Beacons may be small pieces of hardware, but their footprint is only getting bigger as more brands sign on to use them to reach consumers via their smartphones when they’re in stores and other locations.

Mobiquity Networks today announced a deal with General Growth Properties to provide beacon-based advertising services to GGP’s 120 malls which include several popular shopping centers in big cities across the U.S. such as Water Tower Place in Chicago, Glendale Galleria in Los Angeles and Ala Moana Center in Honolulu.

Beacons are small pieces of hardware that can be placed anywhere and that send messages such as promotions and discounts to consumers who move past the beacon if they have the company’s app downloaded and have opted in to receive messages.

With this agreement, Mobiquity Networks now has deals to place beacons in more than 475 malls that together attract nearly 400 million monthly shopping visits and account for as much as $500 billion in annual retail spending, Mobiquity Networks says.

This most recent deal follows an October contract Mobiquity Networks announced with online movie ticketing website MovieTickets.com. With that program, when a movie fan who has chosen to receive alerts through the MovieTickets.com app walks into a participating mall and past a beacon, she will receive advertising and digital content about upcoming releases on her smartphone. The aim is to drive consumer awareness about new movies and boost ticket sales.

MovieTickets.com sells movie tickets from 240 theater chains, representing over 28,000 screens worldwide. The company sells tickets in 21 countries and territories including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Ireland, Argentina, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic and the Caribbean.

More businesses, retailers and universities are adding beacons to their marketing mix.

United Airlines Inc. for example, is piloting beacons at Newark Liberty International Airport. A traveler can open the United app and see a map of the airport with a blue dot showing where she is. That lets the person see exactly where she is in the airport and what’s around her, such as  restaurants and shops.

Universities including the University of Oklahoma and University of Wisconsin are also trying out the technology. The University of Oklahoma library deployed 400 beacons in four campus buildings to send location-specific messages and give directions to students. And the University of Wisconsin’s athletic department relaunched its Badger Gameday app to send location-specific messages to football fans while they are watching the game in person.

Retailers such as Target Corp. are also testing the technology.

However, while beacon technology has garnered buzz for its super precise location-based marketing, beacons are not yet a mainstream tool, says Hari Gottipati, an independent tech consultant. “I go to a lot of malls, but I don’t see as many beacons as I expected,” he said. “It’s very disappointing.” Gottipati is a proponent of the technology, which he now believes will be adopted more readily inside smart homes. There, for example, a beacon might turn off the lights when it senses that someone has left a room.

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