• by John Capone , October 29, 2009

"We've seen app after app integrate location awareness -- whether its relevant or not," says Andrew Thackray, Director, Strategic Alliances, NAVTEQ Media Solutions. He says that mobile is the secret sauce that is going to make mobile advertising take off.

"Location eliminates a lot of waste," he says. "It delivers an ad as close as you can get to the purchase point." As someone pointed out in a Raw blog comment, that last yard is a billion miles, so as close as you can get can still be pretty far.

Not often enough location is a core campaign objective," says Nihal Mehta, CEO of Buzzd. "too often the campaign objective is to send someone to a mobile Web site, when" using the example of the entertainment industry, "it should be driving them to the theater to see the movie." As Mehta points out, there is beginning to be the technology to do that.