• by Mark Walsh  @markfwal, August 19, 2014

Beacons are the latest technology buzzword to capture the imagination of mobile marketers by hitting shoppers with messages and offers while they’re in store. But during a panel on the topic at the Mobile Insider Summit on Tuesday, Patrick Moorhead, VP, mobile brand development at Catalina warned of going overboard with beacons. He raised the prospect of people getting pinged from every SKU in a store, leading them to simply shut off their phones, or an app, to escape the annoyance.

Jeff Jansen of beacon network inMarket and Rob Canterbury, VP, business development, Gimbal, a proximity marketer, stressed that consumers should be foremost in mind when developing beacon campaigns. Canterbury said Gimbal has created a set of best practices for beacon advertising, but suggested how many times a shopper gets pinged with a message depends on each user’s habits. “It’s got to be contextual,” he said. Canterbury conceded he himself has deleted overzealous retail apps.