Thanks to recent announcements by Apple and Twitter, mobile advertising has received significant attention in the past week. Apple, of course, announced iAd and Twitter has announced its goal to focus on mobile as well as the company's revenue plans. However, buried in both announcements was the incorporation of geolocation to include a new variable to the advertising equation, adding a whole other layer of relevancy.

Publishers have been hearing about geolocation for months now, yet drawing a line from location-based services to revenue has remained elusive for most companies. However, even by Internet standards, geolocation technology is still young and most people are still experimenting with possible uses.

We scanned the web for companies deploying geolocation to help get a better idea of how the technology is being used. We also outline ways in which publishers can incorporate geolocation into their own applications.

What others are doing

Thus far, the two big entities in the geolocation space are Foursquare and Gowalla. The companies fought to the death at SXSW and are leading the charge in geolocation innovation. While neither company is bringing in much revenue for themselves, they are using their services to help their partners, which could include you.

Foursquare

Foursquare has leveraged its “check-ins” in two ways: content partnerships with brands like the Financial Times and Bravo, and analytics and coupons for restaurants. For example, The Financial Times has used geolocation to award those who check in at financial centers of business schools with a code that allows users to bypass FT’s paywall, thus helping give free trials of the product to target users.

Foursquare also partnered with Bravo to offer badges to users that check in at places that have a connection to Bravo TV shows and personalities like dining at one of the Top Chef's restaurants. Foursquare has also partnered with the New York Times, AskMen.com and Starbucks among many others.

Gowalla

Gowalla, on the other hand, aims to make checking in more of a game where users can exchange virtual items by “dropping” and “picking” things at each spot. The service is slowly tiptoeing into translating these goods into real items. For example, Gowalla scattered 500 virtual New Jersey Nets tickets at New Jersey and New York sports bars and other locations. If a Gowalla user checked in at one of these secret locations, they would receive a code for a free pair of basketball tickets.

Twitter

Yesterday, Twitter announced that it will not only geocode tweets but assign them to “places on interest.” Meaning your tweets will not only be recognized as a string of coordinates or by neighborhood but also as taking place at a specific venue. So a tweet at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue will be recognized as coming from The White House.

As Twitter rolls out additional advertising features, the “places of interest” feature could expand on publishers’ geolocation advertising options.

Build your own 

If you think geolocation can play a role in the advertising or marketing strategy of your business, but you’d rather not be locked in another company’s system, there are services available that allow you to build your own geolocation application. 

SimpleGeo 

SimpleGeo aims to aggregate and standardize data from a variety of location-based services so developers can include that information in mashups, applications and on websites. The company will even store your data on its own services.

“There’s lots of ways this data can be applied, it just depends on what’s the right use case and how do we make it work,” said Matt Galligan, co-founder of SimpleGeo. 

Galligan said he could see media companies building a Foursquare clone or automatically scanning article content to deliver location-specific content or advertising.

DoubleDutch

Local outlets might want to consider DoubleDutch, the service that allows businesses to create a white-label Foursquare. The company will handle all of the heavy lifting such as app store submission and even allows users to develop their own badges.

So, say, the Boston Globe could create an application that rewards its readers for checking in to Boston bars and restaurants. Its sales staff could then include coupons and other specials to those locations as part of a larger sales effort.

Issues

Geolocation hasn’t been without its drawbacks. Below are some controversial facets of the emerging technology.

Apple limits geolocation use – The company recently took the step of banning the use of geolocation specifically for advertising. As Wired points out, the move is not to protect consumers but to give an advantage to Apple’s own iAd network.

Pleaserob.me – This site made waves earlier this year for publicly displaying when people checked in away from home. The site’s founders thought that making check-ins public invited people to burglarize their homes and risked the safety of users. Though the site has been discontinued, its message remains: be careful with your location data.

Foursquare cheating - Anytime you make something into a game, people are bound to cheat. One man was even able to become "mayor" of the North Pole with some clever API hacks. Foursquare has begun cracking down on such deception, but the lesson? Geolocation data isn't always accurate.