Forget about having me book an airline ticket, I’ll spend a week on Expedia with all those awesome options to work with… well what if I try these days, in to these airports within a 50 miles radius, with these times… now I wonder what will happen if I can try to arbitrage either two one ways, or throw in that trip to Denver next month trying to cross book that return with this departure using the same flight numbers… what fun!

So you can only imagine my excitement when I heard about what a company ReserveX was looking to do tying together location based marketing with yield management designed for tickets sellers. Sloshing around in a big ol bucket of data trying to maximize revenue by continually re-pricing to match supply and demand is one thing, but to introduce real time proactive mobile marketing and trying to figure out how the completely new dimension of proximity will fit in seems pretty damn interesting.

 I suppose the proximity aspect is not truly new, since folks booking airlines flights have always had the option to fly into nearby but less convenient airports, and the sellers have long tried to put a value on that. But you have to think that physical proximity between a consumer and the goods they’re after is a great filter, if for no other reason than it’s inherently convenient and creates the least amount of effort… it could surely be a huge factor for all sorts of purchase and pricing decisions beyond tickets.

The ReserveX opportunity is seemingly pretty straight forward, just like the airlines, entertainment venues want to put as many bottoms in seats as possible. When Madonna comes into town this is not a problem, but at an industry wide level, venue fill rates are well below capacity. Right now it’s not always easy for a consumer to discover what and where events are happening and if there are still tickets available… while at the same time venues large and small are leaving many seats un filled.

Many of the large players like Ticketmaster, Live Nation and Tickets.com have developed systems to allow other application developers to query their inventory and to buy tickets, in an attempt to reach a larger potential audience of ticket buyers. But ReserveX is taking things a step further by doing a few more things. Not only are they aggregating all those source of tickets into a single place, from guys like Ticketmaster and Live Nation down to your local jazz bar, but they’re also developing a yield management capability which will allow venues to better fill and monetize those seats.

What is uniquely interesting about yield management for entertainment venue tickets sales versus say airlines is that there is the new opportunity to use location, including proximity to a venue, as an important new factor in the equation. Since yield management typically is used when inventory is perishable, and the value goes to zero at a particular point in time, the time element has always been a key part of the yield management equation. Now time can be paired with place to even better determine customers who may be most receptive to buying tickets, and to offer those who are most easily able to act with special last minute pricing or offers through their mobile devices.

Pair this with that Apple physical meets digital affiliate marketing patent, and pretty soon you might have your local bar offering you a free drink to book your tickets to tomorrow nights nearby Jay Z concert through your phone from his bar stools… not only for the potential repeat bar business, but for the direct affiliate fee revenue.

Juniper research estimates that by 2014 there will be 15 billion mobile tickets is use. And ReserveX is hoping that more than a few of these will be tickets to check out your favorite indie rock band, purchased a few hours before the event at a 50% discount, from the comfort of a bar stool, a mere ½ mile from the venue.