Clear Channel partners with Qwikker for Bluetooth marketing

Clear Channel Communication Inc.’s outdoor advertising division will team with Qwikker to send marketing messages to wireless users via Bluetooth.
The companies announced plans to “build an interactive digital network” integrating Clear Channel’s display ads with mobile content in airports, shopping malls and other busy areas. Users who pass near the marketing sites will receive a notice via Bluetooth on their phones asking if they’d like to receive advertising content; interested consumers can opt in for the mobile pitches.
Bluetooth marketing is slowly gaining ground in North America and Europe as a novel way to deliver marketing content directly to mobile users. But “bluespamming,” as its detractors call it, has also been derided by many who consider it intrusive and annoying.
Qwikker powers more than 800 Bluetooth-transmitting sites around the world, delivering content on behalf of Anheuser Busch Co. Inc., AT&T Inc., Nokia Corp., Yahoo Inc. and others. The Clear Channel deal builds on an existing relationship that has delivered Bluetooth-based campaigns in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
The companies say they will launch campaigns at more than 1,000 sites in the United States in the next year.
“Through this partnership we can leverage our estate of advertising locations around the world to build an independent mobile content delivery network,” said Michael Hudes, global director of digital media for Clear Channel Outdoor. “It transforms a one-way, indirectly measurable advertising medium into an active, two-way interactive medium with exact performance measurement, increasing the value of our properties and opening up entirely new business models for the out-of-home advertising industry.”