Today, Brightkite has launched what it calls the first augmented reality advertising solution in the U.S. Brightkite has partnered with Best Buy to run augmented reality advertisements within the Brightkite app for Android and the iPhone through the end of December.
For the last few months, the company has allowed its users to see what their friends are doing around them -- as well as photos of and comments about nearby places. Now the company is just extending that idea to its natural conclusion: advertising.
By using targeted information -- like names of places you frequently visit and activities you frequently engage in -- geo-targeted marketing has the potential to be really effective.
Of course, it also has the potential to be annoying and invasive. The key to these types of campaigns will be to make the information easy to ignore if necessary and for opt-out clauses to be readily available.