CS8803 Advanced Internet Application Development
Project Proposal
Location Based Advertisements
Jatin Kumar
Naren Chainani
Praveen Krishnaiah
Rushabh Shah
jatin.kumar@gatech.edu
naren.chainani@gatech.edu
praveen.krishnaiah@gatech.edu
rushabh@gatech.edu
1. Motivation
Mobile phones have become a new source of information in this age. Apart from
communication services, mobile phones have become an important medium for
information services. Mobile devices which were once being used just for making calls
are now used for creating and sharing content like photos, surfing the internet, music, etc.
New capabilities are continuously being added to the mobile phone making it a powerful
and indispensible part of everybody’s daily life. A Mobile phone that identifies the
location of the user is one such new capability. A study by ABI Research [1] predicts that
the GPS enabled mobile devises will more than double over the next five years and reach
about 500 million units. Such location aware mobile devices have made it possible to
include new type of location based services for the users. The challenge for developers is
to identify and exploit these new found capabilities in cell phones.
We propose a new type of location based service in the form of 'Location based
advertisements'.
2. Related Work
Since GPS enabled mobile phones are not available to public in large numbers mainly
due to expensive cost of this technology, this idea is relatively new and not many people
have implemented this idea. However, there has been some work in this area
Innovation Fund LLC (http://www.innfund), which already has patents issued in the field
of Location Based Advertising, has been developing proposals to go to the leaders in the
field, which include Microsoft, Google, and Time Warner, as well as the telecom
companies. Some reports from webpronet.com [3] seem to suggest that hardware
manufacturers like Nokia are leading the headway in location based advertisements.
There have been some startups like ad2hand [4], but it remains to see how the users
respond to this new form of advertisements.
3. Proposed Work
Location Based Advertisement
Advertising is a communication from the producer to the consumer for the purpose of
selling good or services. We plan to do the same but in a radically different manner.
Current methods of advertisement by companies are by television or banner ads which
reach millions of people but affect a very small percentage. There is Google which takes
a more targeted approach by displaying ads based on user search terms, but many a times
the consumer is not at the right place at the right time. We propose to take a radically
different approach to advertisement by allowing companies to reach prospective
customers at the right time and at the right place.
The idea can be explained better with the help of an example:
John wants to buy a pair of shoes today. He enters information about what he is looking
for in the application. John goes out for shopping to a mall he has never been before. As
soon as John enters the mall, an advertisement flashes on his screen showing him
different latest deals in shoe stores that are located in the mall .Out of the various deals,
he likes a particular deal with respect to the price, brand, styling of the shoe. He finds a
particular deal interesting and wants to see the shoes for himself. He clicks on the
advertisement and the phone sends him the directions to the shoe store in the mall. Using
the directions, John reaches the store and sees the shoes, and buys them.
Rather than going to each and every store and checking the different deals, John found
the best deal and saved a lot of time shopping. John wants to have some Italian food after
shopping. He enters 'Italian food' in the user application and instantly, a list of Italian
restaurant advertisements pop up on his screen. He selects a particular restaurant based
on his interest, special offers, etc.
While he is having dinner, an advertisement pops up on his screen showing a '70% sale
on Armani exchange' in a store located in the mall. John thinks that this might be a
worthwhile deal to look for and heads for the Armani Store after dinner. He finds some
good deals and gets a couple of shirts and trousers.
John is not interested in being disturbed now anymore and hence turns the alerts
application on the mobile phone off.
The example above shows the situation where location based advertisements would be
beneficial for both companies as well as users. Companies can target their potential
customers effectively, while can make an informed decision about their shopping as well
as get discounts or save time. Also, providing users with the option to turn off the
application, we are ensuring that we do not spam them with advertisements.
How does this work?
1. Companies who want to advertise will register at a website. They will provide the
following details:
a. The advertisement that should reach the customer.
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b. The location in terms of longitude and latitude where they want the
advertisement to be displayed.
These details will be stored in a database on our server.
The potential consumers will download our application on their mobile phones.
When the user is interested to buy something he turns on the application and sets
his preferences.
Based on the user’s current location and preference the advertisements will be
displayed.
As the user moves, the system should keep track of his location. Privacy concerns
also need to be addressed.
The System Architecture
The diagram below shows a very high level view of the system architecture.
The Business Model
This service would be completely free for the consumers. The success of this application
is based on the number of users that subscribe to this service. Revenue would be
generated by charging a nominal amount to the companies that register with us. Different
companies would sign up for this service and would pay a certain fee for displaying their
advertisements to users.
4. Plan of Action
Software: We plan to use the Google Android [2] code base to build the application.
Hardware: As of now we do not have a hand set, so we propose to use an emulator.
In view of the limited time frame of this course we propose to do the following:
1. Implement the application which is capable of locating the user’s position and
send the information to the server
2. Build a website where companies can register.
3. Design and implement the database, web server and application server to handle
user requests.
4. Deploy this system on an emulator and show a proof of concept.
There are certain assumptions with respect to this application:
1. We assume that the device is capable of supporting location based services.
2. The location based service could be offered using GPS, cell tower triangulation,
wi-fi triangulation, etc. For this project we would use any one of these.
5. Evaluation and Testing Method
Since we do not have a hand set the application will be tested on an emulator. The basic
functionality should be that on the input of a specific location into the application, the
relevant ads should show up on the application. All other additional functionality, user
friendly features and validation will also be tested.
The various metrics of evaluation will be:
• Relevancy of the ads
• User friendly presentation
• Resource utilization
6. References
[1]
http://www.cio.com/article/160700/GPS_Enabled_Mobile_Phone_Shipments_to_More_
Than_Double_Over_Next_Five_Years
[2] http://code.google.com/android/
[3] http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2008/02/07/nokia-may-lead-in-location-basedadvertising
[4] http://www.ad2hand.com/subscribe_user.html