Qualcomm AllJoyn Ideal for Ad Distribution

A Qualcomm software expert says the companys AllJoyn P2P platform is ideal for distributing location- and proximity-aware ads and promotions. 

Speaking at the Uplinq 2011 conference in San Diego, Rob Chandhok, Qualcomms president of internet services and SVP of software strategy said P2P is “ideal” for getting marketing information to consumers, and that privacy policies will be the hardest part of implementing such campaigns. 

“P2P could be used to distribute or superdistribute all kinds of content,” he says. “Advertising messages is one thing AllJoyn is perfect for. If I got the Groupon application, just to hypothetically name somebody, and a bunch of stores were participating with them, as I walked past I might trust the Groupon application to use my Bluetooth connection. So youd build that trust, rather than opening up your radio to receive anything. Thats what we think is unacceptable – it wouldnt make sense in the real world because theres just too many bad actors out there.”

He says P2P would work well in real-world shopping applications – an area in which GPS has its limits. “Geolocation inside buildings is still hard,” he says, “so proximity-based advertising is the kind of application we can imagine people using. Could be ads, could be coupons, could be anything.”

On the subject of privacy, Chandhok says that the AllJoyn framework is set up for developers to build privacy policies, but what those policies will be is the difficult part. “I dont actually think that this is something that we [Qualcomm] will solve. What we should provide, and what we provide with AllJoyn, is a framework in which to build security policies … Its difficult to try to predict all the business models that are going to come out. When we work on peer-to-peer, we break apart the mechanism on which youd build policy, and the policy itself. And in some senses thats going to be the hard thing – how will you describe what devices to trust? I think thats an interesting policy question, but I dont have the answer right now.”