Pop up ads on London buses via Bluetooth
 

Wow, marketing people are getting desperate. This is old technology and been talked about with marketing for over a decade, but no one has had the you-know-what to actually deploy it.

http://www.mobileeurope.co.uk/press-...e-london-buses

Sounds perfectly sensible to me. I've noticed that the Bus London app switched to pop ups some six months ago. I just x out of pop ups but I guess some click through. What I don't understand is how the advertiser makes it relevant when, by definition, the viewer is travelling and the advertiser doesn't know the destination.

How does this work then? I assume you have to sign up and opt-in to the messages?

I assume you need to have bluetooth switched on and authenticated with the bus beacon - easy I won't do that. Does anyone without BT headphones have the bluetooth switched on?

If we're talking about adults, then it's also the people who use BT in their cars. But most of those people aren't on the bus. So that leaves teenagers. And they love to share files with BT. IME a huge percentage of teenagers have BT turned on full time.

But surely you would also have to have allowed London Buses to pair with your phone/tablet/iWatch etc. and that's a step too far for me. But then maybe I'm just getting old and young people are more promiscuous with their phones.

In a few years maybe we'll see pop up hologram ads when we're walking around town.