So Apple are banning location based advertising apps, as a result of their recent purchase of Quattro Wireless. Well that would seem to follow the usual Apple control freakery, well I’m not so sure..
I think Apple is actually doing the right thing, setting best practice for developing apps that use location.
What they actually say is..
“If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.”
In other words don’t just insert a location targeted ad into an application where is does not provide any benefit to the user. So you should not add a location targeted ad into your first person shooter game for pizza’s in Southampton, just because the user is in Southampton.
This is location ad spam.
On the other-hand if a user is looking for train times from their current location to Southampton, then ads from local business offering you food while you wait for the next train or offer alternative journey options via bus would be useful.
As with search ads this represents and example of advertising selection based on a users implicit intent, ignore these signals and as an app developer you would be spamming your users.
Written and submitted from my home (51.425N, 0.331W)