As technology evolves, location-based advertising is firmly back on the agenda, and coming to a square-metre near you

The advertising industry has been getting excited about the ability to use mobile technology to better target messages by using the consumer’s location for around 20 years now. But the confluence of several emerging tools, such as iBeacons, in-store Wi-Fi and the ability to push messages to apps on mobile phones has put hyper-local marketing back at the top of the hype cycle.

The premise of knowing a person’s location before sending them an advertisement is that location is a good proxy for context. If a Topshop customer is near one of their shops, goes the argument, wouldn’t it be great to offer them an incentive to entice them in? This obviously assumes that the consumer has previously self-identified as being a customer and is happy to receive these types of messages.