Bluetooth Pull Based and User Driven Mobile Advertising ... - GEBRC

Proceedings of the 11th Annual Conference of Asia Pacific Decision Sciences Institute Hong Kong, June 14-18, 2006, pp. 334-342

BLUETOOTH USER-DRIVEN MOBILE ADVERTISING SYSTEM Mohd Hilmi Hasan, Anang Hudaya Muhamad Amin, Shakirah Mohd Taib and Uzwani Mahmud Department of ICT/BIS, Universiti Teknologi PETRONAS, Perak, Malaysia EMAIL: {mhilmi_hasan, ananghudaya, shakita} @petronas.com.my, [email protected]

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on using Bluetooth as a tool to provide m-advertising. The objective of this paper is to develop Bluetooth m-advertising system that implements user-driven concept using pull-based approach. The novel contribution of this paper is the introduction of a user-driven concept in the system. User-driven concept simply means giving flexibility to end users to select the preferred advertisements from a list. Pull-based approach enables the users to request for advertisements from the server. Pull-based m-advertising provides advertisement to users based on their willingness and request. A thorough description of the system’s implementation is presented in this paper. The novel contribution of this paper is it addresses two issues that rise in push-based m-advertising system, which are spamming and time limit. Spamming becomes an issue in push-based m-advertising system because of its nature of sending the advertisements to users without their request. Time limit is implemented in push-based m-advertising system. The issue with this implementation is the users must reply the permission message within a specified time to receive the advertisement. If they fail to do so then they may not receive the advertisement at all. The proposed system in this study addresses these two issues. Keywords: Mobile advertising, Bluetooth advertising, pull-based advertising, user-driven advertising. 1. INTRODUCTION Mobile advertising (or m-advertising) is a new approach in advertisement strategy nowadays. In the perspective of marketing, m-advertising has two meanings, which are advertisements moving from place to place, e.g. displayed on the side of trucks and buses, or advertisements delivered to mobile devices, e.g. mobile phones and personal digital assistants (PDAs) [1][2][3]. In this paper, m-advertising refers to the latter, which is seen to be part of m-commerce [4]. M-advertising offers a huge potential due to its ability to send unique, personalized and customized advertisements [5] and also engaging consumers to negotiate with the advertisers [4]. M-advertising is considered as a very important class of m-commerce applications because a much targeted advertising can be done [6]. This paper focuses on m-advertising, particularly its implementation using mobile phones. There are two possible ways to deliver the advertisements to end user’s mobile devices; push-based, i.e. the advertisements are sent to the recipient’s mobile device without their request, [4] and pull-based, i.e. the recipient requests the advertisements from a server. Numerous systems had been invented using the push-based implementation, as a consequence of many marketers still view marketing in the broadcast mindset. They are competing for attention, and an advertiser who is too pushy and too intrusive will find themselves ignored. On the other hand, pull-based offers a concept of “captive audience” in marketing, which likely not appeal to everyone, but most likely to be remembered [7]. In this study, Bluetooth technology is used for the operational of the system. It focuses on the use of Bluetooth madvertising system within a confined space such as a shopping mall. The main reasons to adopt Bluetooth are because it is a low cost wireless communication [8], and its intention for short-range applications. Moreover, Bluetooth is also used because of its low battery usage as compared to Wi-Fi. This criterion is very important to ensure that the proposed system gives less impact on user devices’ battery. Bluetooth communication works within a range from a few meters to 100 meters [9]. Bluetooth devices that work in the same channel form a piconet [10], which can be consisted up to eight Bluetooth devices. Each piconet consist of a master and slaves, and two piconets may connect to each other as scatternet [11]. This study focuses on the use of m-advertising system within a piconet, which means only eight devices may involve. However, having few piconets linked to each other could simply enhance this limitation. Hence, a scatternet will ensure that more users can use the proposed system.

BLUETOOTH USER-DRIVEN MOBILE ADVERTISING SYSTEM

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The novel contribution of this paper is the introduction and implementation of the user-driven concept in m-advertising system, which uses pull-based approach. User-driven is a way to provide a control of the system to users. The recipients will be provided with a list of advertisements, and they may select the preferred one for them to view. The objectives of this paper are to develop Bluetooth m-advertising system, as well as to implement user-driven concept using pull-based approach in it. This paper contains a description of how the system works, and focuses only on the technical aspects of the system, hence shall not address its validity as a business advertising model. This paper is organized as follows. Section 2 briefly reviews related works on mobile advertising. Section 3 describes the motivation for this study. In Section 4, the approach used for the development and implementation of the system is described. Finally, section 5 presents results and discussion about the system, and the future works. 2. RELATED WORKS A few studies have been conducted to show the effectiveness of m-advertising as well as categorizing the system. [12] had studied the effectiveness of advertising using Short Message Service (SMS) in the United Kingdom. Six types of m-advertisements were identified, which are brand building special offers, timely media teasers, service or information requests, competitions and polls. M-advertising is one of the m-commerce applications, which is very important topic for information system scholars because it confronts new and old issues of information system [13]. [14] in their study stated that the m-advertising can be divided into three categories, which are push, pull and dialogue. However a dialogue is different from push and pull categories in terms of duration of interaction between advertiser and customer. Dialogue advertisement last for a few months [15] and hence it is not included in the discussion of this paper. [16] describes two ways of delivering information for wireless e-health environment. In this study, the pull-based approach implemented is for the doctor to retrieve information and the technology used for wireless transmission is 802.11b. [17] describes the alternative method for pull-based e-commerce information subscription, which is using push-based. The work is mainly for generating a secure way of push-based information subscription in e-commerce. Information push and information pull are both having advantage and disadvantage and appreciated by users, hence the work to experiment which design that combine the two approaches at the correct level would be beneficial to be done [18]. The study was done in comparing Bluetooth and Wi-Fi in handheld devices. The main advantage of Bluetooth over WiFi is its very low power consumption, which in some cases will not affect battery life. Wi-Fi on the other hand is designed for devices with high power supply [9]. This is one of the main reasons to adapt Bluetooth as the technology for the proposed system. [19] evaluates the performance of Bluetooth in forming the scatternet. It was done by evaluating bridge topology in scatternet formation. In [1], a Bluetooth m-advertising system has been developed which implements WAP push-based method. Bluetooth sensor discovers the device addresses within its range, and sends them to the server. Server then pushes the advertisements to users’ devices. By implementing permission-based m-advertisement, this system still cannot satisfy everyone, since there may be some people who feel irritated with the permission message prompted on their mobile devices and take it as spam. In a different context, when a push-based is used, users must turn on the Bluetooth sensor on the mobile phone for a long period of time to ensure that the server discovers their phones. The longer the Bluetooth sensor is turned on, the higher chance the user might be spammed. In [20] stated that the portion of spam messages is far beyond 50 percent. A survey was also conducted and stated that the growing concerns about spam in telecommunication put the opportunities of mobile services at risk [21]. M-advertisement should be limited for two main reasons; to avoid overwhelming the user, and to avoid the possibility of network congestion [6]. Spam messages in m-advertising annoy the receiver [22], and would be a bigger problem because of limited resources [23]. Other studies also stated that the risk of push m-advertisements is that the consumer might find they are intrusive, react negatively, and buy less from the vendor. In contrast, pull approach is less intrusive by definition [24]. [23] stated that there are a lot of people who never turn off their phone will be disturbed by spam message even when they are sleeping. Spamming is one of the issues to be addressed in this paper. The authors propose a user-driven m-advertising system using pull-based approach as a solution for this issue. One of the merits of pull-based system is that issue of spam is out of question since all the advertisements received by end users are welcome [15]. In the study of sport’s spectators perceptions on m-advertising done in Finland, it was indicated that pull type of m-marketing services have the potential to enhance spectator experience positively [25]. Moreover, there is also an issue of the inquiry time limit in the B-MAD system. There is a 50% chance of the users’ devices to be discovered because of this time out [1]. This leads to the users’ devices do not receive any advertisement from server. Two Bluetooth applications using push-based approach were also tested in this study [26][27]. However,

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the problem with them is the incoming messages received on users’ mobile phones are not notified with alarm. The message is very important because the user must respond to give permission for the server to send advertisements. Hence, the proposed system presented in this paper addresses this issue by providing an alternative for user to search for the advertisements any time they want. This is possible by using pull-based approach. Pull-based m-advertising in [28] is described as for example, a customer requests the local weather from mobile service provider. Then end user will receive the content of the response, including any related advertising. However, no development was done in the particular study. In this paper, we present the development of a new way of users pulling the advertisement, which is by providing them a list of available advertisement for them to select at their preferences. This is defined as user-driven. [29] stated that a user-driven approach has been integrated with personalization management to give the users a control of their own personalization attributes on pervasive service domain for wireless application. The WebBee architecture, which implements user-driven approach, was introduced in mobile phones application to fetch web pages and selectively extracting information from them [30]. 3. MOTIVATION The previous works of push-based m-advertising system may lead to spamming issue. Few studies have shown that some users may consider push-based advertisements as distracting their privacy. In the other context, the user must also turn on the Bluetooth sensor on their mobile devices for a longer period of time to receive advertisements from a pushbased server. This may increase the chance for their devices to be spammed by others. Another issue with the push-based m-advertising system is the time limit set for a user to response to a permission message sent to them. In push-based m-advertising system, the permission message is sent to the user prior to receiving any advertisement. The user must reply this permission within the specified time, or else they may not receive the advertisement at all. The problem may be worsen if the user does not hear the permission notification and not give any reply. Then the particular user may not get any advertisement even if few minutes later he or she wants to get some information about the latest promotion. This is because the control is not in the user’s hand. This study contributes in way that the proposed system focuses in addressing these two issues. 4. SYSTEM DESCRIPTION The proposed system is implemented in a master-slave configuration. A master contains the available advertisements and it sends them to the slave (user’s mobile phone) when requested. Initially a laptop has been used as a master, but for making it easier to mobile from one place to another to perform testing, the authors set up its configuration in another mobile phone, but it still serves the same purpose as a master. More than one slave may connect or interact with the master at the same time for requesting advertisements. The system architecture is shown in Figure 1. The operation sequence of the system is shown in Figure 2. The system has been tested on two mobile phones, which one of them acts as the master and another as the slave. However, Java Wireless Toolkit [31] is used to execute the system and demonstrate its operation in this paper.

Figure 1. System architecture


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1. Slave requests for a list of advertisements

2. Master sends a list of advertisements

3. Slave selects advertisement from a list

SLAVE

MASTER 4. Master sends the requested advertisement

Figure 2. Sequence of the System The first approach implemented in this system is pull-based. Pull-based means the user has the ability to request for the advertisements. The pull-based approach is explained in the following subsections. 4.1 Master Firstly, the master is set to discovery mode. By doing this, Bluetooth sensor in it would be able to detect the occurrence of other Bluetooth-enabled devices within its range (piconet). After setting up the master, the system prompts a message asking for permission to make connection. Without this permission the other Bluetooth devices may not connect to the master. The next step in executing this system is to set the master to publish the advertisements for the slaves to retrieve them. This is shown in the Figure 3. The slaves may then access the master to view the advertisements.

Figure 3. Master set to publish advertisement

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In this study, the system development is based on some enhancement and modification upon the original version of code from [26][27]. The master device creates the list of advertisements using the code shown in Figure 4. for (int i = 0; i < Listimg.size(); i++) { if (Listimg.getString(i).equals(Nameimg)) { index = i; break; } } return (String) Namesimg.elementAt(index);

Figure 4. Creating a list of advertisements In this study, the advertisements are in image format. These advertisements are put in the folder together with the system for execution in the master device. Now, the slaves are basically ready to retrieve advertisements from the master. 4.2 Slave The slave is firstly set to be in discovery mode. This is to enable it to connect to the master. The Bluetooth sensor in the slave will communicate and make connection to the master. In order for this slave to be detected by the master, it must be in the master’s range (piconet). After setting up the slave, it is ready to retrieve the list of advertisements from the master. The list is then displayed on the slave’s screen as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5. List of advertisements The user-driven nature of the system allows the user to select preferred advertisement from the list. This is the second concept implemented in this system. In this demonstration, the advertisements are named with generic names. The study on effectiveness of the naming style is not done in this paper. Three advertisements are used for this demonstration as shown in Figure 5 above. The code for retrieving the list of advertisements is shown in Figure 6 below [26][27].


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while (list.size() != 0) { list.delete(0); } while (keys.hasMoreElements()) { list.append((String) keys.nextElement(), null); } Display.getDisplay(parent).setCurrent(list); return true; Figure 6. Retrieving advertisements from master The next step is to select one name from the list, and after that the slave system prompts for making connection. To receive the advertisements from the master, the slave must give the permission for connection. The example of the advertisement viewed on the slave is shown in the Figure 7.

Figure 7. Display advertisement Based on the description of the system development, it is clear that there is no permission message sent by the master to the slave. The system is implemented in a user-driven and pull-based approach whereby the user retrieves the advertisements from the master. With this implementation, the time out issue for permission response is eliminated. The spamming issue is also addressed since users initiate all the requests for advertisement. 5. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION In push-based m-advertising system, some of the users may still feel irritated eventhough the permission is asked from them prior to getting advertisements. This is because the permission messages prompted on their mobile devices are not welcome and they take it as spam. The proposed system addresses this issue by eliminating the process of sending unsolicited permission message to users. The pull-based approach implemented in this study provides a way for users to request for advertisements. The spamming issue also occurrs in another perspective. With the advancement of wireless technology nowadays, specifically Bluetooth, anybody may send their messages or advertisements randomly and broadcastly to everyone in their range. The users who turn on the Bluetooth sensor in their mobile devices will receive all those messages and advertisements. The more advertisers doing this, the more advertisements will be flooding in the users’ device. This is even worst if the advertisements sent to users’ devices without asking for their permission. In the context of push-based approach, the users are required to turn on the Bluetooth sensor in their mobile devices. Without doing so, the server cannot detect them; hence no advertisements will be sent. By turning on the Bluetooth sensor in the mobile devices for a longer period of time, the users are having higher chances to be spammed. This issue is addressed in the proposed system by providing a user-driven implementation using a pull-based approach. This approach allows the users to just turn on the Bluetooth sensor in their devices when they would like to look for advertisement. This limits the time for their devices to be exposed, hence decreases the chance to be spammed by others.

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Another issue raised in push-based m-advertising system is the time limit. In order for the server to push the advertisements into client device, it has to ask for permission. The user must reply this permission within the time limit that has been set earlier. If the user does not reply within the specified time, the user will not receive the advertisements at all. It is even worse if the user wants to find advertisements when actually the time limit has elapsed. There is no way for them to proactively seeking for advertisements. The pull-based approach implemented in the proposed system addresses this issue by eliminating the need of the master sending a permission message to users. In this proposed system, user may simply retrieve the advertisements at anytime they want. The introduction of user-driven concept in the system also helps in addressing this issue by providing flexibility to users to select their preferred advertisements. An interesting improvement on the system described in this paper would be to make it capable of sending only a list of related advertisements to users. This might be done by looking at the context in users’ devices that are pre-specified prior to the pulling activity. Furthermore, the system could also be enhanced to be able to provide a mechanism to the advertisers to perform administrative tasks such as adding more advertisements, and deleting using the mobile phone’s interface. As for now, it could only be done by inserting the advertisements in the system’s folder and executing it together on the mobile phone. 6. CONCLUSION This study addresses two issues that raised in the previous work of push-based m-advertising system. The first issue of spamming is addressed by implementing a pull-based approach. With this approach, all advertisements received by the users are based on their requests. There will be no more unwanted advertisements received by the users. Furthermore, in push-based m-advertising system users need to turn on Bluetooth sensor on their mobile phones for a longer time to receive advertisement from master. This increases the chance for them to be spammed. The proposed system in this study addresses this issue by allowing users to turn on the sensor only when they want to seek for advertisement. The second issue is about the time limit for users to reply the permission asked by the master. The proposed system addresses this issue by eliminating the permission message and providing the list for users’ flexibility in choosing advertisement. This is done by implementing user-driven concept using a pull-based approach. There are two objectives to be achieved in this study; which are to develop the Bluetooth m-advertising system, and implement the user-driven concept and pull-based approach in its operation. This study has successfully been carried out and achieved both objectives. 7. REFERENCES [1] Aalto, L., et al. Bluetooth and WAP Push based location-aware mobile advertising system. in Proceedings Second International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services. Boston, MA, USA: ACM Press, 2004. [2] Graham-Rowe, D. Billboards beam adverts to passing cellphones. Newscientist.com, 2005. [3] Patrick, A.O. Commercials by Cellphone Some U.K. Advertisers Beam Video Ads to Phone Screens; New Medium, or Annoyance? Online.wsj.com, 2005. [4] Ranganathan, A. and R. Cambell. Advertising in a Pervasive Computing Environment. in Proceedings of the 2nd International Workshop on Mobile Commerce. Atlanta, Georgia, USA, 2002. [5] Turban, E., et al. Electronic Commerce: A managerial Perspective. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 2002. [6] Varshney, U. and R. Vetter. Mobile Commerce: Framework, Applications and Networking Support. Mobile Networks and Applications, 2002. 7(3): p. 185-198. [7] Masnick, M. Mobile Phone Advertising That's Pull, Rather Than Push. Thefeaturearchives.com, 2004. [8] McDermott-Wells, P. What is Bluetooth? IEEE Potentials, 2005. 23(5): p. 33-35. [9] Ferro, E. and F. Potorti. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi Wireless Protocols: A Survey and A Comparison. IEEE Wireless Communications, 2005. 12(1): p. 12-26. [10] Kapoor, R., A. Zanella, and M. Gerla. A Fair and Traffic Dependent Scheduling Algorithm for Bluetooth Scatternets. Mobile Network and Applications, 2004. 9(1): p. 9-20. [11] Golmie, N., et al. Interference Evaluation of Bluetooth and IEEE 802.11b Systems. Wireless Networks, 2003. 9(3): p. 202-211. [12] Barwise, P. and C. Strong. Permission Based Mobile Advertising. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 2002. Vol. 16(1): p. 14-24. [13] Lehner, F. and R.T. Watson. From E-commerce to M-commerce: Research Directions. University of Regensburg: Chair of Business Informatics, 2001. [14] Jelassi, T. and A. Enders. Leveraging wireless technology for mobile advertising. in Twelfth European Conference on Information Systems. Turku School of Economics and Business Administration, Turku, Finland, 2004.


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