Wednesday, November 23, 2005

Physical World Connection Dichotomy


As I see more stories and applications involving a mobile phone being used to connect the physical world, I ponder.

I am seeing two completely different strategies for using the physical world connection and I wonder which will get adopted.

Today Aura Digital announces another mobile marketing campaign that allows mobile phone users get content from a movie poster using Hypertag (bluetooth) technology.
This is their second campaign and it appears to be even more successful than their War Of The Worlds one.

Who benefits, the advertiser and consumer.

The other mobile application that is getting attention is price comparison using a camera phone and a barcode. ScanBuy has been getting tremendous amount of press with their scanZoom application. Download their software and scan barcodes to get price information.

Who benefitted, only the consumer.

I think you have to look at why Google is so sucessful in order to determine what applications will win the mobile info race.

Google, is a free application, that allows users to find digital content with their PC. Both advertisers and consumers are able to utilize this application.

Google's Froogle service really hasn't taken off and that makes me question how much demand will there be for a mobile price comparison service.

Not only do I not see price comparison being used on a mobile phone, but why would any advertiser want you to compare their product price? But they will want you to visit their website.

Your "next Google" is a mobile application that allows a physical world hyperlink to provide information (coupon, rebate, call center) to a consumer and then allow an advertiser to interact with that consumer to promote his product.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Only a face a "PRIMATE" could love.

Hope that's not your offspring!!

Anonymous said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

concerning: tools like scanbuy

Hi P.P.,

actually someone can be profiting from this and that's e.g. amazon. So they could sell it to amazon as an amazing amazon tool. There will be some tension because of this between the physical retailer and the online retailer, but I don't think this use of a barcode scanning/price tool will be big business in the long term. Why? This tool can and will only be used by consumers for a view items such as books/dvd's (impulsive acquisition and tools like scanbuy takes them of an impuslive acquistion if the price is right/worth it)....as long as the items mentioned are sold in physical stores.

For other items such as TV's, computers (normally not an impulsive acquisition) consumers are using review/price compare sites on a computer at home.

Maybe someone is busy developing something that can be of a better use for both consumers and retailers ;-)

regards,
r.s.

No Name said...

I agree that the "consumer only" applications will not fly.

Watch and see what creative brands do with their barcodes.

If they play their cards right, they will eliminate the need for search engines.