LAS VEGAS-Wiremedia announced it will begin deploying the hardware and network infrastructure necessary to deliver location-based, advertising and contextual information to cell phones via Bluetooth technology. The company said it would attach its Bluetooth MediaServer to billboards, poster sites, retail locations, entertainment venues, public spaces and kiosks to deliver tailored messages to users with Bluetooth-capable mobile phones.
Marketers have been deploying Bluetooth-based marketing campaigns quietly for months, but the efforts only recently have begun to attract attention. Virgin Atlantic Airways is teaming with Range Rover on an offering that sends a text message to Bluetooth users asking if they’d like to download a video clip of the carmaker’s new SUV. Another campaign, featuring Coldplay, saw 13,000 users access video clips, interviews, audio samples and wireless images from the popular band.
WideRay Corp., a technology company that provides on-site content distribution platforms, powered a similar campaign in three Loews Theatre sites this summer. Users who passed within 35 feet of a kiosk at theaters in Los Angeles, New York or San Francisco were offered downloadable content like movie clips from four Twentieth Century Fox films including “Mr. and Mrs. Smith” and “Kingdom of Heaven.”
Such efforts have drawn criticism from some who decry the use of unsolicited messages to mobile phones. Indeed, the campaigns seem to fly in the face of the Mobile Marketing Association’s best practices guidelines. “Approval from the subscriber must be obtained prior to sending commercial SMS messages and other content,” according to the group’s stipulations.
