The proliferation of mobile handheld devices in combination with the technological advancements in mobile computing has led to a number of innovative services that make use of the location information available on such devices. Traditional yellow pages websites have now moved to mobile platforms, giving the opportunity to local businesses and potential, near-by, customers to connect. These platforms can offer an affordable advertisement channel to local businesses. One of the mechanisms offered by location-based social networks (LBSNs) allows businesses to provide special offers to their customers that connect through the platform. We collect a large time-series dataset from approximately 14 million venues on Foursquare and analyze the performance of such campaigns using randomization techniques and (non-parametric) hypothesis testing with statistical bootstrapping. Our main finding indicates that this type of promotions are not as effective as anecdote success stories might suggest. Finally, we design classifiers by extracting three different types of features that are able to provide an educated decision on whether a special offer campaign for a local business will succeed or not both in short and long term.
Location-based advertising (LBS) through mobile phones aims to remove geographical and information barriers between consumers and marketplace offerings by reaching shoppers when they are proximate to advertisers’ locations. Though such contextual advertising seems convenient, it may also be perceived as intrusive. This paper examines the effectiveness of such “convenient” advertising through an experiment which manipulates the location in terms of a private – public dimension. The results suggest that this location dimension and what the recipients are doing (context) affect their perceptions of usefulness of the ad, store evaluations, and willingness to respond to the offer. The findings are discussed in terms of how, when and where to advertise via mobile devices.  A process for purifying crude substituted phthalic anhydrides, e.g. 4-methylphthalic anhydride, derived from the dehydrogenation in the presence of bromine of a Diels-Alder addition product of a conjugated diene, e.g. isoprene, and maleic anhydride. In this process, a mixture of the crude, liquid substituted phthalic anhydride, e.g. 4-methylphthalic anhydride, and an alkali is heated to a temperature effective to reduce the impurities present in the crude substituted phthalic anhydride. Suitable alkalis can include sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate. Mild alkalis are heated to a higher temperature, e.g. 130 DEG C. for sodium carbonate, whereas stronger alkalis are heated to a lower temperature, e.g. 90 DEG C. for sodium hydroxide.