Today, an interesting development came to light. Mashable is reporting that Google has secured a broad patent for location-based advertising. (See Article Here)
One thing I noticed within the abstract for the patent kind of peaked my interest and I started thinking of how this could be leveraged in the car business.
Here’s the specific line that caught my eye.
“The content of an ad creative, and/or of a landing page may be selected and/or modified using location information.”
We all know that there are vendors in the automotive industry selling mobile marketing. As mobile phones get more sophisticated and more consumers start using them to browse the web, mobile websites and SMS marketing will become more important.
Imagine the possibilities of being able to designate which ad, or landing page a person sees based on where they actually are!
Would you give a bigger discount to the person shopping you from 60 miles away than to the person shopping you from 2 miles away? Do you think the 60-mile-away-person needs a bigger inventive to drive to you and buy from you? I certainly do.
Say you sell Hondas. Would you serve up a different ad to the person at a Toyota dealership then you would to the person standing on your competitor’s lot?
Now, imagine automating this effort.
The possibilities are mind-boggling.
(…and it sure could throw a few kinks into some iPhone apps seeing as Google now holds the patent.)
