Russell and I have talked a lot about location-based services over the years, generally in an attempt to interject some reason and deflate some of the hype around them and move the discussion past the ubiquitous Starbucks example as the holy grail of LBS.
The biggest problem is that people confuse location with context. Location is just a part of the context of each individual user. If I’m near a Starbucks, am I just passing by, or am I going to get a coffee? If I’m at an airport, am I travelling, or am I picking up a friend? My location doesn’t indicate my personal context. To beat up the Starbucks example, yet again, maybe it’s 115 here in Las Vegas when I go by a Starbucks, hardly the time I’d like to have a nice hot cup of coffee — but maybe an iced tea would be good. But maybe I don’t like tea or coffee, or simply hate Starbucks. Anyhow, the idea is that there’s more defining me and my state of mind, my preferences, and my desires than my location. Just the simple fact that I’m near a Starbucks (especially given how many locations they have) doesn’t share any meaningful information about me.
So in light of the continued interest in LBS (not to mention the Starbucks scenario), it’s worth asking, would you rather have a location-based service, or a context-aware one? There are some interesting thoughts on context awareness from an industrial design perspective at Speedbird (via Small Surfaces).
Meanwhile, Google today announced the availability of location information from its Gears Geolocation API on some mobile devices, which some services are already using.
In some cases, such as mapping, there isn’t a great need for context-awareness instead of location, but in many LBS instances, being sensitive to context is much more important than simply location. Are there any good examples of context-sensitive services out there? And, of course, sensing context makes determining location look downright simple. How can developers and service providers best build context-sensitive apps and services?
Update: Check out Helen Keegan’s similar thoughts from last month. And, of course, ping her if you need help in this area as she’s the expert!
Interesting post - one might argue that GPS navigation traffic updates (and esp. updates and rerouting for your specific commute) are context sensitive. (BTW - Is it an old wives’ tale or will drinking hot drinks on a hot day actually cool you down more than drinking cold drinks? Wait…maybe I’m mixing that up with what to drink when eating spicy food….)
Thanks for the comment. I think traffic updates and rerouting could definitely be context-aware, combining location with current activity (ie driving). It also has the most common form of context awareness — the user turning on the service when it’s relevant
And personally, I find the hot-drink-on-a-hot-day thing a load of BS!
I’ve had very similar thoughts about this too. I think most location enablers and most LBS focussed companies are completely missing the point. It’s *all* about context which is a much harder thing to achieve. It’s not about postcode, it’s about whether or not you’re in a shopping mall, football stadium or exhibition hall. The fact that that could be in Manchester, London, or Birmingham is pretty much irrelevant. The advertiser just needs to know that you’re near enough to whatever it is they’re offering.
Here’s the link to my post where you can see more of the thoughts on the topic.
http://technokitten.blogspot.com/2008/07/location-based-services-are-they-all.html
And there’s also the rather large question of ‘what’s in it for the consumer’? More targeted adverts is not a benefit for me as a consumer. And actually, because location services tend to lack context, the adverts aren’t more targeted anyway.
I think maybe we’ve done ourselves a disservice by calling it LBS or location-based-services as it means we get rather hung up by err location.
Helen — excellent points, as always. I agree re: location-based services. It makes location the be-all end-all.
Relevancy is important, no doubt. That’s why we’ve waited to launch coupons with navigation. Consumers don’t want to be spammed for the sake of saving a quarter at Starbucks. But I really like the idea of incorporating it with weather. Since we have weather data as well, it’s so crazy, it just might work…
> In some cases, such as mapping, there isn’t a great need for context-awareness
Ah, but mapping is a ruse. Just the easiest, most obvious thing to do when you have the ability to know your position. Yea! I am at 15S UD 56334 21141!
Different services can help users more directly. Even routing — apparently just fractionally-different — can be used without looking at a map.
The real “mapping” services will take off when they act contextual. Searching for restaurants today gives me a set of pinpoints on a map. Tomorrow it better be able to take into account my previous search results actions, previous telemetry data (divining restaurant eating from idle time at relevant locations) my calendar entries (”lunch with clients”), time of day, weather conditions, current and recent telemetry and maybe bluetooth connection (am I in a car or on foot) and much more. And from this I better get concierge-like recommendations, not a bunch of dots on a map I have to peer at while driving.
I do agree that location aware services/ads will not prove successful with the discerning crowd. Basing on context would be the ideal but how to achieve this? Not an easy quandary for sure.
The mid-ground in my opinion is for the service and/or ad to be preference aware. By knowing a users preferences and tastes, the provider may not know that its 115 in Las Vegas at that very moment and the last thing on your mind is coffee, but it can know that you like specific beverages/services and offers those to you when you’re in the area.
Hi Carlo,
You have hit on the exact issue that people have been missing for years. What you describe, is what we call “Place-based Advertising”, and takes into account not just the 2-D lat/long proximity LBA view of the world, but a much more rich 3-D view of the world that takes into account what it is that makes that particular location relevant to that person at that time.
I work for 1020 Placecast, a cross channel place-based media network that uses “place” to identify desirable audiences for advertisers, and delivers highly relevant offers and messages to those audiences based on location.
Furthermore, we do this across web, mobile, WiFi hotspots and even in e-mail for our publisher partners. Combined with our direct ad sales force, we are able to extract significantly more value from publishers’ ad inventory because of more relevance for users based on context.
I would be happy to discuss further if you would like to chat.
Best,
Blair Swedeen
VP, Market Development
1020 Placecast
While I agree with Russell and Helen that there has to be a bit of WIIFM and what will people do with location etc - remember that SMS was never designed for what we now do with it.
The consumer adapted what they had to their own needs - quick & short messages. The carriers worked out that the market would bear 10/15 pence per message and hey presto a whole industry was born!
Instead of trying to work out how/what we will use the location aware element for, Google and others are building a utility to enable developers to get easy access to location information while on a web session. Make it easy and seamless to use and then interesting and useful applications will appear.
Google Gears aim is to make the capture and use of location information as simple as possible, so the consumer or the developer does not need to do much to get their location. SMS is so popular because it just works! Nothing to configure, just go! LBS should be the same.
The mobile operators have for the last 8 years tried to convince us that at 10 – 15 p per lookup LBS would take off. Clearly they are wrong and now the operator independent and handset centric approach looks like taking hold.
I have blogged about the Google Gears announcement here http://www.andrewgrill.com/blog/?p=423
Interesting comments all. Russell and Helen you may recall my old company Saverfone when we tried to introduce location based ad sales on the British high streets back in 2000 - I believed then as I do now the consumer has to play their part for success here. Once opted in to a service they can draw down LBS services on demand e.g. searching for electronic sales in Cheltenham high street, 3 clicks and they should have access to a retailers inventory, specific unique items or even vouchers. Retailers, ad sales media and consumers all gain in highly targeted and double opted in an enviroment
+1 to Helen’s point.
It may not matter that the shopping centre I’m in is in Essex vs Yorkshire, but it could be safely assumed that if I’m in Bluewater I’m in a “shopping” context. Likewise - if you’re in a football stadium during a game there’s probably a good chance we could recognise that you’re interested in football.
Is anyone doing any work to map typical contexts - sampling time+location vs activity for a (demo? psycho?)graphic and recording them to judge behaviours down the line?
Hmm, mapping expressed behaviour (cough searches) vs location at time of search… maybe someone out there is doing this…
@Tom Hume
That’s exactly what 1020 Placecast is doing, what we call “place-based” advertising. We started with leveraging the known context of people logging onto WiFi hotspots in airports and hotels, and have moved into web and mobile. Check out http://www.placecast.net for a very high level description.
Cheers,
Blair
[...] Location-Based vs. Context-Aware Location is just a part of the context of each individual user In some cases, such as mapping, [...]
A recurring topic also in academia, as you can see in this paper called “There is more to Context than Location”
[...] comments Location-Based vs. Context-Aware [...]
[...] lookup (for example the Samsung Blackjack II and HTC Touch Dual. Android soll bald folgen. Auf dem Blog von Russel/Carlo (adMob) findet einen interessanten Bericht zum Thema: Locations-Based vs. Context [...]
At NearbyNow, we’ve tried both flavors of mobile advertising - location-based (ie, we know you are at the mall) and context/location-based (ie, we know you are at the mall and are searching nearby stores for Nike shoes). Click-through and reception is about 3x higher for the latter. Just as important, however, is that we have shoppers in the latter category asking for more ads, while those doing just location-based are quite skeptical from the get-go.
There seem to be a few kinds of offers that do well in both cases. We offered free chocolate samples to those in a mall with a Lindt Chocolate store, which converted well to trial and subsequent purchase. Free movie tickets with purchase of item also does well.
Maybe it’s an American thing - caffiene, sweets, and entertainment go well with everything.
SD
[...] Location-Based vs. Context-Aware [...]
At the beginning, Google Geolocation API has determined the location for only Americans, for the other it has returned “unknown”. Later this service was advanced, but it often does not show results even for developed countries as yet. For such cases, there is a simple javascript extension to the Google API, which gives back the country of user.
http://www.wipmania.com/en/blog/google-geolocation-api/
A digital geography manifesto!
“What should you write on an academic blog? If news, trivia, detail and narcissism are all out, then what’s left? When I started my blog “The Digital Geographer” in early 2006, I decided to sidestep these sins by writing a manifesto. My digital geography manifesto was a tongue-in-cheek statement of some of the challenges that we faced in designing and implementing a new generation of “egocentric” mobile applications that will bring the power of location technology to mobile devices everywhere. As I write this, two and a half years have passed and it is instructive to revisit the manifesto’s ten principles and see which of them captured an enduring issue – and which of them has already been solved.”
http://www.receiver.vodafone.com/a-digital-geography-manifesto