Author: BWild

Retailers now have new regulations to which they must adhere with location based marketing.

When it comes to mobile marketing, geolocation has provided advertisers with an unparalleled opportunity to understand their customers and communicate with them at the perfect moment in the shopping experience.

Location based marketing does involve the collection of a customer’s position, of which a privacy watchdog is highly aware.

In France, a privacy watchdog has looked into the use of geolocation technology as a marketing method and has now implemented limitations for retailers and tracking companies with regards to what they are permitted to do. The goal of these restrictions is to help to protect the privacy of smartphone carrying customers. While the Commission National de l’Informatique et des Libertés (CNIL) says that it is trying to keep private data safe, at the same time, many French retailers now feel as though they have had all of their opportunity for this technology cut off.

The geolocation rules that have been drafted by the CNIL provide strict guidelines regarding what can be tracked.

Some retailers feel that their ability to use location based marketing through geolocation has been nullified by the CNIL rules. The idea behind this type of mobile marketing is to track the movement of consumers throughout a brick and mortar location, or to know when a customer has approached a store so that advertising and promotions can be sent to them at the moment that they are most receptive to information about deals, opportunities, products, or brands.

This type of tracking can also provide a mobile advertising firm or a retailer with the route that customers take while they are within a store as well as the length of time that they spend viewing a specific ad. With this information, advertisers can change their strategies to better appeal to consumers because the information and offers that they provide will be more interesting and relevant to the people who are actually shopping.

However, the privacy watchdog feels that the type of data collection through geolocation places the customer’s privacy and mobile security at risk. It has demanded that if these techniques are used by a retailer, that company must first report this to a special committee and also inform their customers of the techniques being used and the purposes for which the data is being collected. Moreover, as soon as the customer has left the store, any individual data must be deleted. No camera images can be collected and stored and none can be passed to a third party.

Though this network may not find itself in a lot of headlines, it is a more powerful platform than they give it credit for.

While Facebook and Twitter often receive a great deal of attention when it comes to social media marketing, as does YouTube, Pinterest rarely even receives a notable mention in these same conversations, despite the fact that it has started to define itself as quite a powerful platform, especially when it comes to mobile marketing campaigns.

The social sharing platform that uses a pinboard style is highly popular and yet not nearly as widely studied.

That said, Pinterest is now reportedly intending to boost their overall advertising offerings in 2015. This will be especially focused on expanding the impact that it has among mobile marketing firms, as smartphone and tablet using consumers already appreciate the format of this platform. It will be interesting to see if this will finally put the spotlight onto this network when it appears to have been flying under the technology radar for such a long time.

Pinterest is looking to be able to boost its revenue by broadening its social media marketing offerings.

The social network is gearing up to boost the mobile advertising revenue that it brings in by expanding its Promoted Pins service in a “responsible” way. It has been reported by NativeMobile that the company is hoping to see a growth of 300 percent in its Promoted Pins by the end of next year.

The platform has taken a unique stance when it comes to social media marketing in that it focuses primarily on the user experience. It feels that it understands that there is a line between being useful and effective in terms of marketing, and going too far and simply irritating users with ever present ads.

Though they know that there is a chance that there could be a reduction in the potential profits by creating a limit to the expansion of the advertising component of the platform, they are willing to take this risk as they prefer to ensure that their users will continue to enjoy their experience on the site and the app instead of simply giving in to every advertiser that is willing to pay for premium pin placement on the streams of targeted users.

As of yet, the Promoted Pins social media marketing program at Pinterest has been reported as a powerful success, and there has been every indication that advertisers are looking to be able to use it even more.