Sitting on the Geofence

It's like something straight out of a Spielberg-scripted sci-fi movie: The idea of marketing folk using your location to their advantage. And, putting aside whether you like it or not, location-based mobile marketing may soon change the way you shop -- if only in a small way, like forcing you to pick one mall over another.



For those at the marketing end, this is as close as it gets to Heaven; for the rest of us poor saps, it's another battle for privacy in the making.

Google has (um, obviously) a little something to do with why this is set to pick up faster than expected. The search juggernaut launched Near Me Now for iPhone and Android-powered devices in America earlier this year to address -- in its words -- two user problems: A quick way to find out more about a place in one's immediate vicinity, and simpler searches for popular categories of nearby places. What it helped accelerate, in the process, was the creation of a better electronic dog collar.

Keeping in mind that jargon is now an integral part of our lives, the term created for our collective use in this context is Geofencing: A virtual perimeter for a geographic area. Remember it, and quiver with fear. It enables the tracking of people via a mobile subscriber list based on their proximity to a store, then bombarding them with customised messages. For instance: '20 per cent off on sports shoes to your right.' Or 'Tired of shopping?

Try a piping hot Masala Dosa at Southern Spice, on the second floor.' You get the drift.

Apart from the possibility of massive spamming, the big worry is how potential customers will be targeted. Will we even have the option of refusing alerts? No one's saying. For marketing folk, the challenge will revolve around the creation of compelling content, and retaining enough manpower to drive this sort of exercise.

The idea of targeting everyone at a mall in Mumbai -- then sending 30 different messages targeting specific locations within it -- sounds great on paper, but isn't as easy to pull off considering this is data about real-time locations. Send me an annoying message once, and I may ban you from pushing your free coupons down my mobile phone forever. After all, unlike direct e-mailers that aren't as annoying as we like to think they are (and can be dealt with a simple click of the Spam icon), our mobile phones are part of our personal space.

In an ideal world, clever marketers will use Geofencing wisely. They will profile customers well, ensure the tone of messages fits these profiles, and be subtle rather than obtrusive. Sadly, as ours is no ideal world, expect a barrage of pointless messages directing men to spas and women to free beer.

Lindsay Pereira is Editor, MiD Day Online