Cisco, Facebook Collaborate with Wi-Fi Offering to Brands’ Consumers

Cisco on Friday announced its collaboration with Facebook that helps businesses increase brand recognition and proactively target promotions and advertisements based on customer preferences and demographics using Wi-Fi.

The Cisco Connected Mobile Experience (CMX) with Facebook Wi-Fi is currently being piloted by some of the world’s most popular retailers, hotels and other public gathering spots.

This solution, coined CMX for Facebook Wi-Fi, helps improve the consumer experience, provides a quick and simple way for consumers to access Wi-Fi by checking in on Facebook, and gives businesses more opportunities to connect with their customers.

CMX for Facebook Wi-Fi also provides businesses with more likes and check-ins for their Facebook Page, increasing the demographic data on their customers, so they can better serve them.

Also announced today is the expansion of the Unified Access portfolio with the introduction of the Catalyst 3650 access switch designed to accelerate the convergence of wired and wireless networks and the Aironet 3700 802.11ac wireless access point for managing next-generation mobile devices in high density environments. The CMX for Facebook Wi-Fi solution is built on this Unified Access architecture.

CMX for Facebook Wi-Fi operates in such ways that a consumer connect to the network of a participating business, open their browser on any mobile device or laptop, and a Facebook check-in page appears and after checking in, consumers are directed to the business’ Facebook Page, where they can receive the latest information about the venue.

Facebook provides aggregated anonymous insights about people’s activity on their Page, including demographics such as age, gender, and city; businesses can analyse this data to better understand their customer’s preferences and deliver targeted promotions – ultimately improving their advertising and marketing campaigns and driving more check-ins through Facebook Wi-Fi will also increase a business’ brand exposure, by increasing the number of stories generated about them, and will make businesses more discoverable in Facebook’s Graph Search.