Mandoe chief executive Steven Baxter says its instant app will help bricks-and-mortar retailers to combat online-only retailers. If its investment in Sydney-based tech company Mandoe Media is any indication, the telco is already taking steps towards replacing the old directories revenue with new earnings generated through the growing digital media space. Mandoe is primarily a digital signage company that uses Telstra's mobile network to deliver any type of ad content to any screen, anywhere. But its work on innovative ways to profile customer behaviours and cater content specific to them has piqued Telstra's interest. It's why Telstra made a multi-million-dollar investment in Mandoe in April 2012 to take a 25 per cent stake (which creeps to 30 per cent by 2015). At the time of Telstra's investment in Mandoe, the company was generating revenue of about $25 million a year. Last year it had doubled that to $50m with profit margins in excess of 50 per cent. Mandoe's growth has been so rapid that Telstra recouped its investment in the company within three months of its first injection of funds. Much of Mandoe's growth is being fuelled by what it calls the "instant app" that its founder and chief executive, Steven Baxter, says can be used as a tool to provide bricks-and-mortar stores with a new way to fight against the onslaught of online-only retailers. Unlike normal apps that must be downloaded and installed on a user's smartphone or tablet, the instant app installs remotely when a user connects to a WiFi hotspot. Once connected to the instant app customers can browse catalogues, daily deals and access discounts available only to users of the tool. Mr Baxter says it's a good way for bricks-and-mortar retailers to battle against cheaper, online-only stores because retailers can profile a user's buying and browsing habits, allowing them to tailor deals and discounted offers for loyal customers. It's the ultimate omni sales channel. Consumers expect you to have apps and to be tech savvy nowadays, but they still want to go into stores too. This allows bricks-and-mortar businesses to enter the tech-savvy age and offer new content and deals that are catered on a personal level to the buyer," Mr Baxter said. Each time a customer enters a store and accesses the app, their user profile is updated with information on the regular items they browse and what discounts are on offer. So next time you come into that store we know what coupons you have looked at, what parts of the catalogue. We know what is relevant to advertise to you on the screen," Mr Baxter said. The instant app has already been put to use by Coca-Cola Amatil and retail outlets Priceline and RM Williams. At Priceline, where the instant app has been rolled out to 11 stores in NSW and Victoria, the effect on sales has been immediate. There have been more than 25,000 connections to the app and redemption rates for discount coupons are more than double the industry norm. "With the instant app we have 40 per cent of customers using it when they come into the store purely because it is so simple," Mr Baxter said. The more relevant the content, the more we have found people want to use this. There is, of course, a double-edged sword when it comes to tracking sales trends and buying behaviour of customers. US intelligence agencies and some of the world's biggest tech companies, including Google, Microsoft and Apple, have been publicly castigated for their apparent complicity in sharing the private data of technology users around the world. But Mr Baxter said the company was not interested in netting personal data from users. We don't need to analyse anything about the user. It's all done through an analytics engine," Mr Baxter said. It's open authentication so you hand over nothing but your MAC address. You can't change that, anyway, because your MAC address is always sniffing for wireless networks to connect to. A MAC or Media Access Control address is a unique signature that is allocated to a device and used to identify it when connecting to WiFi or other networks. All we want to know is macro device behaviour. We want to understand what your device is doing. We don't care if your name is Steven Baxter or your email address is xyz. We want to know that your device is browsing through these coupons and redeeming these vouchers which are then scanned at the checkout," Mr Baxter said. It's not just bricks-and-mortar retailers that the instant app is being used for. Telstra is working with Mandoe to extend the service into the health sector to profile patient visits and medical histories. This is not just about retail. We are now working on ways with Telstra to get this technology into the e-health arena where its ability to monitor and profile patients could be very powerful," Mr Baxter said We need Telstra as a sales channel and Telstra needs us to be innovative. Telstra can't be nimble and we can't sell to every business in the world. But together the pairing allows us to address those together.