London, United Kingdom - 14 Oct 2015

ABI Research forecasts that dedicated BLE beacon advertising networks will be worth over US $2 billion by 2020.

ABI Research’s latest report, “BLE Beacon Advertising Networks,” considers the use of BLE beacons, audio/ultrasound and LED/VLC for advertising purposes across large third-party networks, Out of Home (OOH) and in-store brand advertising.

“What is clear is that BLE beacons are not enough, and already many of the most successful advertising networks are using audio/ultrasound technologies,” says Patrick Connolly, Principal Analyst at ABI Research. “Longer term, the report also considers the use of LED/VLC to help further augment these networks. This is a hugely powerful technology that can have a major impact on scaling this industry.”

Companies such as InMarket, Swirl Freckle IoT and Mobiquity have begun massive BLE beacon advertising network programs in North America in 2015. But worldwide, a host of startups are using hybrid BLE beacon/audio technologies including YAP, Perples, Blesh, Shopkick and Ecods. ”This hybridization trend is essential to support the short term reach and frequency limitations of iBeacons, given the requirement for active BLE on the handset and user opt-in,” continues Connolly.

Longer term, ABI Research believes major internet players like Facebook, Baidu, Tencent and Google will have a major presence in this space with many already putting in place the ecosystem necessary to support their own advertising networks.

Looking specifically at the OOH space, the banning and/or removal of traditional advertising in cities like Sao Paolo, Chennai and Paris is an interesting emerging trend with major repercussions. Proximity technologies create a way to circumvent this while creating far more pleasurable and personalized advertising. Today, the most notable OOH deployments have come from Adshell and Barcoo, but ABI Research believes deployments will break the 500,000 mark by 2020 as OOH advertising companies rapidly embrace these technologies.

The third major trend driving the growth will be major brands deploying their own advertising networks in-store in conjunction with retail partners. Already, major brands like Elle Magazine, Coca-Cola and Unilever have all ran campaigns using this approach.