• by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, May 29, 2017

Beverage coolers are getting connected. A lot of coolers.

Around a million Red Bull branded beverage coolers around the world are being connected by AT&T.

The connected coolers will provide data relating to performance, temperature stats and geolocation information, according to AT&T.

From a marketing perspective, the data also will provide shopper frequency insight from door activity from coolers around the world.

Each time a door is opened or closed, an embedded monitor notes the data and sends it to the AT&T Control Center, which processes the data from each cooler.

This isn’t the first connected cooler implementation.

There are 2,500 Budweiser beer cooler doors fitted with multiple IoT sensors, so they can measure temperature, door opening or closing and product proximity, as I wrote about here a while back (Budweiser Connected Beer Cooler Screens Highlighted At MIT Enterprise Forum).

In the Budweiser connected coolers, the doors become screens that display branded videos, graphics and animations customized for each reason, Sanjay Manandhar, founder of Aerva, the company that does the connecting, told me.

In both cases, the justification can be the tracking of inventory or the status of each unit, to help identify issues early.

The side benefits for marketers may be even more significant, as consumer behaviors can be monitored in relation to specific products, by location, in real time.

That’s one of the major promises of the Internet of Things.