Advertising, like real estate, is all about location. But lately, advertising in a connected and increasingly mobile world is about location and context and when you put these two together you get relevance. Many companies are trying to capitalize on the emergence of relevance as an index of commercial activity but none more uniquely and effectively than the appropriately named Where. 

A year after launching its “relevancy engine,” Where has 250 mobile application publisher clients with a reach of 50M unique users producing 2B ad requests and 140G of contextual data per month. Depending on how you look at what Where has done, the company has either banished or redefined the idea of location in advertising. In the words of marketing chief Dan Gilmartin the popular DMA (designated market area) of old now stands for Doesn’t Matter Anymore. 

The relevance of advertising in the automotive industry has emerged as more consumers connect smartphones into their cars introducing the world of mobile advertising to the dashboard – a venue previously “owned” by the on-board radio. A growing number of service providers are offering OEMs ad-supported server-based wireless content delivery platforms. And the lead application on many of these platforms – such as Toyota’s Entune or GM’s new MyLink – is Internet radio.

Third Generation Mobile Advertising

Like so many aspects of the connected world, advertising has gone hyper local and contextual. Where first generation mobile advertising might have been broadly targeted to a region, and second generation wireless ads might have sent you a coupon for a Big Mac as you drove by a McDonald’s, third generation mobile advertising will take into account the time of day (lunch time?) as well as, maybe, the user’s past searches or clickthroughs which might indicate a preference for vegetarian.

Location is still important, but now context is the critical determining factor for mobile advertising campaigns and just about everything else in an always connected world. Nowhere is this fact made more clear on a daily basis than in the realm of terrestrial broadcast radio advertising – a nearly $20B business that has resisted the inroads of satellite radio, digital radio and, now, Internet radio. But terrestrial radio’s ability to hold off the competitive threat from Internet radio will be a test and that’s because of relevancy.

To better understand the role of location it is worthwhile looking at the market impact of satellite radio. Sirius XM has been able to build a subscription-based $2.8B revenue stream around premium and curated broadcast content. While some of the stations on Sirius XM allow for some limited advertising messages these ads are generally not location specific since all of the stations are broadcast across the entire U.S. and Canada.

The broadcast approach to advertising Sirius XM-style is “broad” in its most loosely defined sense – very first generation. Ads for male enhancement products (Prolixis) or the AshleyMadison dating service are typical. These ads have zero location relevance and, as a result, have the quality of audio spam.

Relevance Rules

Traditional terrestrial broadcast radio, on the other hand, may have its own sprinkling of national advertising spots, but they are leavened with spots for local service providers with familiar names. That familiarity somehow makes those ads easier to accept and less like audio spam.

The strength of those local advertising bonds has helped the terrestrial broadcast radio industry hold its own against other sources of content, including music playing devices. Today, only 3% of total listening hours are attributable to Internet radio, according to Arbitron (which does not measure satellite radio listening), with the balance devoted to terrestrial broadcast sources.

Internet radio in the car – whether as an embedded solution or delivered over a connected mobile phone – represents the arrival of third generation advertising opportunities in the dashboard. The power of Internet radio advertising lies in its infrequency – about half the hourly ad load of terrestrial broadcasts – and in its relevance. And to help seal the deal for a prospective advertiser, Internet radio offers the prospect of superior metrics for evaluating the efficacy of a mobile advertising campaign.

Predictive Advertising Model

Where’s relevancy engine enables the rifle-shot approach to advertising that advertisers seek. Like a weather or traffic forecaster, Where’s algorithms can predict consumer receptivity to advertising messages based on a variety of inputs including everything from time of day to weather to location or any of a range of behaviors reflected in online activity.

Among the inputs Where’s relevancy engine ingests are such things as page views, click to calls, click to map, click to directions as well as “likes,” “saves,” “favorites,” and ratings. Different types of indicators get different weights, but all contribute to delivering a message that is likely to be more welcomed by the consumer since it is more relevant.

It will take research to bear this out, but my personal theory is that the more appropriate or relevant an ad is the more closely a consumer will pay attention and respond. I am not interested in Prolixis or AshleyMadison, but I may need gas, a cough drop, or a Big Mac depending on my context.

Where also has a mobile phone application which has taken its relevancy concept further with the addition of what it calls Perfect Places, a social discovery service that recommends nearby sites that friends might want to visit based on matching relevant similarities in taste. The service also delivers exclusive deals from local merchants. The Where app has 4M users.

Conclusion:

The transformation coming to the automotive radio experience is driven by the $20B advertising opportunity that terrestrial broadcast radio represents. Internet radio stands a much greater chance of capturing a piece of that pie or, alternatively, making it larger. The Internet radio listening audience is unique and attractive to advertisers and the underlying technology allows for more accurate targeting and measurement of campaigns.

How providers translate Internet radio into revenue opportunities remains to be seen. Pioneer Electronics’ Platform for Aggregation of Internet Services (PAIS) has been the most overt regarding its proposed strategy of advertising revenue share. But most other platform providers, from Airbiquity to aha mobile, have the same idea in mind. There is a reason GM and BMW have been working so hard to bring Facebook into the car. It’s all about advertising inventory.

For further insight:

http://bit.ly/gcXXyX - Next Gen Car Radio: Battle Lines Drawn over Content & Location - Insight – Roger Lanctot – Automotive Multimedia & Communications Service

Traffic data programs have long consisted of three elements: incident data, flow data and the behind-the-curtain algorithms that make all this information work smoothly together. With the emergence of multiple screen and multiple platform opportunities, though, has come the fourth element: video animation.

In the U.S., as in most markets, there is a limited supplier base for these information types. In the U.S., incident data is primarily available from a combination of public authorities and three radio broadcast organizations: ClearChannel, Westwood One and the Broadcast Traffic Consortium. Flow data is mainly sourced from Inrix, Traffic.com, TrafficCast, and AirSage. (Any organization, such as Google, is theoretically capable of creating flow data from GPS probe inputs from handsets or fleets.)

The companies with the data algorithms to process the incident and flow data into standard traffic information products are mainly limited to Inrix, Traffic.com and TrafficCast. Westwood One, which acquired Metro Traffic and Smart Route, has never created its own independent traffic data service, though it does produce and distribute traffic reports.

With the emergence of traffic video and multiple-screen traffic products and services has come the fourth element. Traffic animation is a valuable commodity in the traffic business. When it comes to monetizing traffic data, broadcast radio and television remain dominant. To better compete, suppliers of video have sought to extend their products and affiliated sponsorships to the Internet and mobile devices.

Live traffic feeds on television during rush hour are available throughout the U.S. and in most markets around the world. In the U.S., though, there are four sources of video traffic animation: Triangle Software/Beat the Traffic, The Weather Channel/WSI, Traffic.com and Westwood One/SigAlert.

Two companies are currently positioning themselves to lead the drive toward traffic-only cable channels: Triangle Software/Beat the Traffic and TangoTraffic, which uses Traffic.com animations and traffic data. Triangle Software/Beat the Traffic is in the process of suing Westwood One/SigAlert over the alleged infringement of multiple patents governing the representation of traffic data in three dimensions as well as routing and segment speed calculations – five patents in all. Also named in the lawsuit are TomTom, Volkswagen and Garmin.

Triangle/BTT, TangoTraffic and Westwood all have their sights set on three screen solutions – TV, Internet, phone – with Triangle the furthest along, followed by Tango and Westwood. The legal action, though, has both highlighted the importance of 3D traffic representations, while casting a shadow on Westwood’s prospects.

With the help of private equity group Gores Group LLC, Westwood has been assembling a traffic solution capable of serving as an alternative to dominant players ClearChannel, Inrix and Traffic.com. The company has cut distribution deals with TrafficLand (Dept. of Transportation traffic cameras) and AirSage (handset signaling data) and acquired SigAlert. In addition, the company is in the process of implementing Gewi’s traffic database system.

Westwood has been able to convert AirSage’s handset signaling information into flow data and has extended SigAlert’s reach beyond its original southern California territory. At the same time, Westwood has extended its products from television and the Internet to handsets. In spite of all this effort, Westwood is still confronting much larger and more entrenched competitors and now must contend with Triangle’s legal action.

The only good news emerging from the legal action is that it validates the value of the data processes behind traffic reporting and imaging. The bad news is it puts financial pressure on an industry still seeking to establish its validity with consumers. Sirius XM is learning the painful lesson that consumers have a limited interest in paying a monthly subscription for traffic data. The failure of the subscription model for traffic has served as a major impetus to pushing traffic into ad-sponsored monetization schemes driven by broadcast sources.

The emergence of traffic television channels, though, in the form of TangoTraffic (Comcast/Fios in the Philadelphia area) and Beat the Traffic (Time Warner in Southern California), may help to raise the profile of traffic information. With a higher profile and more revenue may come new solutions capable of delivering more timely and accurate reporting of traffic incidents on more platforms – maybe even in cars.

Conclusion:

The clash over video – both actual DOT video and animated “flyovers” – is an interesting one with significant implications for the automotive industry. Triangle Software’s video animations of traffic, which continue to see additional enhancements including 3D building representations resembling existing mobile and embedded navigation solutions, are changing the way people consume their traffic information. These images are redefining the value and usability of traffic information.

Car makers and their suppliers are still struggling to determine the most appropriate way to bring traffic video images into cars – either as still black and white images or color-coded 3D animations. At the same time, mobile device makers such as Route 66 and TomTom are making use of augmented reality to overlay traffic guidance on live video images of the road ahead or with enhanced junction views.

The resolution of Westwood’s, TomTom’s, Garmin’s and VW’s legal tussle with Triangle is less important than the business model implications of multi-screen traffic solutions and the emergence of new ways to visualize traffic information. Whatever the result it can’t help but be better than the old familiar and inferior red-green-yellow.

Further Insight:

http://bit.ly/ejAvGp - Next Gen Traffic, Navigation: Hyper Local, Global & Always On - Insight Report - Lanctot - Automotive Multimedia and Communications Service

Both Cairo and Espoo witnessed revolutions on Friday, Feb. 11^th. Mobs in the streets of Cairo saw the 30-year reign of Hosni Mubarak come to an end and Espoo saw global handset market leader Nokia embrace the smartphone platform of rival Microsoft. While Egyptians have been left to sort out what their nearly bloodless military coup hath wrought, the open source community surrounding Nokia’s now cast-off platform is assessing the long-term prospects for MeeGo and the Qt developer framework.

The implications for the automotive OS world are yet unclear.

Nokia says the first device using MeeGo is still in the works and will arrive later in 2011. Absent from any public statements at the announcement of the partnership with Microsoft was the statement of a plan for supporting MeeGo as the open source OS choice of the automotive GenIVI Alliance.

By the end of the day, crowds in Tahrir Square in Cairo were setting off fireworks and celebrating deep into the night as Mubarak made his way to the resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. Meanwhile, executives involved in the Qt developer community suggested, by Friday evening, that there was no change in their plans as a result of the Nokia-Microsft announcement. Intel made a belated statement of support for MeeGo:

“Our strategy has always been to provide choice when it comes to operating systems. MeeGo is one of those choices. We support a port of choice strategy that includes Windows, Android, and MeeGo. This is not changing.

“MeeGo is not just a phone OS, it supports multiple devices. It is already shipping and we’re seeing early momentum across multiple segments today, including automotive systems, netbooks, tablets, and set-top boxes.”

Operating system momentum in the automotive industry is slow to build and slow to dissipate. By now, MeeGo and GenIVI indeed have momentum. But there is no doubt that the Nokia announcement was NOT good news for either MeeGo or GenIVI. Both MeeGo and Mubarak were clearly “thrown under the bus.” (Perhaps it is more accurate to say Symbian was thrown under the bus, but MeeGo was clearly de-emphasized.)

In the short-term, the Nokia-Microsoft announcement is a minor blip on the automotive OS radar screen. Longer term, industry executives will watch closely to see the impact on developer support. If Stephen Elop learned nothing else from his time with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer (http://bit.ly/qiASt) it is the power of developers.

Qt and MeeGo both have already attracted legions of enthusiastic developers. Elop’s handling of the announcement reflected a cultural disconnect between an executive coming from outside the open source world taking the helm at a company steeped in the rich broth of open source solutions including Symbian, MeeGo and Qt.

While there is no doubt that the open source community failed to deliver the competitive edge Nokia needed, the company might take better care that it is not throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Nokia must decide whether it can support both the open source community and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 7.

It is worth noting that no one in the industry is questioning Google's commitment to Android.

Conclusion:

Strategy Analytics expects a strong statement of support from Nokia for Qt and MeeGo at this week’s Mobile World Congress. A late statement of commitment and support is better than no statement at all. The legions of developers around the world that are bringing energy to those platforms – which are NOT in flames, to use Elop’s analogy – would benefit from a strong endorsement equivalent to the one given by Nokia to former rival Microsoft.

GenIVI will likely forge ahead with or without MeeGo over the long haul. As an open source platform, GenIVI has the flexibility to shift to a new distribution of Linux if necessary. The ship has already sailed and there is no turning back. It’s just not clear that Nokia is on board. And the company is certainly not at the helm.

Additional insight:

http://tinyurl.com/4m3rm73 - Nokia Tosses the Car Keys to Microsoft - Insight - Automotive Multimedia and Communications Service

Red light cameras and speed cameras are in the news lately thanks to events in both the U.S. and the U.K. In the U.K., the Daily Mail reported that municipalities were turning off their speed cameras – while leaving them in place – because of budget cuts. This would not normally warrant news coverage except for the fact that the local authorities subsequently reported declines in accidents and fatalities. In other words, even without the devices working, the municipalities were achieving the intended outcome of reduced accidents and injuries.

In the U.S., an ongoing struggle is underway in Houston,TX where a referendum narrowly passed calling for the removal of red light cameras, which continue to function and record violations though without issuing citations. The company that installed the cameras in Houston, American Traffic Solutions, has reported a spike in violations, since the shut off.

Houston is not alone. Various states and local governments are considering adding or removing red light and/or speed cameras. And the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS) weighed in early last week with a report validating the effectiveness of red light cameras in reducing fatalities.

As usual, the IIHS report – like other traffic-related studies – experienced widespread criticism for a wide range of fairly obvious reasons. The report’s conclusion, that red light cameras save lives, was far from radical, but the methodology left it open to challenge. Far from laying the issue to rest, the report only further inflamed opponents. (The report showed declines in traffic fatalities for cities that employed at least some red light cameras vs. those that did not.)

With more than 6,000 speed and red light cameras in the U.K., more than 7,000 such cameras in the U.S. (according to Photoenforced.com)  and tens of thousands of these cameras in use around the world, one would assume that some one or some organization somewhere would have conducted a definitive study of the efficacy of these systems. Unfortunately this is not the case.

A study of studies published by the Cochrane Library reviewed 35 studies of speed cameras finding a relative reduction in average speed ranging from 1% to 15% and the reduction in proportion of vehicles speeding ranging from 14% to 65%. “In the vicinity of camera sites, the pre/post reductions ranged from 8% to 49% for all crashes and 11% to 44% for fatal and serious injury crashes. Compared with controls, the relative improvement in pre/post injury crash proportions range from 8% to 50%.”

But this report complained about the quality of available research and the resulting inability to draw actionable conclusions regarding best practices and anticipated outcomes. Critics of the IIHS study, in particular, have pointed out that the organization is supported by the auto insurance industry which stands to benefit from the raising of insurance rates in those jurisdictions where red light camera infractions are reported to the local licensing authorities and, by extension, the insurance companies.

The issue is becoming even more complex as cameras are increasingly used to identify a growing variety of infractions. In Washington, DC, for example, the city announced last week that its 30 speed cameras and 50 red-light cameras will be augmented with “sleeker, smaller and easier-to-deploy” cameras for enforcing other traffic laws such as failing to yield to pedestrians in a crosswalk, blocking intersections and for truck-height-restriction violations.

Cameras have also been used to identify motorists passing stopped school buses, obstructing street sweepers and for grade crossing violations. Photoenforced.com, which maintains and licenses a database of enforcement cameras, reports a 25% annual increase in the number of cameras and tracks cameras used for illegal right turn enforcement as well as cameras employed for tracking multiple infraction types.

There are several questions at stake, most of which can be resolved with appropriate, uniform camera deployment strategies based on and guided by sound research. The problems with current implementations include:

1. The perception that the cameras are employed solely to raise revenue
2. The perception that the cameras benefit the contractor and the budget of the local municipality at the expense of drivers
3. Confusion regarding the magnitude in the reduction in violations, crashes, injuries and fatalities
4. The ability of consumers to be notified of the existence of fixed and mobile cameras
5. The availability of camera-enforced violation information to licensing and insurance authorities
6. The availability of fixed and mobile camera-enforcement locations for integration in embedded and mobile navigation devices
7. The use of revenue from fines
8. The belief that red-light cameras – while helping to prevent so-called T-bone accidents, actually cause an increase in rear-end collisions         
9. The charge that automated enforcement impedes due process

The biggest and loudest beef that drivers have with speed and red-light enforcement cameras is that they are perceived as a money raising scam by local authorities in cahoots with richly-rewarded contractors and collaterally benefiting insurance companies. Sometimes this is due to the size of the fines (as high as $500 in California) or by the placement of the cameras in high-traffic, low-accident areas.

Drivers also feel that there is some unfairness and lack of due process due to the time lag involved in the delivery of the citation. In the words of an American Automobile Association (AAA) spokesperson: “With notices of automated tickets sent out weeks and sometimes months after the event, it’s nearly impossible for a person to defend themselves. Also, the cameras do nothing to remove a speeder from the road who may be truly reckless, criminal, suffering through a mechanical flaw, and who might pose a danger to others or him or her self.”

Actually, this same AAA representative also noted that “visible traffic enforcement officers in marked cars remain the best deterrent to speeding.” “The presence of marked vehicles helps assure motorists that law enforcement aid is available for those in need. Automated enforcement undermines public trust when policy makers turn to such methods as a revenue source for budgets in lieu of raising taxes or cutting spending.”

Almost any technology that has been proven to save lives or reduce infractions by whatever proportion is worthy of serious evaluation. A recent commentary published by the Institute for Transport Engineers (ITE) provides a roster of best practices for red-light camera deployment including:

1.               Sites for enforcement cameras should be selected by government authorities and based on accident histories or other criteria in an open manner and with careful documentation;
2.               “Deterrence should be emphasized through signing and public information”
3.               “Avoid excessive penalties and late fees”
4.               “Include … stakeholders in planning
5.               Take human and environmental factors into account
6.               Avoid appearance of “revenue motive”
7.               Pre-empt legal challenges
8.               Evaluate program performance

The ITE recommendations are more detailed than what I have described above, but do not go far enough. New deployments should be preceded by a thorough analysis of prevailing traffic conditions under a variety of circumstances and installation should be followed by an equivalent analysis to at least try to establish cause and effect; camera locations should be fully and completely disclosed to drivers; insurance companies should not have access to these infractions (which therefore also should be kept off a driver’s record) and resulting revenues should be targeted at the victims of traffic accidents.

In Houston, TX, there is an almost comical scenario unfolding where red-light cameras, which are not recording tickets, are still registering violations, including 3,811 red-light runners at one busy intersection in January 2011 vs. 2,770 in January 2010, a 38% increase. It is also worth noting that in a single week in January 2011 Houston police officers issued 145 tickets vs. the 667 average daily citations issued when the cameras were active. According to a press report the police department attributed the lower number to restrictions on officer overtime.

There is a manpower component to the traffic camera proposition. As the chief of police in Washington, DC, told the Washington Post: “The technology gives us the capability to do additional types of enforcement. I need to get my police officers fighting crime in neighborhoods. If I can have an automated system take the place of what 100 police officers could do and make the work safer for police officers, why wouldn't I?"

The last piece of the puzzle – after validating the research and shifting officers to more effective and productive activities – is the question of public relations. Speed and red-light cameras have a bad name. More complete disclosure of these camera locations will put the driving public’s mind at ease.

There are a variety of solutions for incorporating fixed and mobile red-light and speed camera information into mobile device navigation systems – including crowd-sourcing systems from Trapster (recently acquired by Nokia Navteq), TomTom and Coyote among others. But it has so far been impossible to get these alerts included in embedded navigation systems.

If the goal of deploying these cameras is to save lives and ensure compliance with safety measures it only seems logical that drivers should have access to this public information. So, just as drivers may be alerted to accident “blackspots,” as in the case of some connected TomTom devices, they should also be able to get notifications of upcoming speed and red-light cameras on their phones and in their vehicle navigation systems.

OEMs have not integrated these data points thus far for two key reasons: the locations change and in some jurisdictions, such as Germany and Switzerland, it is illegal to have these locations in navigation systems. I say it is time for law enforcement to be more open about their speed and red-light enforcement activities with the objective of building citizen support for the use of cameras for the enhanced safety of all.

Finally, public authorities can fully silence their critics by diverting the revenue from these cameras to the families of crash victims. There is no rationale for tossing these revenues into the general fund and the good will that will come from this use of the proceeds will cement consumer support.

Conclusion

Speed and red-light cameras are proliferating around the world with the avowed objective of saving lives. In fact, cameras are being used to identify a growing range of violation types.

Because of inconsistent implementation and inadequate research it is impossible to accurately quantify the efficacy of these measures. At the same time, consumers are upset at the exorbitant fines and unexpected implementations. By supporting deployments with adequate research, fully disclosed camera locations and by shifting the fine and fee proceeds to accident victims, municipalities will build strong public support. At the same time, the safer and more effective deployment of these cameras will allow police officers to focus on higher priority tasks.

With disclosure, consumers will finally get camera location notifications – legally in all geographies – in their cars and on their navigation systems. In the meantime, the data will still be accessible in apps from Trapster and Coyote and on various portable navigation devices – yet another advantage mobile devices will continue to have over embedded systems.