Toothing Goes Commercial

EMI, Nokia and Volvo are experimenting with delivering ads to your PDA via Bluetooth.  Some people don't think this is a good idea (see "Industry Divided Over Bluetooth Marketing", by Justin Pearse, New Media Age, July 21, 2005 -- www.nma.co.uk).  Should you care?

I can see it both ways. Having my PDA chirp several times a minute with "may I pitch you?" requests from Bluetooth ad servers lurking in the bushes, could turn that stroll into a walk through a virtual minefield.  On the other hand, if I'm in, say, a grocery store, it might not be so bad to get polite beeps pointing out deals on different items.

So the next question becomes, how much about me can the Bluetooth ad server find out?  I did a simple check.  From the home screen on my Treo 650, I tapped the Bluetooth icon.  Looks like when I configured the device, I used my name to identify it, so I'm broadcasting at least that (I haven't read the spec or Sprint's fine print to see what else could or might be going over the connection, like maybe my cell phone number).  Oops!  Should have given it a pseudonym when I had the chance I guess.  Now, a smart Bluetooth ad server, when it discovers the "Cesar Brea" device, will quickly Google the device ID, run the results against some ad-server database of what I shop for on the Internet, and make a likely-accurate guess that the "Cesar Brea" device should get stuff that's relevant to me.

By-product -- using the same logic, you can be tracked ("based on our discovery of a device ID with this name, there's a high likelihood that Cesar is currently inside the Piggly-Wiggly on Main Street"...). 

Now, should you pay attention to this if you are a marketing executive? Let's apply the Marketspace Technology Relevance Filter:

1. I read about it in a trade journal, not, say, the NYT
2. Mainstream users *are* quoted
3. this does require the deployment of Bluetooth transmitters and ad servers (and Bluetooth-enabled PDA's and phones).  But that doesn't seem like such an expensive or complicated thing to do, and device lifecycles are such that many will have this feature in a year or two.
4. I had my Treo's Bluetooth settings set for maximum security, with the transmitter off and "discoverable?" set to "no", but apparently most devices ship from the factory just the opposite way -- so no change in consumer behavior is required to adopt this new channel.

Applying the logic in the "MTRF", which is to assume that this matters five years out minus a year for each positive answer to the four tests above, I make this a relevant channel in about two years.  Maybe a year after that for the Bluetooth-enabled tracking equivalent of useful mash-ups like http://housingmaps.com .

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Comments

[Silvia Springolo]

Cesar, an example of bluetooth marketing is the ad campaign recently launched in UK to promote the latest album of Coldplay, X&Y.

Six of Maiden’s Transvision screens at six London mainline stations are used to send content via Bluetooth technology to handsets when a trailer for the band is shown.

http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/articles/folder2005/05/maydaily/coldplay-bluetoothad

I think it is still too early to assess the impact of this new way of marketing, but would be curious to see how many people thought this was spam, versus relevant advertising.