Can You See Me Now? - Location Based Accessibility for Mobile Marketers

by Evan Rosenthal

      "Click here", "follow us here", "visit us here". These are all common phrases we as marketers tend to use in attempt to attract and understand the consumer. Often times, marketers struggle with getting people engaged in their content, especially the ones who could potentially be high profile customers in their subject matter. However, this can be difficult, time consuming, and often ineffective.

       Marketers are beginning to understand the value in the most critical Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC) element of location, by taking the unknown and putting it into their control. In fact, a recent survey conducted by New York-based PlaceIQ found that 81% of North American multi-channel marketers responded to having “location” be first or second as the most crucial element for marketing metrics due to its foundational component for the IMC process. This process is about tying all forms of marketing communication together. Without knowing your consumers location, it is nearly impossible to have a successful IMC campaign.  

          The most successful marketers today know that one of the most effective ways to engage users is through experience. Many social applications like Snapchat and Facebook not only use location based services to provide value to their mobile and online applications through engagement based location features, but the information is also used to help target advertisements and campaigns without the user even realizing the information that they are handing out to these Silicon Valley giants.

          IT and marketing departments need to be careful, however, of overstepping their boundaries of “spying” on their consumers. For example, on June 30^th of this year, Snapchat published their SnapMap opt-in feature for their users to engage in with their friends. The heavily engaged location based service allows “Snapchatters” to see where their friends are at any given time, and where the most popular spots are in town based on a heat wave of activity.

Snapchat's location based SnapMap allows users to see where their friends are at all times.

Many of these users can be as old as parents or as young as 13 years old. Once this feature was discovered, many parents were warned to turn this feature off for the sake of their children’s safety. Even someone like myself, who is an active Snapchat user, do not want my friends, or even acquaintances, seeing where I am. Who knows who else can get access to this personal, geo-location data? Others like myself also do not want Snapchat to know where I am at all times. Platforms like Facebook have successfully used geo-location features to covertly gain valuable demographic information from their users to use for their Facebook Insights tool.

By taking advantage of a flaw in the system, apps can force users to set their mobile location preferences to allow their apps to “never” or “always” track the mobile device user’s location. Apps like Uber and the Major League Baseball Ballpark app do not have a medium to allow app developers to track only “when using the app”. Most apps have this feature, however the ones who can get away with it without having users noticing or caring do not opt for this luxury.

This all changes when IOS 11 becomes available to the market for Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod users. Those who have not yet downloaded the Beta version can most likely start downloading the software starting today! The new operating system will now give mobile device holders the option for all of their applications in the newly designed Apple App Store store to choose the “while using the app” location access option at application launch. 

Uber's location services page in IOS 11 with all three privacy options

This surprising move by Apple will give their users a more piece of mind, but may cause problems for marketers and developers who have relied on this data. This massive change lays down speed bumps in the IMC planning process, where marketer and advertisers may need to start seeking other option or loopholes to gain such valuable demographics.

Should technology platforms limit how and when their applications can track their users, or should the valuable information be accessible for developers and marketers to better understand and target customers based off location?

Sources:

https://www.marketingtechnews.net/news/2017/sep/13/location-most-valued-data-most-marketers/

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/07/17/even_teenagers_are_creeped_out_by_snapchat_s_new_map_feature.html

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-stop-apps-from-constantly-tracking-your-location-in-ios-11/