Author: Mandeep Bhoopalam

Location Based Advertising – App Makers Know Where You Are

Do you allow Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other websites and social networking sites to access your location? We give away our location because we want to share it with our friends and family for many different reasons. Companies say they do not share user location with advertisers. But every social networking application is using the location to help advertisers target potential customers because apps want to make money on mobile.

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Location based mobile marketing requires access to the internet and GPS services. Every smartphone owner is a potential customer for location based mobile marketing. Imagine you are shopping at a mall or passing by a shopping center and you receive an email regarding 40% off on Zara clothes. The chances of visiting Zara is high when you are in the mall than when you are at home. Location based advertising is good at targeting potential customers.

User needs differ based on where they are and when they use their device. Location based marketing is used to share specific content based on user location. Location based marketing is not only used for targeting potential customers. But it is also used for insights, segmentation, analytics, and to understand if the advertisement drove people to the physical location. It is about understanding better about you and decide what advertising to show you.

How is it measured?

Location based advertising is measured using customer traffic data. By comparing the customer traffic before and after the advertising. Apple i phones have IDFA (Identifier for the Advertiser on i phones) and Android has Android Advertising IDs for tracking ads. When a user takes action, like clicking on an ad, websites will pass IDFA or Android IDs with the information of consumer action to advertisers. Social networks do not share IDs with advertisers but allow them to target specific IDs.

Example

Starbucks used location based advertising in the USA. They tracked user location and device IDs and then pushed targeted ads to the consumer.  The metric to measure the success rate was how many people walked into a Starbucks store after seeing the ad.

 

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According to Starbucks, the likelihood of a person entering a store increased by 100% after seeing a location-based ad.

Privacy

The disadvantage of using location based ads is its privacy issues. Marketers should respect users privacy and use location only if they have user consent. Social networks track users locations to provide a personalized experience but apps should draw a fine line between personalizing and privacy. Apps are tracking location even when the user is not using the app. Should the app makers know where we go, where we eat, and where we work?

References

Dhar, S., & Varshney, U. (2011). Challenges and Business Models for Mobile Location-based Services and Advertising. Communications Of The ACM, 54(5), 121-129. doi:10.1145/1941487.1941515

Forbes Agency Council. (2017). 15 Things You Should Know About Location-Based Advertising. Retrieved September 09, 2018, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2017/11/22/15-things-you-should-know-about-location-based-advertising/#621e955c1e62

Nichols, J. (2017). Mobile Tutorial Series -What is an IDFA or Apple Identifier for Advertisers? Retrieved September 09, 2018, from https://www.singular.net/mobile-tutorial-series-idfa-apple-identifier-advertisers/

Pangburn, D. (2017). How-And Why-Apple, Google, And Facebook Follow You Around In Real Life. Retrieved September 09, 2018, from https://www.fastcompany.com/40477441/facebook-google-apple-know-where-you-are

Simpson, J. (2018, August 21). What is location-based advertising & why is it the next big thing? Retrieved September 09, 2018, from https://econsultancy.com/what-is-location-based-advertising-why-is-it-the-next-big-thing/

Ethical Issues in Internet Survey

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Online surveys have gained popularity among researchers due to its many advantages over the traditional phone surveys, mail surveys, and face to face surveys. Online surveys are quick, cheap, flexible, and has global reach. It is particularly useful to companies who wish to collect data from a large number of respondents and from complex target groups. However, online survey research brings additional ethical issues.

Ethical Isuues

1) Anonymity

Online surveys are designed to protect the anonymity of the respondents. Online surveys do not use cookies, a piece of data stored in users web browser, and other tracking software’s are usually not supported for online surveys. However, it totally depends on the survey designer to protect respondents anonymity. To protect anonymity, researcher has to make sure there are no identity revealing questions, respondents tracking tools should not be used, there should not be a need to use email addresses, and respondents IP address should not be recorded with the result.

2) Data Protection

To maintain confidentiality researchers should protect the user data after collection. The researcher should make sure that the data cannot be accessed by a third person. To facilitate data protection, questionnaire login and passwords should be issued to every respondent, data should be encrypted and stored, frequent malware scans should be conducted to detect any vulnerabilities, latest security updates should be applied, and certified data centers should be used for storing the data.

3) Informed Consent

Survey consent, an agreement to collect user data via survey, is a crucial component because it is important to inform survey respondents about all the risks, procedures, and benefits of filling out the survey. The first page of the survey should cover the information about researcher identity, what the survey is about, how the data will be used, confidentiality and anonymity options, what is expected of the respondent, how long will the survey take, the benefits (remunerations) and risks of filling the survey, and warnings should be given if the material is sensitive.

4) Respondent Rights

The researchers should make sure they consider the rights of respondents while designing the research and it is important that the respondents are aware of their rights. Respondents should have an option to exit the survey whenever they want. Respondents should be told that if the data cannot be erased after the survey is submitted. If the respondent wants to exit the survey by mid way, data should not be recorded without the consent. Finally, respondents should not be forced to answer; this can be attained by having a “do not wish to answer” option.

How likely will you consider the above mentioned ethical solutions while designing your next survey? Please comment away. Thanks.

References

British Psychological Society (2007). Report of the Working Party on conducting research on the internet: Guidelines for ethical practice in psychological research online. Available from https://www.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/documents/conducting_research_on_the_internet-guidelines_for_ethical_practice_in_psychological_research_online.pdf

Defranzo, S. E. (2014). How Secure is Your Online Survey Data? Retrieved September 01, 2018, from https://www.snapsurveys.com/blog/secure-online-survey-data/

Elizabeth. (2013). Nine benefits for conducting market research online surveys. Retrieved September 01, 2018, from https://novisurvey.net/blog/nine-benefits-for-conducting-market-research-online-surveys.aspx

 

 

 

 

 

The Good, And The Bad Of Online Communities

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Online community is a virtual community whose members share similar interests, and use the internet (websites, discussion boards, messengers, email, etc) to interact with each other.

The Good

1) Accessible & Collaboration

Most of the online communities do not have a cap on the number of users, which means hundreds and thousands of users can contribute to a discussion and access the information at any time. By having users with different points of view, culture, backgrounds, age and the experience will facilitate in generating an out of the box idea for any given problem.

2) Social Capital

When people comment and post, relationships can be easily made with the other members of the community. It helps people in making new friends and adds value by increasing social capital. There are some online communities which are not only online anymore as users meet offline to pursue similar interests.

There is an online community called S.Q.U.A.T.S for sharing fitness and diet information on Facebook. They meet offline to have fitness competitions, and conference about healthy eating. My sister, took part in one of the meetings and made a few new friends. Now, they all talk regularly and travel together for offline meets.

The Bad

1)  Credibility

The post may not be credible, and instead of helping clear up questions, they can bring up more questions. People with half knowledge may knowingly or unknowingly mislead the users by giving the unproven or wrong information. People give wrong information either because they do not understand the question properly or because they post their opinion as a fact. Also, the correct information may not be credible if it is out of date.

Communities have admins, and admins have the control to approve or disapprove people posts, they may not approve the posts if they do not feel comfortable with some ideas, even if the posts are useful for others.

2) Spam! Spam! Spam!

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There is always a hyper, discourteous person who wants to spam the posts with terrible words and pointless substance. Any random user can join the community and start spamming the thread, making it look untidy. (How many times have we not seen an ad or a coupon offer on a thread?)

There are also hackers who join the online community to exchange links. When hackers, spammers, and phishers post a fake link, it can launch any number of virus or spyware tools that can infect your account, your machine, and even worse, it might compromise your data. So, beware folks!

 

Thanks for reading, do share your online community experiences.