Wi-Fi Coupon and Ad Delivery: Beacon Stuffing

Back in the mid 90s there was this company WavePhore that was trying to bypass the very slow connections that folks were experiencing on the internet by pushing content down over the television broadcast signal using a section of the signal called the vertical blanking interval (VBI) reserved by the government for communicating those emergency broadcast system test… you know the ones with that had that annoying squeal followed by the ‘This has been a test of the emergency broadcast system, this is only a test, if this were a real emergency….”.

Well the company didn’t make it, for a variety of reasons that I won’t get in to, but it looks like Microsoft is channeling WavePhore ghosts in some research they’re conducting into a similar concept concerning delivering location relevant ads over Wi-Fi Networks. For those with hard core interests their paper makes for an interesting read, but for everyone else it essentially goes something like this:

Many Wi-Fi networks (if set up to do so, and most are) are constantly emitting beacons essentially saying ‘I am here” to allow potential users to find and connect. Whether or not you connect to the network or not the beacon from all networks in range will continually announce their presence and wireless (Wi-Fi) devices will always receive this announcement. The range for these beacons is limited to 100-200 meters so if you know the location of the thing transmitting, then you know the location of any recipient within that radius.

So what could happen is that simple ad messages or coupons (text, audio) could be ‘stuffed’ into this beacon and PUSHED out to any Wi-Fi enabled device within range. Some benefits of this approach are that it is device independent, doesn’t require an actual connection to be made, and is location relevant without being aware of specific device location, a nice privacy benefit.