This document discusses beacon technology and its uses. It provides an overview of how beacons work using Bluetooth to send unique IDs to nearby devices. This allows for targeted content delivery and location-based applications. The document also outlines common beacon use cases in marketing, tracking, and vertical industries. It describes the components of the beacon ecosystem including hardware manufacturers, cloud services, and OS support and integration required for beacon apps.

1. Stop freakin’ it’s just a Beacon
April 2014
James Senior
VP, Product Strategy & Innovation
jsenior@weareratio.com
@jsenior

2. Ratio is a leading multi-screen agency that partners with global brands to
create seamless experiences across all platforms. We deliver multi-screen
apps that provide consistent and optimized user experiences across the
web, mobile, tablet, Connected TV.
Ratio’s specialized team combines product strategy with compelling design
and deep technical expertise to deliver award-winning applications.

3. Our Clients

4. What will I get out of this session?
• Understand how to think about beacons, apps and geolocation
• Learn how to think about the components of beacon ecosystem
• Get smart about Beacon hardware, OS and device support, cloud services

5. We <3 location

6. We <3 location

7. We <3 location
Read more: labs.weareratio.com/project/12-man-hunt/

8. Beacons complement existing location tech
 Supporting a combination of location
technologies / inputs is the most effective
strategy to achieve highest coverage with
users
Another tool in the toolbox for locating users on mobile devices
values represent approximate proximity accuracy
 Beacons are particularly useful for:
 Indoor and outdoor deployment
 Rapid deployment with no infrastructure
 Demanding less power from user’s
devices

9. Beacons in the App Lifecycle
User
Acquisition Uninstall

10. How beacons work
Unique ID
Cloud services
for beacon/content
management
Targeted
Content

11. Beacon Landscape
e.g. Apple, Microsoft,
Amazon, Google,
Samsung etc.
e.g. Qualcomm, T.I.,
Estimote,
Beaconic etc.
e.g. Swirl, Qualcomm,
GeLo, Beaconic

12. Beacon Landscape

13. Cloud Services Landscape

14. OS / Device Landscape

15. OS / Device Architecture required to support Beacons
Device
Operating System
Bluetooth Stack
Beacon API & Service
Beacon Provider SDK
App
Device requires radio hardware that supports BLE (BT 4.0)
Operating System provides I/O for firmware and Bluetooth Radio
Bluetooth Device Driver and APIs for controlling / interacting with the Bluetooth radio
A service & API designed to manage beacon polling for Beacons & passing events to registered apps
API layer augmenting Beacon API features with beacon / cloud specific APIs
Native app that leverages beacon proximity

16. Common Use Cases
 Marketing – e.g. in-venue promotions, campaigns, announcements
 Tracking – e.g. mapping, visitor flow analytics
 Verticals
 Retail
 Institutions
 Commercial
 Venues
 and more…

17. What you got out of this session
• Understand how to think about beacons, apps and geolocation
• Learn how to think about the components of beacon ecosystem
• Get smart about Beacon hardware, OS and device support, cloud services

18. What’s next?
 Beacon Goodness: www.weareratio.com/blog
 This presentation
 Beacon Overview Whitepaper
 Read about SmartPostr Experiment
 Download our Beacon BLE Library
 We’re hiring!
 www.weareratio.com/company/careers
 Let’s rock your project out!
 hello@weareratio.com
 Questions:
 jsenior@weareratio.com

19. Thank you

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