Marketers wary of location-based ads
Marketers are set to spend $1.8 billion in 2015 on location-based advertising with providers such as Loopt, Gowalla and Foursquare, according to a new study from ABI Research.
But advertisers are still finding their feet in the segment. “It’s still early days and there’s no single right approach to location-based advertising,” says AIB practice director Neil Strother. “This remains a very fragmented market that is full of experimentation.”
There are also concerns about being tracked. “Some might be put off by the ‘Big Brother’ aspects of this,” says Strother, “but it’s really about the value-exchange – if you care about getting discounts, or being rewarded for shopping, is the value-exchange high enough so that you’ll accept having your whereabouts known to these companies in return for the benefits?”
