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Comment by wklauss | Hacker News Reader

I doubt this is a great opportunity for businesses other than having an image of the storefront in the app. Geolocation range is wide enough that players don't need to go inside the store or be in front of it in order to have access to the Pokéstop. I guess for areas with low density of commercial storefronts could attract some foot traffic, but doubt it will be that significant in long term.

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It worked today for my coworkers and I. We were walking by a poke-stop that's beside a restaurant. One of the servers stepped out and said if we stopped in to eat he'd throw lures at the poke-stop. It got seven of us to stay and sit and eat.

The action range is 40m in both Ingress and PGo for now. Ingress players have long suggested restaurants can benefit the most from such stops. In fact there are several locales that contain 2 or 3 of these stops/portals we favor for farming gear and they are visited weekly by both sides. Most of the team is seated, eating/drinking during the event as in many cases you must be inside to access all 3, and it's preferrable to stay out of the rain/sun. PGo is far more popular than Ingress ever was, so this would be significant revenue for the establishment.

Seems to work great for the local Dunkin Donuts where I live. You have to enter the parking lot to get the PokeStop, then you see their store, and are probably more likely yo come in and get a donut or coffee. I've grabbed more coffee from them since. It's basically like free advertising for them since people have to go walk by their store and actively think about going in or not vs. never entering the parking lot and maybe not noticing it. Sure the free advertising won't pull in every customer, but it will increase the average number of customers who come in.

I think the inevitable future will be more integrated than just walking past a storefront. Think virtual poke-prizes with your happy meal. Training gyms at coffee-shops. Battle night at your pizza shop. Plus the inevitable market for items Steam style. I can see this getting much, much bigger.

I'm imagining a future where there are multiple location based games and local businesses will need a way to keep track of all the games and which ones drive foot-traffic.

I'm also imagining a startup that manages all of a businesses "in game" listings so they don't have to deal with going in and out of apps all day.

Would work for malls and fairs. There's people using lures (that attract Pokemon for all player around) and selling lemonade already.

Businesses like Walmart or Target have large enough buildings you'd have to go inside. Same goes for malls probably. Not everyone who goes to the pokéstop is going to spend money, but even if 1% of people who visit buy something, the pokéstop is still generating far more value than any other kind of online ad.

Maybe put a physical QR code in the window or inside the store that needs to be scanned to get access to the Pokestop?

However, I'm not really sure business really want to advertise to people whose intent is just to collect virtual Pokemon.

Maybe they could somehow tie real-world purchase to in-app tokens, i.e. buy $10 worth of stuff at some store and receive 100 Pokecoins.

Eh, it's not THAT wide, you definitely have to be within sight of it

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