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While there are plenty of other user controls on the feature, eventually those who opt-in for Nearby Friends will also see location-based advertising via the service.
Given Facebook's massive audience, there are likely tons of marketers that would love to add a location-based component to their Facebook ads. If you own a bar and you can serve an ad promoting a happy hour special to someone who's walking by and who's liked your business, it could be a huge opportunity.
In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we take a look at why local-mobile marketing is so attractive to brands and what techniques they are using to serve location-based targeted messaging. The report identifies some the latest and most effective location-based apps that are giving consumers' reasons to share their locations. Research increasingly supports the notion that local apps and advertising lead to in-store purchases, which is why Facebook's Nearby Friends service could be a big new source of revenue for the social network.
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Here are some of the report's key findings:
- Location-based services enjoy widespread acceptance, but adoption isn't growing. Seventy-four percent of U.S. smartphone owners said they used mobile location-based services in 2013. That percentage is flat compared to 2012.
- Check-ins are becoming passé. The percentage of U.S. adults who reported using local-social networks to "check in," decreased from 18% in February of 2012 to 12% in 2013.
- Apps like Life360 and Waze prosper because consumers feel like they're getting great value out of sharing not just their location, but other information too.
- Geoaudience profiling, geoconquesting, and hyper-local in-store campaigns are three primary strategies used to segment audiences and target consumers based on location.
- The geoproximity technique is equivalent to casting a big net near the boat and hauling in whatever gets caught. Campaigns erect geofences created around bricks-and-mortar stores and send targeted ads to smartphone users who travel within the radius. Some providers adjust their geofences for different times of day.
- A geoconquesting campaign is a specific type of geoproximity campaign that uses location data to target potential customers when they walk into a competitor's store.
- Geoaudiencing uses layers of location data and data from complementary sources (offline customer data provided by retailers, Web browsing data, etc.), to build audience segments of anonymous users, e.g. soccer moms, or white-collar frequent travelers.
In full, the report:
- Examines how location-based services have changed now that the check in is on the way out.
- Considers those apps that have done the best job offering a service to consumers and getting them to voluntarily share their information.
- Puts location-based services in the context of mobile in-store shopping among consumers.
- Unpacks the three main campaigns associated with mobile-location marketing.
- Looks forward to emergent trends like hyper-local targeting, in which retailers use Bluetooth technology and mobile payments in stores.