Heard of Foursquare? No? Well, it isn’t going away anytime soon – especially when it can literally walk consumers directly through the front door for businesses. (Hint: it gets people to use their mobile phones to tell friends when and where they are – Starbucks, an Irish Pub – you name it) Heard of AdMob? No? Well, they were this teeny tiny mobile-advertising company one guy named Omar Hamoui started in January of 2006 – and Google announced in November that they agreed to acquire the firm for a breath-taking $750 million in stock.

Why does all of this matter? Because if you connect the dots – the picture that is forming signals further evolution in the current renaissance of all things social, advertising, and technology.

Here’s why…

Back in December, Social Media and the Big W predicted that this would be the year of ‘geo-location.’ What is geo-location? It is the ability of mobile-users to report to others their physical location using their mobile devices. It can be in the form of two iPhone users with an application like ‘Where r u?’ that lets one user ask the other to share their current location, which then pops-up a ‘pin’ on a Google Map to show where they are. It can also be in the form of ‘Foursquare’ – which is a social community that you join for free, where you may find some of your other online friends, and use the Foursquare application on your mobile phone to ‘tag’ locations. First, you go to a business or location like, for instance, Starbucks. (who just became one of the first major brands to start testing the waters with a Foursquare promotion in Starbucks) Then, you open the Foursquare application on your mobile phone and it will look at your physical location and tell you what places nearby have been ‘tagged’ or ‘created.’ You can ‘create’ a new location, if no one else has yet, or ‘check in’ if the location already exists. If you are the most frequent person to ‘check in’ – you become the ‘mayor’ for that location and this is why businesses are starting to catch-on by rewarding the ‘mayor’ with free incentives. This drives more ‘check-ins’ and therefore more business, as users compete to become the ‘mayor’ and receive the perks that go along with it. That’s geo-location, and one example of how it applies – not to mention, as ‘The Big W’ mentioned in a recent blog post, that Facebook is taking the wraps off of it’s location-sharing feature at the f8 conference.

Now, realizing that the geo-location social applications will create an exponential rise in usage from mobile devices, couple the above ‘geo-location’ developments with the opportunity created for advertisers – here comes AdMob. (In 2008, Google CEO Eric Schmidt appeared on CNBC’s Mad Money and gave his prediction that mobile ad revenues would eventually outstrip conventional web advertising, based upon a a shift in mobile platform usage and technology) All of these new users are now discovering the advantages of using their mobile devices for location-sharing (friends and family, as well as discounts at businesses and other rewards), increased real-time communication in social media (Facebook applications), and multi-media sharing (MMS) without opening up the computer. All of these ‘eyeballs’ are coming for all of the aforementioned reasons, and those that were betting on it, like AdMob, will reap the rewards.

Consider that, according to the International Telecommunication Union we have 4.6 billion wireless subscribers globally. That means that cell phones out-number total desktop and laptops by almost 5x’s. What’s more, how many of us walk around with our laptops while we are running around in the car or walking? Not many. But how many of us carry our mobile devices? This means advertisers can offer real-time highly-specific offers to users based on location – and now you could find yourself walking by a store and receive a real-time offer on your smartphone that is just to good to bypass…now your feet come through the front door – and so does your wallet. (or purse)

Do a little research and you will also find that online (web-based) conversion rates are traditionally less than 1 percent – but mobile advertising conversion rates reportedly average between 5 and 7 percent. Which one would you use?

How do you feel about mobile-advertising, and what experiences can you share?

Popularity: 100% [?]

Google+