For the past day or so, I’ve been trying to parse a direct marketing angle from AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile. It goes without saying that there will be mobile marketing implications.
In the press release announcing the deal, AT&T estimates that the acquisition will result in 4G LTE coverage for 95% of Americans. That’s an awfully large claim, but alright, let’s go with it. Having nearly all of the country coated means having nearly all of country trackable, er, location-aware. Ta-da! The big-picture marketing impact I see from the AT&T-Mobile deal is the ubiquity of location-aware devices and therefore location-based marketing campaigns.
A few weeks back, I covered AT&T’s ShopAlerts program that delivers offers and promotions via SMS from brands to opted-in AT&T customers when they are in the vicinity of a participating location, i.e. a geo-fenced area. The program initially rolled out only to metropolises like New York and Los Angeles, but I expect it to reach AT&T-Mobile’s rural customers by the time the FCC clears the acquisition.
And even better for mobile marketers is that, by then, most consumers will have shaken off any Big Brother fears (same as they did with e-commerce).
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