Location-Based Ads getting closer to reality…

According to MobiAD News, two stories that it has covered recently are indicating that Location-Based Advertising (LBA?) is becoming more of a reality - by the way, the companies involved in those stories are Skyhook Wireless, Loopt/CBS Mobile.

Skyhook Wireless have announced that they have introduced location based advertising to their software development kit. The development will allow mobile application creators to earn revenue from the ads that are delivered based on the user’s location. The service is different to many others as it uses wifi signals to locate a mobile phone. This is a novel way of locating a phone and is possible as the company has mapped wifi signals across 70% of the United States and 40 million access points worldwide. The ads are to be provided by Quattro Wireless.

CBS Mobile has agreeed a deal with Loopt to provide targeted location based ads. This will add an extra level of targeting to ads on CBS properties, as ads will only appear when Loopt users visit one of CBS’ mobile sites. CBS will be able to tell the location of the user (via GPS) and will have the option of serving an ad for services in the nearby area.

So there you have it, different offerings that claim to deliver location-based Ads - neither of them using the Mobile network - of course, as we know, the Operators are all over Mobi Ads that do in some way make use of their networks, but the above does show that other channels are at least open.

Personally, I think the power to make this a cohesive offering is with those handset vendors (and suchlike) that have the scale and capability of operations to do so - Nokia (NYSE: NOK), Apple (NSDQ: AAPL), and Google (NSDQ: GOOG) all spring to mind…..! What say you, IntoMobile readers?

[Via: MobiAD News]