A new study from ABI Research says businesses are expected to spend $1.8 billion (£1.16 billion) on location-based advertising in 2015.
Location-based mobile services are already proving popular with consumers. Some are 'check-in' services - such as Loopt, Gowalla, Foursquare and the new Facebook Places – for finding friends and sharing your location, while others promise to reward shoppers for visiting certain stores.
Neil Strother, practice director at ABI Research, said "It’s still early days and there’s no single 'right' approach to location-based advertising. This remains a very fragmented market that is full of experimentation. Some might be put off by the 'Big Brother' aspects of this but it’s really about the value-exchange: if you care about getting discounts or being rewarded for shopping, is the value-exchange high enough so that you’ll accept having your whereabouts known to these companies in return for the benefits?"