Proximity Marketing as described by Wikipedia is “the localized wireless distribution of advertising content associated with a particular place.”
The commercialization of location will get a boost by the power and opportunities offered by Mobile Augmented Reality applications.
Have a look at the first real-time Augmented Reality proximity marketing platform by Insqribe:
Two disadvantages of conventional proximity marketing are that users need to enable the mobile device to receive location based information/ messages, secondly not each and every message received is welcome or relevant for the receiver.
Messages can be perceived as irrelevant and spam, users can receive too many promotional messages which will backfire proximity marketing as a tactic because devices can and will be disabled again to not receive any messages again.
Enabling a mobile device to receive information is a primitive form of acknowledging the interest on the location, the possibilities offered by Mobile Augmented Reality will boost and enhance the primitive form when it comes to location based promotions (Point of Sale promotions – POS) nearby initiated by the user.
Mobile Augmented Reality makes it possible what users want to see and when they want to see the information .
Augmented Reality powered Proximity Marketing is much more gentle, it becomes more of a pull mechanism instead of a push mechanism. The pull mechanism increases relevancy towards the users because the users control when he/she activates the system to scan the surroudings. This is the difference. Enabling bluetooth is not synonymous to being receptive for all and any kind of promotional messages. The new Proximity Marketing is exactly the other way around, by activating the system the user shows -initial- interest and decides what message can be further explored and not.
Of course permission systems do exist before messages are being send out, but the concept is the same, push versus pull.
Will Proximity Marketing be fueled and made more fun by Mobile Augmented Reality?
