Urban Airship introduces location-based messaging service

Urban Airship, provider of push messaging to mobile devices, has launched its new messaging service for location-based marketing.

With the service, marketers can analyse participating consumers’ location history – from the last minute to the last year – through sources such as Maponics, Nielsen DMA and OpenStreetMap to deliver personalised offers.

For instance, a retailer could create geofences around specific locations to send Black Friday offers tailored to opted-in shoppers' interests that have also been there in the past four weeks.

Consumers must opt-in to the service to allow their location be monitored by Urban Airship and its customers, which include CBS Interactive, ESPN, Groupon, shopkick, Viddy, Walgreens and Warner Bros.

Scott Kveton, co-founder and CEO of Urban Airship, said: “Understanding where consumers live, work and play adds entirely new dimensions of insight to retailers, brands and media companies’  marketing efforts. We are bringing the consumer back into the center with this approach to location-based marketing, enabling marketers to use everything they know about their most loyal customers – their app users – to be more relevant.”

Greg Sterling, Opus Research senior analyst, added: “Geotargeting and geofencing have held tremendous promise for mobile marketers but have thus far not lived up to that potential. Urban Airship's new capabilities enable marketers and brands to bring much greater precision to geofencing and location-targeted notifications.”