I’ve been reading about proximity beacons (or iBeacons) for the last couple of years. From a digital signage perspective, you can use beacons to trigger personalized content on screens to promote products and services that are directly relevant to the viewer. However, competing standards and plarforms (mainly iOS & Android) meant beacons were still mostly a curiosity. There were few big deployments to speak of, until now.
Today, the Rite Aid pharmacy retail chain announced it is deploying beacons in more than 4,500 US stores. It will be interesting to see if other retailers jump in and start deploying beacons as part of their marketing strategies.