Via the iPointer Selection Model 

Christopher Frank, Markus Wuersch

November 28, 2006 

Intelligent Spatial Technologies
PO Box 3857, Portland ME 04104, U.S.A.
{cfrank, mwuersch}@i-spatialtech.com 

Abstract. Location-based Services (LBS) is a relatively new, growing technology field that focuses on providing information via mobile and field units based on individual geographic positions. In contrast, advertising and marketing is a well-established field, which incorporates decades of academic and industrial research and development. When advertising becomes integrated with this new mobile and location aware medium three additional fundamental aspects, are provided: mobility, distributiveness, and an insight into the customer’s egocentric perception. In this paper we investigate these three aspects, and illustrate the advantages an implicit opt-in LBS based marketing application has over more classic advertising and marketing mediums. 

Introduction

Location-based services have started to find their way into every-day life and will increasingly do so in the future. Especially tourists, but also fire fighters or field workers will benefit from getting localized information on mobile devices anywhere anytime. Such systems rely on a range of mobile hardware units that require different interaction styles compared to their desktop-based counterparts. To alleviate the cognitive load placed upon the user by such devices, new tech-niques and methods have to be found. Sensor-based systems allow gathering data about variables such as position, speed, heading, or orientation, from which information related to the user’s con-text and immediate surrounding might be deducted. Users of LBS can dynamically get informa-tion about their surroundings and receive personalized advertising. For example, a traveler walk-ing down the street sees a restaurant that looks interesting points their cell phone at it and gets its menu, reviews, and a coupon.

This paper presents a novel approach that closes the gap between more classical advertising me-diums and LBS due to the use of integrated sensors. These sensors are instrumental in generating an insight that enables automatic extraction of information about the environment, thereby im-proving advertising and marketing to the customer. Mobility, distributiveness, and an insight into the customer’s egocentric perception are the fundamental aspects that need to be considered in the development of such a mobile advertising system.

Mobility

Classic advertising mediums such as billboards and posters typically are at a specific location and, although the content might change over time, they do not move with the potential customer from place to place. Advertisement in magazines or flyers may travel with the potential cus-tomer, but are not specific to a location. LBS, on the other hand, are used in the field where users preferably interact with their surroundings, and interaction with the system is a secondary con-cern. To support such live interaction advertising mediums need to become mobile and be loca-tion aware. Making use of location aware information quickly and effectively in a mobile envi-ronment is an inherently challenging task because of the complexity and resource intensive struc-ture of dynamic advertising systems (Dickinger et al. 2004). In addition, interfaces need to be redesigned and tailored to the new requirements of mobile environments (Rodden et al. 1998).

Distributiveness

With dynamic and adaptive advertising being memory and processor intensive, it will be difficult for mobile computers to provide the necessary functionality. To resolve this lack of infrastruc-ture, processing needs to be spread over multiple entities (Hinze and Voisard 2003). Such a dis-tributed system may include a thin client in form of a mobile device, a full time connection to the Internet, an application server, and a database management system. This structure allows the data to be stored and managed in one place. Complex processing occurs in a different place, finally, leaving the mobile device with the manageable task of coordinating the users’ interaction in the field.

Egocentric Awareness

Map data is usually organized and presented in an allocentric or “bird’s-eye-view” form (Krum et al. 2001). Users in the field, however, view their surrounds in a perspective way, relating real-world objects to their position. Therefore, a dynamic and adaptive advertising medium needs to translate between the egocentric view users have and the allocentric data in the system (Frank 2003). In addition, LBS intrinsically create the need for personalized map and advertising con-tent. This translation and content management is based on the distributed system’s awareness of the user’s position, orientation, and task at hand.