Neil Sweeney, founder of Juice Mobile, has launched a new company called Freckle IOT (for “Internet of Things”). Working at arms-length from Juice, Freckle will develop marketing applications for new mobile technologies, like beacons, wearables and smart home appliances.
The new company has been operating in radio silence for the last several months, and during that time has put together its first working solution: an outdoor beacon network stretching across Canada.
According to Sweeney, Freckle and its partners have placed beacons at outdoor anchor points, like billboards, lampposts and subway shelters across Canadian cities. Advertisers on the network can use the beacons to send push notifications to mobile users that have downloaded branded apps. So if an opted-in customer walks by an outdoor ad, they might receive a special offer or access to gated content.
While the network is still in its early days, Freckle is keeping its partners confidential, but according to Sweeney its working with multiple “major outdoor ad networks.” The startup plans to announce the names of its partners and advertiser clients in the new year.
So far, most mobile beacon implementations have focused on messaging customers while they’re in store. Freckle’s network, by contrast, focuses on messaging in public and communal spaces (in part to avoid conflicts arising over clients targeting customers in competitor-owned territory).
“Doing something like this is forcing brands to think completely differently about how they’re marketing to a mobile device,” Sweeney said. “It’s one-to-one, it’s personal, you have to think completely differently about how you’re positioning your message, and what you’re potentially offering to the individual. That may seem rudimentary, but trust me when I tell you that’s a very dramatic change for brands and marketers.
“I think the general misunderstanding about beacons is that they’re easy. They’re not.”
For one thing, privacy is a much bigger consideration in the personal space of mobile. Sweeney stressed the beacon system will require active opt-in from consumers — not only will they have to download the advertiser’s app (or a third-party app partnered with Freckle), they will have to give permission to receive messages.
“There is no message without opt-in — we are never going down that road, ever,” he said. “Privacy is paramount. Making sure that everything is locked down, everything is compliant, there’s no spam issues, no leakage or third party access — all that stuff is top of mind [for us].”
As for collecting data from Freckle’s mobile beacons to use in Juice’s programmatic media targeting, he said it was too fraught with privacy hurdles to even consider at this stage.
Beacons are just the first step
Sweeney said Freckle was started as an independent business primarily to prevent its new experiments becoming a distraction from Juice’s core business in programmatic and automated direct media buying. Juice will continue to focus on its Swarm DSP and Nectar programmatic direct platform.
“There’s a lot of different directions that mobile is going, whether that’s into smart appliances, smart homes, wearable technology, proximity based marketing,” Sweeney said. “I wasn’t necessarily convinced that all of those ideas could be explored and experimented inside Juice, with how quickly Juice is growing.
“So I created a separate company. It’s a full-on startup, that has its own team of individuals tasked with determining what are the models in and around wearables, beacons, smart appliances, etc.”
He said it will function as a separate company, with its own dedicated development team, though Freckle and Juice will share some services like marketing, HR and sales.
Part of Freckle’s mandate will be to explore new technologies and trends as they develop, instead of committing to any one solution. Right now it’s looking at beacons, but Sweeney said it’s also working on solutions in wearable tech, aiming to launch other IOT solutions in the near future.
“That’s an important part of Freckle — it needs to be comprised of individuals with a very clear understanding that the model, the product that we’re working with is going to change,” he said. “We’ve got some really cool, exciting stuff happening in 2015 that will blow your mind.”
