“The Holy Grail of Mobile Marketing”
—Third Screen Media’s Brian Stoller, discussing location-based targeting

If behavioral targeting is a potent force in interactive advertising, the mobile marketplace increases the power of such targeting still further by pinpointing the precise location where various consumer behaviors take place. In the past, of course, marketers could determine the approximate location of mobile device users through a complex system of triangulation. But the latest generation of cellular phones, which are increasingly equipped with sophisticated global positioning capabilities, are taking all of the guesswork out of location-based targeting. Utilizing these advances in GPS technology, marketers can now determine the precise location of mobile users—within three feet.^[52] As Ad Age noted, “Context-based banner ads now morph into GPS locators for the closest product from the user’s current location. Ads can initiate calls or purchase DVDs for instant viewing. Ads can incorporate audio, video and web browsing, and can also direct users to the iPhone App Store or iTunes.”^[53] Predictably, the response of the marketing community to these technological advances has been universally positive. According to Brian Stoller of Third Screen Media, for example, location targeting could well be the “holy grail of mobile marketing,” allowing advertisers to “to mass-target ads to users on a local basis.”^[54] No less enthusiastic, Mark Slade of 4^th Screen Advertising (itself no stranger to targeting mobile consumers), refers to location-based targeting as “the Promised land of mobile advertising.”^[55]

Unfortunately, without adequate oversight and regulatory safeguards, that Promised Land for mobile marketers could soon become Armageddon for consumer privacy. Location-based strategies are often supplemented and refined by other profiling factors, including the user’s compiled content interests and even the time period in which those interests were expressed. Third Screen Media (which is part of Time Warner’s “Platform A” online ad services division and typical of how online PC and mobile marketing, data collection, and targeting are merging) provides targeting by content channels. Among the 26 channels for “unmatched targeting” are business and finance, automotive, careers, family, food and drink and health and fitness.”^[56]