Proxama CEO Interview

Transcript

• Narration 00:06

  You're listening to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem with Steve Statler.

  Jon Worley 00:23

  Yes, we're doing great things on bus. We also have beacons within taxis here in London. We have some beacons in the airports and whatnot number I think by the end of this year, we're going to see some pretty big campaigns with significant volume of Beacon derived or enabled content delivery. We will be extending that transport network of beacons starting here in London and across the UK and then somewhere in in the 40%, click through on that first notification. Increased app sessions that we're generating using using beacons.

  Steve Statler 01:29

  So welcome to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Beacosystem in partnership with Oxbow. My name is Steve Statler of Statler onsulting, and I am in the City of London today with John Walley, who is the CEO of Proxama proximity marketing business. And this is the next episode in our series of interviews with leaders in the location and proximity ecosystem. And so we're Jon, thanks so much for agreeing to spend some time with us.

  Jon Worley 02:03

  Thank you, Steve.

  Steve Statler 02:03

  You guys are doing some really interesting stuff I there's quite a lot of coverage of what you do in the book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the ecosystem, because because you're doing so much in this space. And in the book, we try and kind of break down into categories, what people are doing. And there's like apps where you're doing apps, because you've got loker, and probably other apps. And then you have, you have what we would call an orchestration layer, because you've got intelligence, which you can talk about more in terms of kind of campaign management style, location based campaign management, and then you've got really interesting, and network and we'll probably go back and talk about what kind of network it is. But I personally believe that is the secret to success in the future. So you your company's trailblazing, I think it would be fair to say there's a lot of there's a lot of good things that come out of that. And there's some challenges, so I couldn't think of a better person to have in this introductory round of interviews. I've said a little bit, but I've probably done more to confuse people and educate people. Maybe you could give us a little bit of an introduction to the company and the services that you offer.

  Jon Worley 03:14

  Yeah, thank you, Steve. Proxama is a technology business. As you say, we're here in London, in the UK, we have been around for some 10 years. And we exist to connect the mobile consumer with their physical environment. And that's always been our mission. And we've done that along two major streams of business. So we have a payments division that supports organizations that want to enable mobile payment at point of sale. But I ran as you say, the proximity marketing division, and we help brands engage more effectively with their mobile consumer. So over the past five years or so, we've delivered a huge range of NFC and QR campaigns, enabling consumers to tap a smart poster to interact with physical piece of media and experience something entertaining on their mobile device. We've done tons of that. Yeah, now we moved into more and more into the beacon world.

  Steve Statler 04:25

  So really, you were doing location based marketing before beacons existed?

  Jon Worley 04:30

  Absolutely, absolutely. And that experiences has been hugely relevant and has really helped us trailblaze as you say, we also acquired a business some few years ago, there was a leader in the early Bluetooth marketing arena. So we draw on those skills as well. And yeah, very important legacy, I think to Proxima that's helped us. Really X tolerate the delivery of services around beacons.

  Steve Statler 05:03

  I think what's this this business and so this this podcast is videos in partnership with procs book, there's over 300 companies in proximate. Most of them, most of them are very small run by very young people, and which is fantastic because there's this incredible energy and a lot of diverse solutions and approaches, I would characterize you as probably close to my age than the average age that so I think in the book, what I said was that you guys are like the grown ups in in the room. And as grown ups, I think we know that there's advantages and disadvantages. With that, like, our habits tend to we'd like to live in nicer homes, and you're in this, you're in the city of London, which is, which is just a real buzz. And the energy around here is amazing. Probably not the lowest cost real estate in in the United Kingdom. But I imagine you also get a lot of benefit from having an established storefront, if you like to the business. Can you talk a little bit about what you see as the pros and cons of, of being a grown up in this speaker system?

  Jon Worley 06:12

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I would, I would characterize us as a grown up mature business in a very, very new market. So yes, we are based here in London, our head offices here, executive teams here, and we sell to the media community and the agency community, principally in London and other major cities around the world. But we do balance that with a bunch of clever people in the lovely city of Norwich, where we have our research and development, and all our technical folks. And that tends to be a younger, more dynamic environment, the, as you say, the slightly perhaps gray haired environment of the head office facility here in London. So we try and maintain those two different worlds and, and, and keep ourselves fresh with with youngsters coming through thinking innovatively about how to use mobile technology.

  Steve Statler 07:13

  And you've got they've got a university. It's a university town. So you've got a bunch of smart people there. And it's not exactly development off in Bangalore, but pretty good language skills up in Norwich funny accent.

  Jon Worley 07:26

  Yeah, and a great, great bunch of people out there. And we draw on the local universities, picking out the talent that can help us, as I say, innovate in this in this in this arena.

  Steve Statler 07:40

  So I know that you have been doing a bunch of pilot tests and effectively r&d that goes beyond technology into into the kind of the business area. And I believe that you won a million pound grant from the UK Government. Can you talk a little bit about what that project was? Or is?

  Jon Worley 08:03

  Yeah, absolutely. We have been innovating with beacons from the very early days. So back in q4 2013, I think it was. So we gathered experience very, very quickly. The middle of 2014, we were fortunate enough to win A a small grant from UK government to help us explore the use of proximity technologies to re energize the UK High Street. And that project developed an application called lokur that consumers can use to discover their local environment. And that initial piece of work was so successful, that UK government awarded us a more significant grant to further develop loca develop the technology to really help principally small but also large businesses on the high street, engage more effectively with consumers and get their value proposition out to consumers. Through the medium. The more and more of us are using course mobile mobile device.

  Steve Statler 09:11

  And what did the government get for their money, they got an app?

  Jon Worley 09:15

  They got an app, and absolutely a bunch of learnings and a more vibrant, more energized city center environment. So our mission now is to grow the technology, develop the technology further, optimize it for all the different stakeholders in that environment. As the consumer, of course, we need to put those guys first, but also the small business owner, the large business owner, and the organizations that run the high street. So our mission is to develop loci and grow across a number of cities.

  Steve Statler 09:51

  So you're going to keep on with the deployment in Norwich. And is it still being funded by the government or is this now just in your hands and your building on this platform that was originally sponsored.

  Jon Worley 10:02

  We have, we continue to have funding from Innovate UK that funding aid runs for another six to nine months, I believe. And yet we continue to develop the technology and deliver on our on our promise to to that body.

  Steve Statler 10:22

  And what are some of the use cases that the app implements?

  Jon Worley 10:27

  So as I said, the real mission of loci is to help businesses share the proposition more effectively with consumers. So we have beacons on the high street, we have beacons on buses, we have beacons in museums, and we're using beacons to wake loker at the right moment, and deliver information to consumers that they'll find useful at that particular moment in time and that location, right. So that might be an offer. But it might be just information about a new store that's open a new product range, perhaps a new event that might be starting in the city at the weekend. So it's a mix of information, retail offers. And it's hugely dynamic in the content that it exposes to consumers. But the trick is delivering that information at the right moment when it really makes sense to the user. So it's not just coupons. It's not just coupons, absolutely not just coupons. Now, we found actually, that, that local needs to have a really diverse and rich mix of content. And that content needs to be turning over all the time. Our objective, of course, is to create app opens that consumers engage with, and then engage more with their local community.

  Steve Statler 12:02

  And how successful has it been in bringing people into the center of Norwich and then getting them to spend money in shops?

  Jon Worley 12:10

  it's very effective at bringing consumers into store we know that. So we can see the results from offers and information that we deliver about new store propositions. And with beacons in store, we can measure that attribution and the end result.

  Steve Statler 12:30

  So this is sounding pretty sophisticated. So I'm a merchant in Northridge family business, been doing it for 100 years. And now someone comes in and talks to me about beacons, what's involved from the merchants perspective? And what do they get out of it?

  Jon Worley 12:47

  Yes, we try to keep it really simple for the merchant, I think that's been the trick. So the little beacon gets placed in the store. We do that for the merchant. And really, that's the end of the beacon conversation. We then provide the merchant with access secure access to an online portal, they can log onto that portal, and configure their campaigns, which are really their messages that they want to deliver to consumers as they go about their business in the city. So they have great access to technology, we kept it as simple as possible, removing all the technical jargon, and helping them engage effectively with the platform. And we've also got a team of people locally, that are there to support. So we have feet on the ground, engaging very regularly with the with the retailers and the business community, talking to them about what works, what doesn't, and how they might improve their campaigns going forward.

  Steve Statler 13:48

  So they can run campaigns, they have a presence in the app, what sort of information do they get out of this system?

  Jon Worley 13:57

  So we provide them with a dashboard of performance reports that shows them footfall into their store shows the number of notifications that we've delivered to consumers. And, and further information about the performance of that activity. So they have full transparency and access to that data. I think that's been really key to help them engage effectively with learning.

  Steve Statler 14:22

  And how much does it cost? If I'm a merchant? Is it expensive?

  Jon Worley 14:26

  It isn't, it isn't expensive, we've really tried to keep the cost down. So somewhere around 3035 pounds per month, access to loca and access to the local community of consumers.

  Steve Statler 14:42

  And how can they so how do they measure? How do they measure that whether they're getting a return on their 30 pounds?

  Jon Worley 14:49

  If you compare that that investment with the cost of perhaps advertising in a local paper or putting some poster flyers out it's it's extremely low cost, and very effective approach, locusts still needs to grow. So you know, we have a way to go in growing the audience to really drive home that return on investment for merchants. And that's where we're now turning our attention. How do we deliver more and more value for consumers to start growing the user base? And that's where a lot of our attention is, and will be for this time.

  Steve Statler 15:28

  And is there? Are there like kind of lessons learned that you I'm sure, there must have been loads of lessons, other lessons learned that you'd like to share with us in terms of what you've found out from that process? And what other Is there any specific benefits that that you can point to that a merchant has gotten out of using the system?

  Jon Worley 15:50

  Yeah, so I think the very early days of Loker we felt that it should be entirely driven by proximity to interesting places, entirely driven by Beacon notifications. Actually, what we found is the users want to browse as well. So sometimes they want to sit and open the app unprompted. And look at the merchant offering. So we've had to extend broaden the functionality within loker to give some browsing type experiences, above and beyond just fully notified. route into the app. So that was one key learning. We've learned in practice as a real obvious one. But we've certainly learned that you need to keep the content fresh. And if the content goes stale, then users lose interest very, very quickly. So we look, we've learned that and we've made sure that we've got people constantly monitoring the quality of the content, again, a very important learning. And that that concept is is maintained at the other point is that the technology has to be really simple for the user, and for the and for the merchant for them to engage. So a number of different learnings throughout the first 12 to 18 months of loca. And I'm sure a bunch more as we continue to press ahead.

  Steve Statler 17:17

  Loker is more it's more than just beacons in the stores you did you not do some work with public transport as well?

  Jon Worley 17:25

  We have them on we have them on buses, I think we have some on taxis now as well. Yeah, in the local community. And we have them as a set in shopping malls, and we have them in museums. So we've been testing their performance in various places, and using them to raise awareness of that local community and all the good stuff that goes on.

  Steve Statler 17:48

  So what would happen with a beacon on a bus versus a beacon in a store?

  Jon Worley 17:53

  So the bus is a great opportunity to flake Loker and deliver information about what might be happening in the city environment that weekend. When we get on a bus, we sit down, the first thing we do typically is take our phone our pocket, we have time on our hands, and it's a great moment to engage. So we we found not just with local but with other campaigns that that dwell time is a really valuable opportunity to engage effectively through mobile channel and beacons do that really nicely. I think it's quite difficult to achieve that kind of trigger through any other technology.

  Steve Statler 18:36

  Make sense? So beacons on buses in Norwich. But also beacons on buses in London. Is that right? Yeah, absolutely.

  Jon Worley 18:47

  We have worked with a number of fantastic partners in the out of home community. And here in London, we work with exterior media. We're deploying beacons on London buses, alongside in partnership with exterior media.

  Steve Statler 19:07

  And they're an out of home advertiser, they're kind of in the same bucket, broadly speaking as JC DeSoto would decode depending on how you want to pronounce it.

  Jon Worley 19:18

  Yeah. So these, these are guys that that help, again, help brands engage effectively with an audience. So in London, you will often see buses wrapped with a brand message on the outside they might have brand message advertising on the inside of the bus. So their, their their business is all associated with advertising to a mass audience of abuses of bus but also general population.

  Steve Statler 19:52

  And they so they have a sales force that are selling to brands and And presumably, these beacons can be used by lots of different apps. It's not just the local app we're talking about, or is it is local being used in London?

  Jon Worley 20:09

  So we're not yet using Loker in London. So our objective in London and in fact, our water strategy is to build out a network of beacons across a transport infrastructure. Because as I said earlier, transport represents a great moment of dwell to engage a consumer in a meaningful experience on mobile. So yes, we're doing great things on bus. We also have beacons in taxis here in in London, we have some beacons in the airports. So we will be extending that transport network of beacons, starting here in London, and then across the UK. And then our ambition, of course, is much wider than that. So we established a network of beacons. And then we make that available to mobile apps that can benefit from that opportunity to engage in those moments.

  Steve Statler 21:13

  And which apps are using your network?

  Jon Worley 21:15

  So the the one of the first to come on board is the Bus London app. So we've partnered with a company called Mapway. own mobile apps, across numerous cities around the world, that many of us use to navigate public transport. So they have the Bus London app, they also have the Bus Tube. App. They have apps in Paris, New York, Chicago, so all over the world, these guys are renowned for their their mass transit applications. So we partner with them here in London. And we are waking their app, when a consumer with their app sits on a bus.

  Steve Statler 22:06

  Can you delicate matter, but I'm gonna probe into this area anyway, let's talk about the money and the flow of money. Because networks are really interesting, because rather than having to have a beacon for every app, and kind of that slow process of deployment, which is holding in my mind that ecosystem back, potentially, you can turn on access very, very quickly. But it's got to be so there's got to be something in it for everybody. And so you have a whole bunch of questions to answer in terms of who gets paid, what can you. So you got beacons on buses, beacons and taxis, beacons in airports, beacons and kiosks, where does the money come from? Where does it go to?

  Jon Worley 22:49

  So the money ultimately comes from the brand. So let's take a let's take an advertising use case. So the money would come from the brand, who wants to place an alpha in front of the consumer in that great moment of dwell? So money comes from brands. And of course, it's only right that the enabling stakeholders in the ecosystem are paid for for their role and the value that they bring in delivering that that high performing ad. So in that example, it would be box armor, exterior media and mathway are facilitating an opportunity to present a high performing interstitial within a mobile app at that moment.

  Steve Statler 23:37

  So you got the out of home advertising company, you got the app owner, you've got you. And what about the bus company?

  Jon Worley 23:46

  Typically they would have a relationship with the media, right? Okay. So that's typically how the marketplace would work. We all we all have our costs, yeah, to prove to provide our role in that ecosystem. So typically, yes, that's how it would work. And the same model would hold held true in an airport, there would be a media owner, that would potentially earn revenue from playing their role in locating the beacon, typically alongside their physical media asset. So we're very excited about the interplay between advertising on mobile, and the supplementary physical media that the media owner would display alongside it.

  Steve Statler 24:37

  Okay, so that potentially gets quite complicated. So I've got a big billboard, and that's got to the content. There's got to be coordinated with the content on the phone. It sounds like a lot of effort.

  Jon Worley 24:49

  Well, we our job is to make it as straightforward as possible. So as you said, we are we are business with a number of layers of technology. Very importantly, we have A platform called Tap point. It's a proprietary campaign management and beacon management platform that we've developed over many years, also supporting our NFC and QR proposition. So that technology makes it easy for us, all our partners to configure a campaign and the delivery of a brand message within the mobile app. And yes, there's the need to tie that up with a specific location. But we worked hard, again, to make that as straightforward as possible.

  Steve Statler 25:36

  And I mean, this is something that's never been done before, you've never been able to have something popping up on a personal device that synchronized with a billboard there. It sounds valuable to me sounds like there's some value significant value add is, is there a significant increase in the CPMs, or whatever the measure is?

  Jon Worley 26:02

  Yeah. So you know, going back to the Bus London example, when I get on the bus, I've got the Bus London app installed on my phone, I get a notification. And that notification on my lock screen will say something like, welcome to bus route C two. So the notification is specific to the bus and specific to the route. But it's not advertising at that stage, there's utility there for the user. So I swiped the notification, and the app will come to the foreground with all the information about the following stops on that very specific route, great utility for the consumer, we're seeing a fantastic click through on that first notification. We then use that opportunity after a few seconds to deliver an interstitial. And that interstitial ad, could be married up with physical advertising on the bus. And we've done that. Or it could be some other advertising that's contextually relevant to that route. That particular area of London, or perhaps that ultimately, that unique consumer.

  Steve Statler 27:13

  Got it. And so what can you share some numbers? What what are the numbers that would make people feel I should consider this?

  Jon Worley 27:27

  Yeah, we, we have published some numbers, actually, last night, although we have, we have published some numbers, I'm now going to try and remember, somewhere in in the 40%, click through on that first notification. So think of the huge pile of increased app sessions that were generated using using beacons, the interstitial click through, I think we've published a figure over 10%, which, again, is an order of magnitude, perhaps greater than an interstitial that would just appear with no context in a moment that is likely to be irritating and difficult to engage. So those numbers are really significant. And we were proud to, to publish those numbers last night alongside our partners exterion In that way.

  Steve Statler 28:22

  So great conversion numbers, and how does that relate in terms of money coming into the ecosystem that's going to be shared amongst all those people?

  Jon Worley 28:30

  So this is, as you say, this is this is early, these are the first numbers that we're beginning to roll out, we've got huge interest in it. And we'll see how this scales from here. But you know, the early indications are fantastic. And we're very excited about that. And with with those kinds of numbers, you know, we have to be on designing, and there has to be some, some value here that will be created very, very quickly.

  Steve Statler 28:56

  So one of the things that is kind of annoying and irritating to anyone that's kind of coming because this whole thing that we're doing is about helping people to create solutions. And there's a technical aspect, there's also a business aspect, and you get your spreadsheet and you're modeling your business out. And you say, Hey, we can get this, we're going to drive 50% increase in value of CPMs through this. And then the other part of that spreadsheet is how big is the segment and on one hand, the CPMs go up. But because you're targeting the segment gets smaller and smaller as I want to segment women who are this age you happen to be in this location, you have this interest, and you kind of got down to five people before you know what it is. And even if you're traveling the CPM, it's still not a very good business. So is that some Is that a challenge that you've seen and scale

  Jon Worley 29:50

  is scale is clearly important. So we you know, it's it's important to us and our strategy that we have a massive network of beacons that address So really interesting audience segments. But if you think about bus or you think about taxi or airport, what's really driving? I think the performance of this is the dwell time. So, yeah, I think I think there is a potential to over segment and over target. But I think there is also the opportunity to get the balance right here, and still deliver volume and create real value.

  Steve Statler 30:33

  Got it. And at what point, do you think we will be at scale? So let's so one of the questions that I get all the time, so some of my clients are institutional investors and private equity companies, and they're like, still too early, still too early? So the question is, when is the year of Beacon going to be and obviously, we're in this business, so every year is the year of the Beagle and kind of continue that way, until we then decide it's a wild hat, and we'll leave and then it'll stop being the year of the beacon. But what I mean by you have the beacon is, you know, we're going through the Geoffrey Moore curve, and we have the innovators in the early adopters, the people we love, and who are our customers, I think, at the moment, and then we've got the early majority, all those conservative people. And that's actually where we ended up making money. And so how close do you think we are to getting through this chasm, which I think is where we are at the moment where all of the early majority, people are kind of looking at those innovators and saying, You got to be mad, I'm not gonna do that. When is this wave going to hit us?

  Jon Worley 31:43

  I think what's interesting, perhaps about what we've achieved here is the number of parties in the ecosystem have learned over a period of time, and have come together to deliver something really exciting and new. And I think that's taken a long time to play out. And there's been a whole bunch of pilots with beacons that have been more technically orientated than really commercially orientated. So we've had to go through that learning, we've got to this point now where the key players in the ecosystem have come together, we've created something quite exciting. And we've created some some great numbers that show performance and future value. So I think that we had to go through that 18 months, two years of learning to get to that point, we also had to figure out the that it's not all about coupons, and pressing retail offers into consumers hands through notifications, you know, what we've led with here is a real utility for the user. So I think, yeah, that's been a good learning. And we need to build on that. And find new really cool, really interesting, use cases, ways to open apps create app sessions. I think that's the important takeaway, that will ultimately drive scale and take up in across numerous apps, and numerous markets with a big audience.

  Steve Statler 33:20

  So I'm going to put to you a specific date. Okay. Your reaction to this in terms of when's the year, the beaker system, I actually don't think it's this year, I think this year is it's going to grow and be even more exciting than last year. And I've been talking to people that work at big infrastructure vendors, because now you can buy your beacons from Cisco and all these guys that actually the early majority, the conservative people trust. And what I've heard is that everyone has budgets for beacons this year. And to me, that means there'll be a bunch of projects that won't actually deliver any benefits until next year. So I actually think it's probably going to be the tail end of 2017, before this thing actually starts to go nuclear.

  Jon Worley 34:08

  I think we'll see consumers engaging with content that has been beacon triggered at scale, much sooner than that. And put a number. I think by the end of this year, we're going to see some pretty big campaigns with significant volume of Beacon derived or enabled content delivery. But I would I would agree, perhaps in terms of the nuclear expansion on the beacon network, then that will take that will take some time. And yeah, maybe your forecast is it's is is about right.

  Steve Statler 34:51

  It will be let's just go back to Proxama and what business you're in because you're in lots of businesses, but there's probably One that you've considered to be kind of the core that you're most interested in. And I'm guessing that it's not the app business. Am I right?

  Jon Worley 35:09

  You're right. Yeah. I mean, Loker's has been fantastic opportunity for us to use our own platform technology and learn how to engage an audience using beacons. But, you know, that isn't where our ambition lies long term in an app. Our ambition lies in enabling other apps to utilize a beacon network across travel, transport, and use this technology to re energize high streets to help brands reach reach audiences. It's a core underlying technology that ultimately is important to us. Loker is great. And we'll continue to do what it does underpinned by that really special technology that we're building.

  Steve Statler 35:59

  And if I kind of dissect that part of the business, I, we kind of look at networks and kind of classify them in three buckets. You know, there's one of these registries, which is, here's where all the beacons are, but it's up to you to figure out how to use them. So there's a bunch of those wiki beacons being one example in the states actually covers here as well, because it's so all the beacons on Regent Street learning wiki beacon, how you get actually access them governance. But then there's beacon access networks, which is, I've got beacons. And I can control who uses them. What you use them for is up to you. And so I would say gimbal, I kind of in that space over in the States. So they have, they have a lot of beacons. And if you want access to them, they can unlock them, lock them, and they'd do other things as well. And then I look at someone like in market, I would call them a beacon commerce network, because there's beacons there. But actually this commerce functionality in their case, it's kind of this. There's these dashboards that brands can look at, and dashboards that retailers can look at, and they can kind of see what's happening. And that's kind of a way of brokering a much higher set of information. So are you do you where do you see your future? Or maybe you see your future in both? If I have an app, that is a Maps app, and I have no interest in advertising at all? Can I buy access to your beacons?

  Jon Worley 37:33

  You can? Yes, yeah, absolutely, you can. And we would broker that and enable that alongside our partners. So our partners that deploy beacons with us are, of course, an integral part of our offering. So we would work with them to enable apps to access the network.

  Steve Statler 38:00

  And then of course, you have like the commerce functionality, which I would say is kind of that all the value add that you have some kind of brokers who gets paid what for?

  Jon Worley 38:09

  Yeah, it's actually quite complex, the, the technology and the work that we've done, and Loker has really helped support this, ensure that we understand all the different stakeholders in the in the value chain of supporting a particular interaction, whether that's a small retailer, a large retailer, a big brand, or a network partner.

  Steve Statler 38:35

  So I need to wrap up because you're running out of time. So I've got just two or three more questions. And so let's get a bit geeky and talk about beacon standards. And so since we last spoke, Google have gotten the business fairly and squarely with Eddystone. And then they just come out with Eddystone EID, which has got a lot of interesting stuff in it. What's your view of what a Google up to? And is that is that a positive thing from your perspective? Or?

  Jon Worley 39:06

  Well, we're very excited by physical web. We're very excited about the potential of Eddystone to engage an audience through a browser such as Chrome. And we've actually launched our own progressive web app here in London. That can be discovered on exterion bus. So quite similar to the matt way bus, London example you could get on a bus. If you have Chrome installed, you could discover that bus, you could launch a progressive web app that will give you in Chrome access to route information about that particular bus.

  Steve Statler 39:58

  So there's an app but you're actually using Chrome?

  Jon Worley 40:01

  We're using we're using Chrome to host that that mobile web experience. So you can then you can then see all of your just like this, as I explained with the with the with the native app, yeah, you can see all of the bus stops coming up, you can click on one of the bus stops, perhaps the one you're interested in getting off at, you can set a reminder, with your phone back in your pocket and receive a notification from us, when you're one minute from that stop calling chrome without any native app support.

  Steve Statler 40:39

  So I thought you said you developed an app, but maybe I just missed.

  Jon Worley 40:42

  Developed a progressive web app that lives within within Chrome browser. Fantastically exciting, no need for us to, to ship an app. We have control over that on our web service. But we can do some really cool stuff. So we're very excited about about that potential. I think we'll see some really great innovative use cases around physical web using Eddystone.

  Steve Statler 41:16

  So recap once more. How if so I've got my Chrome browser. And this works on iOS and Android, does it?

  Jon Worley 41:24

  It works best on Android. It works best on Android, but there is an experience on iOS as well.

  Steve Statler 41:30

  What's the difference?

  Jon Worley 41:31

  So if I'm in iOS, I can discover the bus, I can launch Chrome. And I can be taken to the specific bus route, I can't set the reminder. So we don't quite have the same degree of control within iOS. But on Android, we have additional capabilities to talk back to the to the consumer and deliver them a notification.

  Steve Statler 41:57

  And how do I get access to the app again, I bookmark it or?

  Jon Worley 42:01

  You can discover it. So in Chrome on Android, you could swipe down, see the physical web location nearby, click on it, launch Chrome straight to that experience.

  Steve Statler 42:15

  And this is in the latest build of Chrome. And what's the coverage of those in on handsets now?

  Jon Worley 42:22

  Growing very quickly, and we're monitoring and learning every day. But, you know, we're right at the forefront of this fairly exciting opportunity. We think iBeacons have got massive potential to engage apps. But we're also very excited about where we can take physical wherever and progressive web apps. In in a in a browser such as Chrome.

  Steve Statler 42:46

  I'm excited by physical web, because to me, it comes down to money. It's like two orders of magnitude or more cheaper to create content gaps for the Physical Web. And so that means anyone that can create a web page basically can create content, which is most of our children. Yeah. Good. Set them up. Whereas creating an app, you're talking about significant money. So that's a good thing. But the thing that really worries me is just training users to discover it, because I don't know, you know, the today widget on iOS, which is the way you may find that you find it is like no one knows about that how we're going to solve that problem.

  Jon Worley 43:24

  I'm not sure call to action, we'll see how this one plays out. I don't, I don't know the answer yet. But I think the experience is so cool. I can really see from a consumer point of view, I try to take my business hat off and think of, of, you know, the kind of experiences I'd use as a user. I can see this working, when we get used to it, sit on a bus, I want to understand what's going on in this in this very specific environment. I'll take a look to see if there's a progressive, see if there's a physical web opportunity to engage.

  Steve Statler 44:02

  And you did this with Google. And I was wondering, what does what does that mean? Because I do stuff with Google every day. I've Google Search and Google Apps and so forth. But were Google involved in that?

  Jon Worley 44:17

  So they've been supportive in helping us understand this new technology just goes as far as that. Yeah, everything we've done, we've done ourselves. Our own very clever and bright technicians and engineers, in the Norwich office, have been working away to develop this progressive web app. And yeah, I think there's an exciting future there for physical web.

  Steve Statler 44:42

  So there's any standard Eddystone or Edison, depending on where you come from that so that's a distant URL. And then there's we've got EID and just an EID, which is basically kind of iBeacon only with a few of them. feels adjusted so they don't get sued. Presumably, that's why they do it. And then we've got TLM, which is all about sending management information. But what about Edison? EID, the ephemeral ID P switch? I, I'd love to hear your reaction to that. What's the significance of that? And maybe you should kind of do you want to summarize what it actually is?

  Jon Worley 45:24

  To be honest, I'm not sure yet. This, that's an area that we're just beginning to explore. We've got excited about these, these other things, and put a lot of energy and investment into getting beyond the pilot stage with iBeacon. And to do some really cool early stuff with physical web, the other bits, we're taking a breather, and we'll get back to that. So maybe we'll do another one of these in six months time or so Steven, we can talk about our experience with that.

  Steve Statler 45:56

  That'll be interesting. I think. I think it's a tremendous opportunity. So I'll just put some stakes in the ground, and you can react or not react to them. So EID, something badly needed a albeit a proprietary standard. And what we need is a non proprietary standard, but at least we've got a proprietary standard from someone that can impact lots of beacons on how you grant access to beacons. So I believe that benefits us all. The thing is, it's like Google is right at the heart of this, and then collecting the metadata on all of these beacons. And so I think that a lot of brands and especially retailers will be very nervous about that. And so one of the things I'm wanting to ask in these sessions is how businesses are reacting to that, and how there any concerns they are hearing from the market. Are you hearing any concerns in the market?

  Jon Worley 47:00

  No, not yet. This is not an area that we that we've really put any energy into. I think it's something for us to get to grips with and start talking to our partners about this summer. But yeah, for now, I'm gonna sit on the fence. Okay. And we'll see how that one plays out.

  Steve Statler 47:18

  It will be interesting. So basically, are Google doing it out of the goodness of their heart? Or are they getting into the the network business? And that could be good, or it could be not good? Depending on who you are? We'll see. We'll see. Absolutely, very good. Well, let's wrap it up. And was kind of one last question I wanted to ask, which is, you know, what is the thing that surprised you most in the last year? What are the things that happen that you were expecting to happen? That didn't happen? Or did happen that you weren't expecting to happen?

  Jon Worley 47:50

  I think it's been such an interesting year. What? I don't expect anything to happen now, we take it, you know, we try to push the technology, we try to think about the consumer, we try to think about all the people in the ecosystem and we've got a vision of where we want to be. And, you know, I think we're we're progressing along that journey fantastically well. So I'm not surprised that perhaps we didn't see the explosion that we thought we might in beacons. Yeah, tough, tough one to answer that tough one to answer. I don't think I'm surprised by anything in this market. We just take it. Take it a step at a timer, follow our strategy and our vision.

  Steve Statler 48:39

  Very good. Okay, John, this has been fascinating. I really appreciate your time. You guys are doing some amazing work and we'll continue to watch your progress and hope to check in with you in a few months time and see where the ecosystem is taking us

  Jon Worley 48:55

  Love to do that.