The dust has well and truly settled on IIR’s LBS 2008 show in Berlin last week and now I’ve brought together some analysis of the LBS start-ups that were on show.

First up is LOVO, a mobile lifestyle recommendation service that takes into account your location (as well as the weather, season, time, preferences opinions, needs, moods and past behaviour) when providing you with leisure tips. The preferences can all be set by users and range from 19 basic preferences (if you like shopping, relaxation, sport etc.) to 450 more detailed preferences relating to food, nightlife, payment preference, beverages etc. Lovo have done well bringing together some large brands for this project (American Express, Google, bwin.com), but in my opinion, recommendation is all about peer recommendation and the key to growth is linking this with social networking.

Next to present was Simon Davis, CEO of MobGeo who showcased a location enabled mobile advertising proposition that ticked the boxes in terms of relevancy, actionability and user control. The handset location is provided by the messaging application API which then enables increased relevancy of banner ads served and – in one click – a mobile coupon is sent to the phone via SMS/WAP-push. Simple for advertiser, simple for the user and the addition of a user feedback loop is invaluable for testing the effectiveness of campaigns.

However, I for one am sceptical about the long term value of banner advertising on mobile. In my eyes, you’re taking an ineffective online advertising model and squeezing it onto a smaller, less capable screen. Also, and perhaps more importantly, banner ads are impersonal by their very nature and that won’t fit with the most personal of all media – mobile. Personal devices need engagement to deliver successful advertising and the key to all of this is dialogue.

A very cool application that will be skiing onto your handsets soon is the Snocator. Boh Tjarks, Business Development Director from Useful Networks presented the ski and snowboard guide service to delegates, highlighting its key offerings: the ability to find yourself on the slopes, up-to-the-hour snow reports, weather forecasts, mountain cams, surface conditions and mapping options to find friends and restaurants. OK, so this is a fairly niche product, but those on the slopes would make attractive eyeballs for top end brands.

Finally, Georg Broxtermann, Managing Director of Orbster, gave the conference an insight into GPS Mission, a multiplayer scavenger hunt game where users can create and challenge connections to different missions based on their location. Obviously, this could be a great vehicle for mobile advertising and in addition the potential revenues to be had from digital gifts and souvenirs – much like the model employed by CyWorld – is huge.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 6th, 2008 at 5:54 pm and is filed under Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Social Networking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.