There’s been speculation that free WiFi would be used by Google and others as a carrot to target users and seize the local advertising market. That’s hard to do under any circumstances. But assuming that all the stars align, how attractive can WiFi be as a targeted, local delivery medium?
It can be “very attractive,” according to Nitin J. Shah, Executive Vice President of Feeva Technology, a San Francisco-based software company focused on WiFi ad targeting.
Shah is the first to concede the real limitations of WiFi technology. But he argues that WiFi’s adoption in laptops, PDAs and even cellphones, combined with the rapid proliferation of free WiFi hotspots, “clouds” and “zones,” creates real opportunities for local advertisers and other geo-targeters.
Feeva’s software, for instance, allows advertisers to create and deliver online advertising that is targeted to individual users. It is also able to target users throughout their entire session, not just on the typical “land grab” of the first page.
The keyword, here, is probably “free.” Premium T-Mobile hotspots accessed at Starbucks and other locations only get 5-16 users per day, according to published reports. But Shah claims that some of the free, Feeva-enabled WiFi hotspots in San Francisco are being logged on over 100 times a day. He also claims that users take advantage of the free access in large enough numbers to make targeted advertising models viable.
Hi-tech San Francisco, of course, is an anomaly. But Shah suggests that other markets would have at least 30-40 percent of the Bay Area’s usage. “It is reasonable to use the results to project traffic in other markets,” he says.
WiFi is not, however, the next great telecom medium for residential broadband access. WiFi is best suited to highly targeted hot zones, warns Shah. “It is difficult to use WiFi technology to provide pervasive coverage,” he says, noting that it was really designed for local area networks. “Conversely, this also makes WiFi technology well-suited to local and targeted content, precisely because it has a short range of coverage,” he says.
From a time-to-market perspective, Shah is especially concerned about the complexity of building out the so-called “Muni” (municipal) WiFi networks being proposed by community leaders in San Francisco, Philadelphia and other cities. “Muni WiFi relies on close cooperation with local governments for their facilities, policies, their commitment to the public interest etc,” he says. “It is complex and time-consuming. Metro or targeted WiFi deployments, on the other hand, requires only an entrepreneurial approach and speed.”