PROXIMITY MOBILE MARKETING | HOW CAN STADIUMS & VENUES USE TECHNOLOGY TO DELIGHT FANS & KEEP THEM COMING BACK ?

Source : umbel
By      : Trips Reddy
Category  :Beacon In Museum

HOW FAN-CENTRIC COMPANIES ARE REDEFINING LIVE EVENTS AND CONVERTING SPECTATORS INTO SUPERFANS

Data and new technology are changing fan experiences at stadiums and venues like never before. Teams and venues are using data, apps, beacons and digital innovation to improve operations, player performance and fan experiences. The top priority is to bring fans to stadiums, put them in the center of the action and create experiences that keeps them coming back.

Across the U.S., teams are spending millions to bringing connectivity and convenience to stadiums. In-stadium fans want to be able to share, interact and stay social during games. While many college teams still don’t provide Wi-Fi access in their stadiums, that’s quickly changing. Even colleges have joined the race to give every fan the best seat in the stadium, from the bleachers to the VIP boxes.

Live events are not just about watching a game or concert from a seat anymore. Fans expect a tailored mix of physical and digital experiences across their phones, digital screens, kiosks, concession stands and pretty much every area of the venue.

So how can teams and venues convert stay-at-home viewers into superfans who pay to watch the event live?

Here are the top technology investments that teams are making:

 BEACONS


While beacon implementation across stadiums has been slow, they’re definitely happening. Teams that already implemented beacons use them to send exclusive, stadium-only promotions and trivia to fans devices. The geomapping also helps alert fans on closest restrooms with the shortest wait times etc. More importantly, teams are using beacons to track fan behaviors, movement and spending inside stadiums. So far, 20 of the 30 MLB stadiums have already implemented beacons.
Stadiums already using beacons: Levi’s Stadium, AT&T Park, Houston Dynamo

 A POWERFUL WIRELESS NETWORK SOLUTION


The top priority to ensure fan interaction is connectivity, not just for fans, but also for internal staff, vendors, contractors, press and luxury suite guests. Many younger fans are leaving stadiums at half-time if they can’t connect to the internet. And offering better Wi-Fi also means more money from additional food, beverage, merchandise and upgrade purchases. It’s not enough to just provide Wi-Fi. Fans expect a fast, secure and reliable connectivity. On average, larger stadiums are installing 700+ wireless access points and there are multiple third-party companies like AT&T, Cisco and Verizon that provide end-to-end wireless network services.
Most connected stadiums in the world: Levi’s Center, Barclay’s Center, AT&T Center


STATE-OF-THE-ART MOBILE APPS


Mobile Apps are quickly becoming the most efficient and profitable tool to engage and activate fans at live events. Some professional sports teams already have apps that let fans find parking spots, purchase premium seat upgrades, check-in and locate their seats, order food and beverages to be delivered to their seats, find the closest restroom with the shortest line, watch high-definition instant replay videos and close-up videos, view exclusive content, promotions, coupons and statistics, and get traffic information and the fastest route home after the game. This is already a reality and many teams are scrambling to catch up with the ones that already offer these amazing mobile experiences.
Teams and venues with cutting-edge mobile apps: San Francisco 49ers, Barclay’s Center, New England Patriots, Denver Broncos, Austin City Limits Music Festival,


MOBILE POINT-OF-SERVICE (POS)


Many stadiums and event venues have already rolled out mobile POS (point-of-service) systems so they can have hundreds of vendors selling food, beverages and merchandise pretty much anywhere in the stadium without requiring fans to leave their seats or spend a lot of time in lines. Mobile POS systems enable fast, secure concessions and merchandise sales and also offer savings on space, manpower and time.

GOPRO VIDEO STREAMING

GoPros are becoming increasingly popular with sports teams allowing them to capture and stream unique angles of their venues and games to fans. The National Hockey League (NHL) and the NHL Players’ Association (NHLPA) recently announced a North American partnership with GoPro. GoPros also allow teams and venues to create a lot of virality and buzz based on the stunning visuals that these cameras can capture when used creatively. Here's a video of the Denver Broncos Thunderstorm parachute team dropping into Sports Authority Field at Mile High Stadium before Sunday’s AFC Championship Game. The Cincinnati Bengals appear to be the latest team to embrace the GoPro video camera to enhance their ability to study game film from a different perspective. In preparation for football clash between Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, ESPN installed the HeroCam to give fans a feel of what it's like seeing through the eyes of an NFL player. They did it for several other players and teams throughout the 2013-14 NFL season.

In 2014, before a Houston Texans' home game against the Bengals, a bald eagle named Challenger flew over Reliant Stadium wearing a GoPro camera, and the footage captured is pretty amazing. Also, check out a GoPro video shot by a skydiver as he lands at midfield in Ralph Wilson Stadium during the pregame ceremony against the Dolphins.

TARGETED IN-STADIUM ADS


Stadiums and venues are always looking for new ways to improve their bottom line and get fans to spend more at games. The Denver Broncos’ Sports Authority Field in partnership with Cisco created a powerful marketing platform by installing 1,200 displays that are 55 inches or larger for compelling high-definition experiences and high-impact partner content. But these screens aren’t just for keeping fans engaged with videos, photos and stats. Their team offers segmentation opportunities for advertisers, sponsors, concessionaires, and merchandising partners allowing them to promote tailored offers and products on these screens during games. The Broncos saw a 50% increase in partner sponsorship revenue using these new screens as compared to older, traditional static ad units. The screens have tremendously expanded the amount and value of the digital ad inventory that the Broncos can sell.

The ads and offers can be customized and targeted to various sections of the stadium including destination bars, entitlement zones and seating areas. For example, Bud Light sponsors the Mile High Mountain Village pre-game area and Coca Cola sponsors the Fan Cave. The screens have expanded the amount and value of the digital ad inventory that the Broncos can sell. Sponsors can also run promotions during key moments of the game to capture the most eyeballs. Their digital screens are highly customizable to support a brand's’ creative assets and are also used by alcohol brands to deliver promotional safe driving messages towards the end of a game.

The right technology and fan data can help both sports teams and venues connect with their fans, truly understand what their fans want and build experiences that keep them coming back to live events. Teams need to focus on creating amazing experiences from the minute fans leave their home through their in-stadium time and even after they leave the venue. Fan’s also expect reliable and secure Wi-Fi that lets them share their experiences more easily and stay connected during games. Sports teams and venues need to start innovating and collecting fan data to track customer buying behaviors both online and offline and use it to engage and convert their fans into buying customers.

(Read More: umbel.com/blog/publishers/10-ways-stadiums-are-using-technology-to-delight-fans/)

Beacons | Exploring Location-Based Technology in Museums

Source    :  metmuseum.org

By        :    Veronika Doljenkova

Category : Beacon Technology in Museums

Recently in the museum sector there has been a lot of attention given to "Beacon" or Bluetooth low energy (BLE), a technology that addresses the need for a low-cost, easy-to-implement solution for indoor location-based services. What really excites me about this technology is not that it's going to help museums build great mobile apps (we already have one of those!), but, rather, how open it is—that it opens the door for non-programmers to build their own location-based experiences and

share them with others.

Exploring the museum of Egyptian art using beacon technology

If a museum puts some beacons in its galleries, any device can find them, and any app can use those beacons to trigger content. EddyBox is an app that makes it easy to develop just these experiences.

As mobile technology is developing, the boundary between the physical and the digital user experience is rapidly disappearing. Visitors who enter enclosed public spaces such as galleries, malls, airports, and museums are expecting to receive a mobile experience that is highly relevant, convenient, and delivered in a timely and seamless manner.

For enclosed spaces with thick walls, such as those in museums, using GPS is problematic. The GPS receiver relies on continuous signal transmission from several satellite sources, so physical barriers such as thick walls can cause significant signal interference. Beacons, although a relative newcomer to the location-technology space, have proven themselves to be a seamless and robust solution for large indoor spaces.

Beacons have already been tested in diverse industries ranging from museums (Victoria and Albert Museum, Museum of Neons), to retail (Shopkick, Carrefour), to the entertainment industry (Tulipland, Coachella, Tribeca Film Festival), and airports (London's Heathrow International Airport).

With such promising case studies, the Met's MediaLab decided to test the potential of this technology for the Museum. Under the leadership of Don Undeen, the initial experiments were conducted in the MediaLab's fifth-floor space.

Beacons

Beacons are small wireless sensors that communicate with Bluetooth-enabled smart devices such as iPhones, iPads or Android by continuously advertising their location using a Bluetooth low energy radio transmitter. In turn, smart devices monitor the received signal strength indication (RSSI) and determine the device's proximity to the beacon. Apple's developer guidelines divide the proximity to the beacon into three states: immediate, near (between one and three meters), and far. Once the user is in the desired proximity range, the corresponding app content is triggered.

A typical beacon, like the Eddybox beacon, is essentially a miniature computer that, together with BLE, may include an accelerometer and a temperature sensor.

The initial beacon experiment in the MediaLab's space demonstrated that beacon technology could provide a valuable locative context to the Met's visitors—including supplementary audio and video content, and descriptions of the objects. Beyond the initial supplementary content, the beacons can be a valuable tool in informing visitors about locations of special exhibitions, libraries, dining venues, and other amenities, as well as alerting visitors about current tours and events happening relative to their location.

From the physical UX experience, however, the experiment in the MediaLab space provided a glass-house experience at best. The initial testing in the actual gallery spaces brought to the surface the host of important environmental factors to consider when working with beacons. These include gallery architecture, human traffic, interference with metal objects, temperature changes, battery life, and the customization of app's interface.

Beacon Battery Life and Temperature

One of the main advantages of beacons is supposedly their fairly long battery life. However, changes in temperature seem to have a noticeable effect on the battery life. For example, moving the beacons from the "ideal" temperature environment at the MediaLab to a considerably colder and less predictable lecture-hall space adversely impacted their battery life.

Placement and Human Traffic

Although just an observation at this point (since not enough evidence has been collected), having a group of people between the beacon and the BLE smart device may interfere with the broadcasting of the beacon set to an immediate or near regimes. The app may either start showing another beacon set to a far-proximity range or start switching back and forth between beacons in the near regime that are in the area.

The effect was more pronounced when testing in the busy area of the Arms and Armor galleries. The same "blinking" effect seems to happen if two beacons in an intermediate/near range regime are placed too close to each other, a possibility which is mentioned in Apple's iBeacon developer tools. A deeper understanding of how possible interferences such as metal and human traffic affect the beacon/device communication will be really important to create the most effective user experience.

Future Directions

Beacons and other BLE-responsive devices, although a recent phenomenon, are quickly gaining momentum across a variety of industries. As the technology is becoming better and more affordable, the Met has many opportunities to use it in order to add to the visitor experience. One route would be to develop, in-house, a custom app using tools like the Eddybox SDK, with a possibility of eventually integrating it with the Met app. Such an app can be tailored to address both aesthetic UX aspects

and challenges of the actual gallery environment. Since the physical factors such as temperature changes and human traffic seem to affect the capabilities of the hardware, it is important to investigate this phenomenon more thoroughly by recording the signal strength as a function of temperature changes and human traffic inside each gallery space in question to determine the most appropriate position for each beacon. Finally, the possibility of a beacon being hacked and hijacked should be thoroughly investigated as well.

(Read in Details: metmuseum.org/about-the-museum/museum-departments/office-of-the-director/digital-media-department/digital-underground/2015/beacons)