Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?

“2012 is going to be a huge year in terms of innovation—not just with respect to being able to leverage location to contextualize the types of advertising and offers that a consumer receives, but also then to turn the corner on that and turn it into actual commerce in the physical world,” said Walt Doyle, CEO of the location-based service Where.

And geotargeting doesn’t stop with the widely cited example of a free cup of Starbucks. While often accused of not living up to its promise, we likely will see the day, and soon, when location-based technology redefines behavioral targeting as we know it, when a consumer packaged-goods company recognizes that a shopper is in the cereal aisle and sends a Wheaties coupon to her phone. What’s more, in the not-so-distant future, a marketer could use technology like that of Where to track a person’s daily routine so precisely that it knows when she’s on her way to the office, the gym or home for the evening. To be sure, the future of location-based marketing is about more than just check-ins.