This will be the result of a new partnership into which the NHL team has recently entered for this purpose.
The Pittsburgh Penguins NHL team has now entered into a new partnership with Rover, a proximity marketing firm that will be using iBeacon technology to help to enhance the experience for fans.
The idea is to use the geolocation technology in conjunction with the use of the Rover proximity platform.
There is already existing iBeacon tech installed at the stadium and by bringing this together with the proximity platform at Rover, it will become possible to create a beacon-triggered experience for fans. This will send them content that is location specific by way of the Penguins app. Fans who have the app on their smartphones will be able to access exclusive content when they attend games at the CONSOL Energy Center during the length of the 2015 to 2016 season.
As soon as fans with the mobile app step into the arena, the iBeacons will provide an “at the game experience.”
Once fans are in the arena, the beacon-triggered content is released, greeting the device users with special content. Once they reach the Mario Lemieux statue, an interactive experience is launched and they are provided with various types of discounts and offers for concessions.
According to Erik Watts, the senior director of technology for the Penguins, “We are excited to partner with Rover. Rover makes it easy for us to deliver relevant content to fans, and provides us with a platform to which we can have input and help develop an experience that is exciting and engaging for our fans and corporate partners.” While they started to successfully use the geolocation technology beacons for the 2014-2015 season, this year they are hoping to be able to “take it to the next level,” with the added advantage provided by Rover.
Rover CEO, John Coombs explained that the company is hoping to eliminate the complexity that is associated with the use of iBeacons and location based marketing, and will continue its evolution on making it simpler to take advantage of the power of this tech.
Geolocation technology is growing at a very rapid rate, and the market will be considerably larger in 2018.
A Berg Insight Report is now making recent news as it has revealed that location based marketing and advertising will soon make up a healthy 7 percent of all digital ads, which means that its popularity will be expanding quite rapidly over the next four years.
This will mean that geolocation advertising will represent 2 percent of all global ad spending.
If the report from the analysis firm is correct, then it will mean that the total value of the real time mobile location based marketing and advertising marketplace will have risen from where it was last year, at $1.66 billion, at a 54 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), to the point that it will have reached $14.8 billion by 2018.
This will then mean that location based marketing will make up 38.6 percent of all mobile advertising.
The report also underscored some of the latest evolutions in the real time mobile location based marketing ecosystem. This includes the latest popular geolocation using technologies such as the beacons that use Bluetooth low energy (BLE). Though even the most commonly used among these methods is still relatively rare, Berg Insight predicts that the adoption of beacon using methods will have exploded before the end of 2014.
This use of beacon technology will be used the most among retail marketers that will be adopting them as a part of innovative new programs to help to engage with consumers and provide them with ads and content that they will find useful and relevant. This will also be very appealing to retailers as it will provide them with a far greater opportunity to understand how customers use their stores, from the time spent in various areas, to the actual navigation patterns.
According to Berg Insight senior analyst, Rickard Andersson, while discussing this location based marketing study, “The concept of Bluetooth marketing has been reinvigorated following Apple’s introduction of iBeacon in 2013.” He added that the broadening of the beacon ecosystem now includes a number of other very important players, including Qualcomm and PayPal, as well as some promising startups, such as Shopkick and Swirl.
