AppleInsider Staff
It was reported on Friday that the NFL has rolled out a micro-location beacon network in New York's Times Square and MetLife Stadium, with the transmitters set to serve up personalized ads to football fans during the Super Bowl.
Speaking with The New York Times, the National Football League's general manager of mobile Manish Jha explained that the beacon installation is an experiment to help gauge the effectiveness of micro-location ads.
"The power of this is it really is able to connect the real world, the brick-and-mortar world, with the virtual world with a level of granularity that hasn't existed before," Jha said. He added that the NFL will not connect personal and location data with the Super Bowl test, thereby protecting end-user privacy as the league figures out how to best leverage beacon tech.
Apple sparked interest in micro-location, or context aware, technology with iBeacon, a framework built on the Bluetooth Low Energy protocol. The location-aware iBeacons feature two-way communication, meaning the devices can advertise personalized specials to end users while tracking customer traffic information for store owners.
iBeacon has seen test applications at Macy's and all U.S. Apple Store locations.
Other companies have jumped on board with their own systems that work in a nearly identical fashion and are usually compatible with iOS and Google's Android.
While not specifically mentioned in the article, photographs illustrating the NFL's beacon rollout show Qualcomm's Gimbal product line is being deployed. The company's inexpensive hardware, which can be purchased for as little as $5 per transmitter, is compatible with iOS, but is more limited in scope when compared to iBeacon.
Whereas Apple's protocol can theoretically leverage iPhones and iPads as transceiver beacons, Gimbal units can only be used on the content server and collection side. Currently two Gimbal models are available, the $10 Series 20 and the $5 Series 10. From the publication's photos, it appears the NFL chose to go with the more powerful Series 20 device.
The NFL is not alone in its hyper-personalized advertising effort. Earlier this week, it was reported that Major League Baseball will be rolling out thousands of Qualcomm beacons in 20 stadiums ahead of this year's season.
Those attending the Super Bowl — or who will be in the area — on Sunday can access the beacon network through the NFL Mobile iOS app.
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32 Comments
The guy in the photo looked like a ninja planting a bomb...
So It Is Written so It Shall Be Done...
New, Interactive, Effective location based advertisings are upon us folks...
...and again Apple devices are leading the charge.
Just so I have a better understanding of this technology, can someone here answer a question?
Will those who want to take advantage of what iBeacons offer need to download an app for every participating store or organization? In other words, will I need to download an NFL, MLB, Apple and Macy's (etc.) app in order to participate in their particular use of their iBeacon technology?
Edit add-on: And will the app launch automatically when in close proximity to the iBeacon?
[quote name="Dickprinter" url="/t/161857/nfl-brings-ios-compatible-beacon-tech-to-new-york-for-super-bowl#post_2466388"]Just so I have a better understanding of this technology, can someone here answer a question? Will those who want to take advantage of what iBeacons offer need to download an app for every participating store or organization? In other words, will I need to download an NFL, MLB, Apple and Macy's (etc.) app in order to participate in their particular use of their iBeacon technology? [/quote] I believe so. The reasoning is, a lot of people don't want to get blasted with promos when walking into a store without first agreeing.
[quote name="Dickprinter" url="/t/161857/nfl-brings-ios-compatible-beacon-tech-to-new-york-for-super-bowl#post_2466388"]Just so I have a better understanding of this technology, can someone here answer a question? Will those who want to take advantage of what iBeacons offer need to download an app for every participating store or organization? In other words, will I need to download an NFL, MLB, Apple and Macy's (etc.) app in order to participate in their particular use of their iBeacon technology? [/quote] Yes and no. It's possible for, say, Acme's General Sports app to have partners with NFL, MLB, etc. to get permission to add all the iBeacon data to a single app but so far it's too nascent that I doubt that occurred and it's possible it might now occur. A [I]possible[/I] downside of iBeacons is that one could obtain iBeacon location and unique ID info and add that to an app that will spam you. The difference is that unlike an email account you can delete any abusive app quickly and painlessly which means this possibility highly improbable for any legitimate app maker. PS: I'm not sure how well known this is but it should be noted there is nothing keeping any other mobile OS or app vendor from incorporating all current iBeacon device access to their systems. Apple's iBeacons, while their invention is just a branding at this point. The BLE data can be accessed by any device that has BT 4.0 which does limit it in scope to only high-end devices with very little developer effort and no need for any iBeacon device to be changed to accommodate non-IOS devices. Apple could potentially add proprietary protocols that would effectively lock out other devices but as of right now it's just standard BLE that will trigger an app event.