Designing and Developing a Citizen-Oriented Advertisement System Based on the Concept of Geographic Fence (Geofence)

Introduction
Conventional media and environment advertising tools (including radio and television, websites, billboards, and writings on buildings), due to their limitations such as fixed location and time, high cost, and damaging effects on urban landscape, are not location-oriented and, in other words, they are not offered based on the location of the people. Therefore, they have less effectiveness and flexibility. Advertising and marketing based on the location and position of the user is considered as a new and practical way of managing urban advertising. Extensive efforts have been made in the use of Internet-based technologies such as social networks, digital marketing (Barnes, 2002: 401), location-based marketing (Brener and Kumar, 2012: 4) and geographical Information systems (GIS) (Azaz, 2011: 299) has been made to increase the impact of advertising and reduce the negative effects of urban physical advertising. The geographic fence or Geofence is a location-based service, which usually aims to inform the occurrence of an event when a person enters a specified area. Geofences can play an important role in providing location-based information to citizens in different areas. The Geofence in the business sector also plays an important role for targeted and accurate advertising, so that when customers enter a certain distance from a restaurant, store, etc., they receive targeted and accurate ads for their interests and needs.  Some of the apps that have used the Geofence to inform citizens, including the PlaceCast app, use the geographic fence to send messages and notifications to potential customers. ShopKick is also a similar program that sends special discounts and rewards when customers enter the geographical area of the store and uses a combination of GPS, WiFi and other sensors for accurate location tracking. CellSafety is a program that enables parents to be aware of their children entering and leaving a particular location. This research tries to use a concept of geographic fence (Geofence) and GIS tools to create a citizen-oriented and location-based service called Customer Finder in order to display advertisements on customers' mobile phones based on their spatial and temporal in urban environments. Through this system, business owners can provide advertisements to their potential customers at a specific place and time. The concept of a geographic fence can link the physical and virtual environment of citizens. This research is presented in three sections. In the first part of the theoretical basis, the concepts of geobusiness and geomarketing, location-based services and geographic fences (Geofence) investigated. In the second part, implementation of the advertising system based on the geographical fence expressed and in the final section of the research, results and conclusion presented.
Methodology
The system is divided into three parts including site management, business owners (or stores), and users (or customers). Site administration, in addition to managing the site, is responsible for creating, updating and changing the geographic fence (Geofence) of the stores. Business owners can enter their ads in the system with a specific time and related Geofence, and customers receive messages and notices such as ads and discounts when they enter the Geofence range. The geo-based advertising system is programmed in a modular way and consists of a database, an Android application, and a web application. The system consists of five modules including selection, location, calendar, computational, display guides and databases. The advertising system takes the contents of the advertising database and, based on the selection module; it displays the advertisement on the mobile client. The selection module chooses ads that have the right spatial and temporal conditions. The location module receives the coordinate location of the user by the phone's GPS. The customer's location can be sent to the server every 10 seconds or every 5 meters, and received by the location module. The Geofence is based on the server side determined by the site management for each store. The parameters for determining the range of the Geofence include the location of the store and a radius or range (distance from the stores), which is assumed to be 400 meters by default. The time dimension determines which adverts of each store can be activated at any time and will be disabled on other dates. The owner of the business, for example, the storeowner, determines the time, in contrast to the Geofence. In the computing module, the number of advertisements sent to each user is logged. The important thing is that each ad should be sent to each customer only once and to avoid duplicate advertisements. It can be said that the computational module that stores statistical information and history of sent messages plays a significant role in the system, and if the ad has already been sent to the customer, it will prevent it from retransmission.
Results and discussion
To develop web pages for managers and business owners or stores, we used JavaScript, PHP, JQuery and Openlayer from JavaScript programming tools. The web address at http://www.geoadv.xyz is accessible online. As stated above, the site management task involves creating, deleting, or modifying the user and the location of the stores on the map, the responsibility of the business owners or stores, including the creation, deletion, or editing of the advertisements along with determine the activation time. The store page provides information and location details of the stores using Google Maps. Site administration in addition to creating a page for each store, also determines the store location on the map. By default, the radius of 400 meters considered, as a Geofence for all stores, so all customers who enter the 400-meter radius of these stores will receive ads for them. The number of people who received the ad for the stores was specified (users who viewed 1 person). Ability to remove or modify the ad is also located on the store page. In the design of the user side (customers), Android application development tools and libraries, such as the Java JDK, Android SDK, Notepad ++, and Genymotion simulator, were used. The graphical user interface of the mobile application includes the menu screen, the user registration screen (if the user first installs the application on their phone, it should log the basic information including the email, contact number, username and password in the system), and the page of the ads viewed with its account manager.
The System Usability Scale (SUS) used to measure user satisfaction and system usability, which used by many researchers for the applicability of a variety of technology products and websites (Şengel, 2013: 3248). Eighteen postgraduate students of Tehran University selected as clients. In addition, four stores selected along the customer traffic route (Laleh Park to Kooy dormitory), which each had four advertisements per day with different items such as food, clothing, and technology and ... within 4 days. Overall, the average SUS score for clients is 70%, which indicates a high level of satisfaction.
Conclusion
In this research, a citizen-oriented advertising system is based on the concept of (Geofence) and GIS tools. The system was designed with the aim of displaying ads on customers' mobile phones based on their geographic and temporal location in urban environment (District 6 of Tehran).  In addition, the usability and satisfaction of the system measured by the System Usability Scale (SUS), which achieved over 70% customer satisfaction. Proximity or local marketing using short-range wireless technology such as Bluetooth, WiFi, NFC, RFID and Bacon are relatively expensive compared to the proposed system and do not establish effective communication between customers and business owners. By tracking customers through mobile devices, business owners can send targeted ads to clients based on a precise timing and user placement within a given geographic range that is one of the key pillars of e-commerce.