Go and Track GPS Tracking

Market research firm Compete recently-launched a “Smartphone Intelligence” product which gives some insight about the use of location-based services by Smartphone owners.

Overall, 1 in 3 Smartphone owners currently use a location-based service at least once a month. An additional 20% of Smartphone users said that they would be interested in using LBS if they knew more about what was available and how to use them. The chart below shows some specific types of LBS applications consumers are using now (shown in the dark blue bars) or would use if they had more information (light blue bars):

As seen in the chart, weather and directions/navigation applications are the current leaders in the LBS space. Two thirds of survey respondents who already use LBS said they use a weather application while slightly over half told us they use a navigation app.

However, when asked which types of LBS they would prefer to use if they were available or knew how to use them, we saw some interesting results, particularly appealing for advertisers. It turns out that consumers are also interested in getting local alerts and special offers or promotions from nearby stores or other retailers. This presents an opportunity for advertisers to reap the rewards by serving up location-based ads that will likely see higher clickthrough rates and subsequent engagement. Also, ROI from these types of promotions would be easier to measure as the benefits are more immediate and trackable to a specific customer interaction than many other forms of advertising.

LBS users spend more

In addition to being valuable tools for local businesses and advertising networks, LBS services are also important to carriers who provide the data packages and may possibly split the application revenues. It turns out that Smartphone owners who use LBS are more likely to spend more each month on their total wireless bill. In the chart below, we see that LBS users (red bars) are less likely to be spending $75 or less on their monthly wireless bill and more likely to be spending $125+ than Smartphone owners who do not use LBS.