• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, February 13, 2015

Another indicator of the magnitude and coming impact of beacons is that the big guns are starting to jump in.

Music recognition app Shazam recently partnered with beacon-maker Gimbal to add beacon functionality to the app, which has been downloaded more than 100 million times.

Social behemoth Facebook recently announced a beacon experiment in New York where information can be beaconed to users nearby in several different shops. The consumers can turn their Place Tips off at any time and receive messages if they opt in.

And now daily deal outfit Groupon is joining the beacon marketplace by letting merchants use beacons to launch targeted promotions, just announced yesterday.

These are entities that have large bases of consumers and, if they decide to do so, can massively scale a new feature, such as beaconing.

They have to see some of the early results of other large scale beacon launches from last year.

For example, Hillshire Brands, now part of Tyson Foods, last year used beacons for a new product launch, using the InMarket beaconing platform in 5,000 stores.

David Ervin, vice president of marketing services at Tyson Foods, speaking the MediaPost IoT: Beacons conference earlier this week, noted that the program hit its intended target of the entire campaign within the first 48 hours.

He noted that purchase intent increased 20X. That’s not 20%; it’s 20 times.

Consumers may never hear the word beacon, but they likely will be hearing from brands they know and use, like Facebook, Shazam, Groupon and through apps they shop with on a regular basis.

While they won’t hear the word beacon, they will be beaconed.