: “We decided to have a next-generation approach to [mobile phone] client development….As we looked beyond smartphones it became clear to us that taking our user interface and jamming down into a Java enabled platform or WAP-like [platform] wasn’t going to work.” The way for this to succeed is to take a more embedded client approach, which is why GyPSii’s strategy is focused on embedding GyPSii on as many devices as possible, where the actual user experience (via the UI) is owned by the customer/partner company. (GyPSii’s platform is device and network agnostic, and works across iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Web-based operating systems.)

A big part of GyPSii plans going forward is focused on mobile advertising. And with good reason since the disconnect between mobile advertising efforts and results is a growing cause for concern. Predictably, the lack of real mobile marketing success stories reduces the enthusiasm of major brands to invest in mobile advertising in the first place. And around we go. But it’s more than a catch-22 for advertisers and carriers. It’s a vicious cycle that threatens the health of the global mobile business ecosystem if we consider that the vast majority of content companies, app store developers, and mobile carriers have already bet the farm on the uptake of mobile services increasingly subsidized by mobile advertising.

Against this backdrop, GyPSii has purposely made Advertising a central focus of its OEx API, beefing up the offer with a location-specific targeting capability and the ability to deliver an integrated advertising experience/message across devices and platforms – even  gaming consoles in the future. (Makes good sense given the perfect fit between games, location, and community…)

We wrapped up the interview with an interesting look at the future of content types and what might evolve from experiences that bring together information, entertainment, social networks, location/navigation, advertising, and search on all devices everywhere. It’s early days, but GyPSii is beginning to break down the content and comments it sees into its smallest components, allowing it to recognize the associations and relationships between the content and the context. “When someone looks for something or wants it [relevant information] in a mini-feed, we want to make sure it is relevant and [fits] in the context of their world.”

The right content to the right person at the right time and in-tune with their lifestyle/life stage? It’s a challenge. However, GyPSii has the capabilities (information, entertainment, social networks, location/navigation, advertising, and search) and mindset (open APIs and a sharp focus on the user experience) that may get us there.