This post was originally published on the RGA Tech Blog
In Part I of our iBeacon series my colleague Andy Hawkes introduced the concept of iBeacons. My team and I have also been playing around with the creative possibilities of this new technology and testing its technical limitations. We’ve been working with at least one start up from the R/GA Accelerator who sees iBeacon as core to their business and also building our own Beacons from scratch using various types of hardware.
Because location monitoring is such nascent technology there is a lot of confusion on the differences between iBeacons and geofences, and the best use cases for each. iBeacons are for monitoring and serving unique content to micro locations (regions between 0 to 25 meter radius). Geofences are generally less accurate on a smaller scale, so are better suited for monitoring entry and exit to larger geographical areas like a city block or a festival.
iBeacons are simple devices in that they emit just three identifying pieces of information in their Bluetooth Low Energy (BTLE) payload, a UUID a major value and a minor value.
The UUID is basically a long string of characters your iPhone matches against any beacons it is currently monitoring. For instance a department store could have the same UUID for all beacons in that store. A major value could then be used to separate the department store’s beacons by floor, and a minor value could differentiate between each beacon on that floor. The store could then serve unique content to the user based on their actual position, for instance a sale on the Gucci perfume they’re standing in front of.
The cool thing about iBeacons and geofences in iOS is that your phone is always monitoring them in the background, even if you’ve killed the app. So if iOS registers you’ve entered a beacon’s range, it quietly wakes up the app in the background so it can handle the event.
An important thing to remember when designing for iBeacons is that they don’t have to be tied to a stationary geographic location. iBeacons monitor a small area around their physical (and potentially mobile) location. Larger, stationary and static geographic locations are better suited to geofences.
iBeacons and geofences are similar in that monitoring can be set to start and end at certain times (app side) so both work very well for transient events like festivals or sporting events. In a festival scenario you could use them in conjunction by wrapping a geofence around the whole festival, to serve general content upon entry (maps, set times of all stages), then you could use iBeacons throughout the festival to give information about specific micro locations. Perhaps the festival goer received additional content about art installation she’s standing in front of, or she receives personalized content on the band currently playing.
The hype around iBeacons is valid, however it is important to identify the right combinations of technology for each situation. It’s not difficult for the technology to become the feature, making the experience gimmicky or spammy instead of seamless and functional. Regardless, there’s lot of opportunity to explore new creative uses that enhance how brands interact with consumers.