Alcatel-Lucent and Placecast Team Up on LBS
1020 Placecast announced a deal today that will marry its location-based ad delivery engine to Alcatel-Lucent’s “geo-fencing” technology.
As we’ve written, Placecast delivers ads based on location and a number of other “vectors” that are closely tied to that location (time of day, upcoming holidays, nearby events, etc.). These things can be good proxies for user interest in nearby products.
It gets this location data in a number of ways (see past post). This is where Alcatel-Lucent comes in. Its geo-fencing technology identifies certain radii that represent commercial zones, such as a shopping district. When a user enters one of these zones, she can be served any number of ads (mostly SMS), corresponding with prestated preferences that are identified during an opt-in process.
The way this comes together and actually reaches users is through carrier partnerships — some of which Alcatel-Lucent already has. The mashup of the two technologies hasn’t been seen, but it could be an effective combo when it hits the market. It’s currently in trials with a few undisclosed publishers, but we’ll likely get to see it in action soon.
