CTIA: Location-based services infiltrate all things mobile

On the advertising front, mobile content and ad vendor Quattro Wireless teamed up with LBS provider uLocate Communications, to create a free iPhone app giving users targeted advertisements based on their search queries. Called WHERE, the app combines Quattro’s ads with uLocate’s mapping of location-based keyword searches and widgets.

The ads are based on a pull proposition – users enter a search term, and an ad relevant to the contextual, demographic, behavioral or location nature of the query is overlaid with the search results. Quattro advertisers, including Toyota, Sony and Comcast, can sponsor widgets, offer promotions, invitations to send to friends and links to their own WAP sites.

As far as advertisers are concerned, said Quattro CTO Eswar Priyadarshan, the combination of location, search and the richness of the iPhone experience is the Holy Grail. Quattro gives users the chance to raise their hand and express their intent and responds with interactive, entertaining and contextual ads, he said.

“In many ways, the iPhone for us is the pinnacle of one-to-one marketing,” he said, adding that Quattro’s goal is to enable advertisers to be flies on that wall.

Also this week, software vendor deCarta launched deCarta Mobile, a location platform supporting location-enabled application deployment on mobile devices. The client/server architecture uses a J2ME API to enable rapid development of mapping apps revolving around fluid maps and geocoding.

To help spur the growth of consumer and business apps that use location in many of the aforementioned ways, digital map and navigation vendor TeleAtlas tied things together by announcing finalists in its 2008 LBS Innovator contest. The top three were Open Green map, a social mapping Web site designed to guide users to local “green” spots; Pongr, a mobile price-comparison service tied to location; and the Travel Channel GO, a free mobile travel application providing access to the Travel Channel’s destination content.