Advertisements Message Service
Location Based Advertising (LBA), has as yet unexploited potential in tapping the consumer market. Project ELBA, European LBA, aims to bring to consumers up-to-date information via MMS on shopping opportunities, depending on their interests and profile. Shops wishing to utilise this from of marketing install a Bluetooth monitoring device inside the shop. Such devices can locate Bluetooth devices of registered users. Messages are then transmitted to the user based on their user profile informing them of current offers. The system works by establishing a database of user profiles. This contains information about the users preferences and wishes, their mobile phone number and the Bluetooth ID of the users device. Vodafone Terenci has developed the application, which detects and registers the ID of Bluetooth enabled mobile phones. With this information contained on the in-store system, users approaching the store can be recognised by their Bluetooth device. The MMS application which recognizes Bluetooth devices is placed as close as possible to the customer area, since the range of detection is limited to 20m. It runs on a notebook since this provides faster processing due to shorter communication ways. The ID of the user is checked with the IDs contained on the database. If the user is registered, the system is checked for user preferences, and these are cross-matched with offers which could be of interest. If the system finds a match, this offer is sent to the user via MMS. Registered users are thus given up to the minute information in the form of image and sound files and text messages. The MMS application Advertisements can only be sent to users registered in the database. The system proves an effective, direct mode for advertising, which is beneficial to both business and consumer. With further research it could be further developed and successfully marketed, improving business in all areas.
