• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, October 7, 2011

As has been recounted frequently in recent days, Apple and Steve Jobs have been most adept at selling the world on products and ideas it didn't even know it wanted. The digital music player was a nice niche product until Apple got its hands on the idea and turned the ridiculously named "MP3 Player" into an "iPod." "Smartphones" in 2006 were big, blocky, fugly things that your IT guy carried on his hip hilster and suffered a Windows Mobile interface. Who knew that what we all were waiting for instead was an "iPhone" and the rethink of mobility it promised? And in what I would consider Jobs and Apple's coup de grace, the iPad, they literally invented a new category of computing that history suggested should have failed. As a result, the iPad is that rare piece of technology that actually changes behaviors. A recent Gfk MRI study found that tablet owners make substantially less use of other media as a result of having their nightly iPad crawl.

The post-PC world Jobs announced last year is upon us, and it entails radically different patterns of use and access to media. We're now chasing ourselves -- trying, as media and marketers, to keep up with behaviors that as consumers we are making up as we go along. But in almost all respects, these new devices, and the patterns they invite, make media more intimate. A great irony of Jobs' legacy is that a man who was known to be personally chilly, often unyielding in his personal dealings, and incredibly aloof and unrevealing in public, was pushing technology toward a more intimate, personal and personable relationship with consumers.

Among the new intimacies of technology is its knowledge of where you are and the ability to read into location your intent. The nightmare and clichéd scenario of being pinged by Starbucks as you pass their store has always been held out as the dark side of mobile marketing's potential. In that view, geofencing (or using location as a trigger for mobile messaging) is something akin to being assaulted at shopping malls by overly aggressive kiosk salespeople -- because you look like the kind of guy who needs those microwaveable, chamomile-scented neck collars.

In fact, geofencing is a very direct form of behavioral targeting that is almost certainly upon us. Consumers opt in to being pinged by a select store when they enter a certain proximity to the store. A recent Prosper Mobile Insights survey of mobile customers found that a quarter of respondents are already comfortable with the idea of receiving coupon offers from merchants that are triggered when they are near the relevant store. AT&T offered a pilot program it called ShopAlerts that included offers from Kohls, Kmart, and HP. A commercial launch is imminent. The longstanding geofencing provider Placecast, which powers the AT&T program, already makes the service available for North Face, White House Black Market and Sonic.

Even though every geofencing mechanism I have seen requires careful opt-in procedures and easy opt-outs, the model has the kind of creepy factor associated with it that always dogged online behavioral targeting. While merchants have been experimenting with the format, it is nigh impossible to get one of them to discuss it openly.

That may change with next week's drop of the iOS version 5 upgrade. One of the less-covered features in the new iPhone operating system is the new Reminders feature that is also tied to location. I have been playing with the gold master build of iOS 5 a little in recent days, and it lets me create a to-do list of tasks and set location triggers on any of them. For instance, I can erect a geofence around my own home so that a series of tasks will ping me when I either renter or leave the address. Likewise I can set it alert me when I enter another address. Alas, this last piece is poorly handled right now. The iOS 5 interface currently only lets me set a location via my personal contacts list and any address location that might be there. In a sense, this is the kind of highly intimate use of the technique we want to start with. Likewise, as Apple announced just this week, a new friend finder app will be available soon that lets a group of people opt into tracking one another (at a mall or sporting event, for instance).

What Apple is doing is making geofencing and geolocation tracking familiar by keeping it highly personal, controlled, intimate. But the larger implications of this move for marketers is that it helps acquaint consumers with a technology they could then invite third parties to share. In fact, as I play with the rudimentary reminder mechanism in iOS 5, I am already frustrated that I can't just pop in a map location easily or pull in one of the merchants like Starbucks or five Guys or Giant, with whom I have a third-party app relationship.

Alistair Goodman, CEO of Placecast, recently stated that the inclusion of user-generated location triggers in iOS 5 should encourage developers to experiment with a format that actually has been available to them as part of the app development kit for a year. "Most new geofence services still require an app, and the app needs to stay on. We believe geofencing should work across all mobile media and remain always-on," says Goodman. "The best services should integrate geofencing broadly via SMS, the mobile Web and apps." The most likely provider for that kind of pan-app service would be the carrier, with whom of course Placecast already partners, or conceivably the maker of the OS itself. A centralized control, either at the OS or carrier account level, would make the most sense. A user could turn specific merchant geofecning alerts on or off as they do already for mobile app alerts. But the provider and the consumer would likely also want some kind of geofencing marketplace where they could find new vendors they want to let into their fence.

Whether Apple itself is looking ahead to allowing third-party apps into its reminder function (and thus a torrent of new marketing possibilities) is anyone's guess. The company is adept at letting consumers get comfortable with one new function, like apps, before introducing a commercial component, like iAds. Likewise, letting users get accustomed to building their own geofence, and feeling assured that they themselves control it, is the best and smartest step toward opening up a new generation of behavioral targeting that literally invites select merchants to tag along.