Hold The Phone! - Third Screen Media
March 2007

The Game Changer: A Carrier’s View on <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Mobile Advertising

In Third Screen Media’s ongoing byline series for The Messenger, we’ve looked at the growing mobile advertising ecosystem, its opportunities, pitfalls and success stories.  In an effort to paint the entire landscape, we’ve taken the opportunity to provide a closer look at each of the integral players in mobile advertising to give you a better idea of the unique role each plays in making it all happen.

First we discussed the content provider—or publisher—in our January interview with Matt Jones, director of mobile strategy and operations for Gannett Digital—which includes Gannett’s 113 domestic local print and broadcast properties and USA TODAY.  As Matt noted, publishers are now in droves seeking to establish and expand their presence on the mobile platform, and advertising has become an enabler in their efforts.

From the issue of on and off-deck advertising to standards and new delivery technologies, we’ve gained the unique perspective of one key component of the ecosystem. And now, another player in mobile advertising whose efforts have placed the phones in our pockets and have ushered in the era of mobile devices: the carrier.

This month we chatted with Richard Williams, executive director, digital media operations for Verizon, to hear the carrier side of the story and to understand what the future holds for those players partnering with carriers to realize their mobile advertising goals.

Q. 2006 was the year of mobile advertising’s awakening for brands and publishers. The carriers, as a whole, were cautious in their approach. What can we expect of Verizon in 2007 as companies look to partner with you in mobile advertising?

A. As the operator of an extensive network and responsible for the mobile experience of millions of consumers each day, Verizon takes its role very seriously. We must be cognizant of each individual’s privacy, experience and overall satisfaction with their mobile phone service.  For this reason, Verizon chose to partake in smaller, exploratory advertising trials with brands off of our main deck, or entry portal.

With that said, we recognize the enormous potential mobile advertising provides and seek to expand our partnerships and business relationships with technology providers, brands and publishers to ensure that. Verizon plans to increase its mobile advertising initiatives in 2007.

Q.  What are your thoughts on the mobile subscriber’s perception of mobile advertising?

A. Our customers value their experience on the third screen, as the mobile phone is their most personal device. It goes everywhere. While advertising stands to delivery relevant content to the consumer, we want to be sure its done in a way that does not impede the delivery of content.

Early on in our mobile advertising trials, we conducted surveys and focus groups with our valued subscriber participants. The trial campaigns garnered high click-through rates and we received positive responses from the individuals, including no calls to our customer response center.

Not unlike the Internet, the consumer expects to see advertising on the third screen, so a great majority of the mobile audience is expecting and accepting of mobile advertising.  As an opt-in experience, mobile advertising is an experience where the consumer has control of the messages he or she wishes to receive. At the end of the day, they don’t have to click on the advertisements, but should they wish to, it’s all within their control and discretion.

Q. What plans does Verizon have to implement advertising?

A. At Verizon, we’re always seeking to provide the best possible experience for our subscribers.  Over the course of the past year, we’ve conducted mobile advertising trials to better understand how the consumer would act and receive advertising.

We have plans to implement advertising throughout the Verizon mobile Internet offering, including the portal’s homepage, sections and article pages.

Q. What challenges do you face in providing advertising on your mobile properties?

A.  We always are aware of our subscriber experience and want to ensure this experience is non-intrusive.  In addition, the advertising should add value and the ads should be properly targeted. Our goal is not to provide diaper ads to the 18-24 year old male demographic. Rather, the advertisements should reflect the needs and interests of our unique subscribers and should never disrupt Verizon’s reliable network.

Q. What is your definition of best practices for mobile advertising?

A. On the third screen, there is only a small amount of space with which to work, so an ad needs to be small and shouldn’t encroach upon the content the subscriber is seeking. While video, SMS and downloadable applications all provide opportunities for advertising to the mobile subscriber, our initial focus will be on display advertising in VZW - our mobile Internet offering. 

Verizon already works closely with the MMA—Mobile Marketing Association—to ensure that campaigns on its mobile properties adhere to its standards.  The frequency of a campaign and its appropriate targeting are just two important factors that must play into the planning of each mobile advertising campaign. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

MOBILE ADVERTISING: From the trenches

Our industry owes a lot to the executives at companies like Third Screen Media, AdMob, Sprint Nextel, Millennium Media, JumpTap, Enpocket and others whose entrepreneurial efforts have pushed mobile advertising to the front of today's headlines.  While each of these companies is trailblazing into the market with a slightly different approach and strategy, one thing that I suspect they’ve all learned, as have we, is that building an ad sponsored mobile service and selling advertising on mobile phones is not as easy as everyone thinks. 

Before trying to figure out how we can all work together to move the needle in 2007, it’s important to first appreciate the clear schism in the advertiser landscape between the two distinct groups of companies that are looking to advertise on mobile phones.

1.  Advertisers Offering <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Mobile Content

Firstly, we have the companies that want to advertise on our properties to bring customers one click away from their point of sale.  This includes mobile game publishers, mobile music vendors, and other mobile application creators.  For these companies, mobile advertising is all about speeding up the process of customer acquisition and their ad spending is driven in a measured fashion whereby the cost to acquire the customer (CPM Rate / Average CTR) must over time be less than the lifetime value of the same customer (net monthly customer EBITDA x Average Lifespan).

For these lifetime economics to really start making sense, CPM rates need to move below the $5 range (compared to the current rack rate of $50).  In 2007, the companies that will enable this category of advertiser are the ones that can facilitate reverse auctions, blind auctions, and the ability to bid on search words and targeted pieces of inventory in a large scale through an on-deck presence.

But are these the type of advertisers that the industry really wants and needs?  Isn't this type of advertising going to create a merry-go-round race-to-the-bottom where I sell you my unused inventory and you in-turn sell me your unused inventory and we collectively put downward pricing pressure on the industry's ad rates as a whole?  And from a macro-economic perspective, how big can this type of advertising really get?  Will it not be functionally capped by the marketing budgets of the companies that excel in the mobile space?

And beyond the economic issues, how do mobile operators feel about dodgy off-deck content providers buying premium placement on their portals to ensnare customers into a recurring $10/month subscription through a free (oops I mean 'zero cost') ringtone offering?  Will each ad need to be vetted and approved prior to publication to avoid an increase in customer care calls?  How do portal managers feel about competing portals advertising on their prime real estate with the goal of permanently diverting customers away?  And in this vein, aren't all mobile application providers essentially competing with each other for the same time-slice and value added service spend from the end-user? 

It should be interesting to see how these issues work themselves out over the upcoming year.  But as you can see above, at first glance there are several strategic and economic issues related to courting this group of advertisers.

2.  Everyone Else

The second group of mobile advertisers are companies from outside the mobile industry looking to increase the awareness of their products and services in a highly intimate and personal setting. These companies have begun to understand that a mobile phone placed 8 inches from your face is a better platform to inculcate a message and brand into your thought patterns than a 42-inch plasma TV situated 8 feet away in your living room.

But selling these companies on the concept of mobile advertising and getting them to spend more than just their 'trial budgets', which admittedly can be in the $10s of millions per annum, is a long and challenging sales cycle.  Budgets are crafted on a quarterly and sometimes annual basis, with countless intermediaries, media buyers and agencies soaking up the ad spend along the way.  Selling to these advertisers is more of an art and less of a science, and the sales process depends heavily on pre-existing relationships and coming up with creative custom ad-units for each separate campaign.  This custom creative services approach holds far more weight than the technical details of an ad serving platform, the financial implications of CPM rates, or access to mobile advertising inventory through an online user interface.

On this front, look to those companies that have pre-existing Madison Avenue relationships to be the big benefactors of these advertisers.  But it should also be noted that the highly customized nature of selling to these advertisers poses a challenge to the revenue scalability of the mobile advertising industry.  Consider this: if Google had to customize a pitch and concoct a new ad unit for each campaign, would its revenues have scaled as quickly?

It should be interesting to see how the interactive agencies reposition themselves for mobile in the next year, if we can work together as an industry to solve the scalability issues, and if mobile advertising can move out of the 'trial' budgets and into the 'essential' budgets for these traditional advertisers.

But back to my initial conjecture - even with all the attention and excitement in the mobile advertising space, it is still quite difficult to sell a mobile ad in the scale needed to build an ad-sponsored mobile service, and to do it in a fashion that doesn’t cannibalize the traffic or customer retention of your core mobile business.

I certainly don't want to go on record as the industry's stick in the mud – especially given the latest analyst reports suggesting mobile advertising will be a $4 billion industry in 2011.  Quite the contrary, I am extremely bullish about mobile advertising and the potential financial implications for all of us in the value chain.  

But I believe that there are still several key economic and strategic issues that need to be ironed out before the industry can scale.  And for these issues to be resolved expeditiously, it is important that we work together as an industry and avoid falling into the trap of being irrationally exuberant about mobile advertising.  After all, it wasn’t too long ago that analysts were saying mobile advertising would be a $6 billion dollar industry in 2005 (source: eMarketer).

Frederick Ghahramani
Founder
AirG
[email protected]<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Hold The Phone! - Third Screen Media
February 2007, Written for the MMA Mobile Messenger

In A Publisher’s World Mobile Advertising Reigns Supreme

In November, Third Screen Media’s “Hold The Phone!” column introduced the mobile advertising ecosystem by highlighting the evolution of the industry.  In the coming months, we will take a closer look at each of the major players involved—including carriers, agencies and advertisers, technology providers, publishers and the mobile subscribers—to show how each entity affects the industry and what part each will play in the overall growth of the ecosystem.

For our first ecosystem profile, we’ll look at the integral role of the publisher. As we mentioned back in November, in every ecosystem there are costs associated with delivering value and for mobile content providers the good news is that advertising revenue can offset these costs.  In addition to WAP sites, publishers are now exploring the viability of video and downloadable applications as advertising vehicles. With all the attractive possibilities, publishers are looking forward to a variety of off-deck and on-deck advertising revenue opportunities, along with the need for scalability, ad standards and creative executions that will delight and entertain the consumers in the ecosystem.

This month, we sat down with <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Matt Jones, director of mobile strategy and operations for Gannett Digital—which includes Gannett’s 113 domestic local print and broadcast properties and USA TODAY—to get the publisher’s perspective on the mobile advertising industry.

Q: How would you describe the mobile market as we move into 2007?
A: Right now, an ever increasing number of traditional publishers are eager to extend their properties and content into the mobile environment.  This willingness to explore the mobile advertising ecosystem has resulted in a marked increase in mobile-ready content of all types.  The market continues to expand, and that’s in advance of even more, soon-to-be more widely distributed capabilities that show tremendous promise…like search, local and video applications, to name a few.

USA TODAY has contributed considerably to the growth of mobile advertising by making steady gains in enlisting new advertisers to this new medium. We have consistently maintained above industry average click-through rates for our inventory.  So not only are we seeing an increase in size and popularity, we’re seeing first-hand that the medium is really working and consumers are truly warming to navigating the mobile Web.

Q: What has helped you be so successful thus far?
A: USA TODAY is one of the most well-known and well-trafficked sources of news and information in every medium we enter: first print, then online, and now mobile.  Part of it is the overall strength of our brand.  Another part of it is building and partnering to produce innovative products that meet and exceed the demands of our users. 

Q:  Are you subscription based?
A:  While our print version is based on subscription and newsstand pricing models, our mobile Web site is entirely ad-supported.   Likewise for our text offering where we partner with 4INFO.  We do sell USA TODAY Mobile Sudoku—an extremely popular game title—under a subscription plan.

Q:  Have you considered a subscription model for news content?
A:  We considered this option several years ago and determined that the audience would be limited by a subscription.  Mobile phone users already pay several subscriptions for ring tones and other content on top of their data plan fees.  There is a limit to the number of subscriptions that a consumer is willing to pay.  We believe that in the long run, we are attracting more users to our content with an ad model.

Q:  What is the benefit of the advertising model?
A:  The biggest benefit around mobile advertising is it allows us to produce, maintain and continually enhance products, like our mobile Web site, without charging a subscription to our users.

Q:  Have you seen an increase in traffic on your mobile site over the past year?
A:  All our mobile efforts (mobile Web, text messaging and games) showed significant traffic gains in 2006. All our usage metrics, such as pageviews, sessions and unique users, showed year-over-year gains up several hundred percent.

Q:  On-Deck or Off-Deck?  Which has seen the most growth?
A:  USA TODAY is lucky to posses a widely recognized brand, which is often viewed as an essential read for a mobile or traveling audience.  Customers know they are going to get a consistently great user experience on all our platforms (print, Web and mobile) and that has paved the way for our off-deck gains.

Q:  How do you build the on-deck carrier relationships?  Do you have dedicated staff to manage the carrier relationships?
A:  All the major carriers are partners with USA TODAY.  We don’t have dedicated resources for that area of our business, but nonetheless we spend a good deal of time working to maximize the relationship for both sides.

Q:  What tactics are you implementing to promote your mobile content beyond the on-deck carrier links?
A:  We have dabbled in a few other promotional tactics, including sponsoring trade events like CTIA, print advertising and applications like “wap push” via a short code (Text USA to 59523)  Our main objective here is customer awareness of our mobile offerings.

Q: Where is the mobile advertising industry headed?
A: Mobile is a powerful medium, but it’s still young.  Like any young medium, it’s going through growing pains and needs more widely implemented and understood ad standards, more inventory, more advertisers and a greater diversity and creativity of ad units.  It took the online world years to develop these standards, but people want and expect the same for mobile…right now.

I also see an increase in demand for direct-to-consumer advertising to promote off-deck content.  More brands in a variety of industries (automotive, travel and consumer packaged goods) will build persistent mobile sites. Moving forward, you’re also going to see for a demand for advertising rights agreements with wireless carriers.  The medium is growing fast and it’s going to have to grow up fast, too.

Look for the “Hold The Phone!” feature again in March as we highlight another major player involved in the mobile advertising ecosystem, the advertising agency.  As more brands realize the reach and reward of a well-developed campaign, the role of the agency becomes ever more important for those companies seeking a larger mobile presence.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

The Mobile Advertising Ecosystem-Part I
November 2006
Submitted by Third Screen Media
Written by Tom Burgess, CEO

This article will be the first of a five part series.

One of the disadvantages of being first in a market is that there is plenty of disorder and chaos.  When Third Screen started in mobile advertising, we knew who all the players should be, we knew that a platform was necessary to connect them and we knew it was going to be big.  So not so surprisingly, the players are in, we have a platform and the industry numbers are growing every quarter.  What we didn’t realize until this past year is the way the business would evolve.  Essentially a mobile advertising ecosystem has formed with a lot of interaction by a community not only of companies, but of consumers.

Our ecosystem is comprised of these entities:



As in every ecosystem there is a lifecycle, but instead of a food chain, mobile advertising really is more of a value chain.  At any point in time, each member of this community brings something to the process to enable it to move forward.  What drives value to these parts of the ecosystem?  And how will it sustain and grow?  For now, let’s look at the individual components of our ecosystem.

First there are the advertisers.  What started as testing and trials in mobile campaigns has turned into a groundswell as budgets for mobile advertising have increased over 300 percent in one year.  With research and measurement being critical to advertisers, studies have validated the mobile channel for some very specific objectives such as engagement and branding.  And what will keep advertisers healthy in the ecosystem?  Ad standardization will be key and the MMA has played a big role in working on this topic.  In addition, the maturing market will be able to offer advertisers lower production costs and easy replication and scalability. With consumers showing a clear interest in mobile ads, advertisers are looking up the value chain to the enablers and aggregators for more premium content and to publishers to leverage cross-media relationships.

The next piece of our value chain is the ad enablers.  Connecting the advertisers to the publishers has resulted in significant off-deck penetration with average $30-$50 CPMs for WAP and average 3-5 percent click-through rates.  But for the mobile marketing ecosystem to grow and thrive, the enablers know that the market needs the same kind of technology and service solutions that work well in online and traditional print and broadcast advertising. Enablers are essentially the diplomats of the ecosystem, facilitating and enabling advertising management and delivery, working with third party research firms and the analyst community to help define the market, participating in the dialogue about how the ad rights between carriers and content providers will be monitored and looking at the advantages to the ecosystem of carriers making targeting data accessible to advertisers and publishers.

Then there are the publishers.  In every ecosystem there are costs associated with delivering value - in biology-based ecosystem the costs are food, water and air.  For publishers the costs are in the development required to extend their properties into the mobile channel and the good news is that advertising revenue can offset these costs. Publishers are also exploring the growing interest in and viability of video and downloadable applications as advertising vehicles. With all the attractive possibilities, publishers are looking forward to a variety of off-deck and on-deck advertising revenue opportunities, along with the need for scalability, ad standards and creative executions that will delight and entertain the consumers in the ecosystem.

Carriers serve a dual role in our ecosystem as both content publisher and distribution network.   As a distribution network, the carriers’ role in the mobile market is an important one; they have a lot of valuable data.  Although the data is not personally identifiable to an individual subscriber, in aggregate this data means they can provide better targeting of messages for advertisers, appropriate ads for consumers and still allow the carriers to maintain a guardian role.  Because carriers consider themselves the subscribers’ advocate, they, while enthusiastic and optimistic, are proceeding cautiously with advertising roll-outs on their networks.  With initial (and carefully managed) on-deck trials achieving good results and consumer feedback positive, carriers are now looking at business and revenue models to make mobile advertising viable.  With advertisers creating demand in the value chain and publishers with plenty of supply, it’s clear that there is a market that will be financially attractive to the entire ecosystem in the very near future.

In the end, this young ecosystem looks energetic with much enthusiasm from the whole community.  As it grows, changes and adapts, we will be able to say we were there in the beginning.  In the coming months, we will be talking more about each of our ecosystem members and how we anticipate they will and can influence the growth and impact of mobile advertising.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Advertisements on Phones-Admob CEO Talk with mytreo.net
October 15, 2006, mytreo.net
Submitted to the MMA by AdMob

To View Direct Article, please click HERE.

AdMob is poised to change the mobile internet, slightly and drastically, by enabling text advertising. It's a slight change since there will likely be just a line of text added to mobile sites. It could be a drastic change when more and more sites see the potential of advertising with mobile users in mind and create mobile sites we all love. With its recent financial backing, AdMob looks like they’re here to stay.

Omar Hamoui, AdMob’s Founder and CEO, spoke with mytreo.net and explained how AdMob works.

mytreo.net: Can you tell me a little about your service?

AdMob: AdMob is a mobile ad network, advertisements across mobile websites. We allow mobile web publishers, companies who are operating mobile sites to run ads on their sites and advertisers to reach that.

mytreo.net: How does this work? How does this advertising happen?

AdMob: From a site’s perspective or from an advertiser’s perspective or both?

mytreo.net: Both please.

AdMob: We can start from a partner’s perspective. They would come by AdMob, register, and then they would get some code they could drop onto their site. And essentially ads would start running. And from the advertiser’s perspective, they have a text ad and they select what channels they’d like to run their ad on. They can select the News channel or the Portals channel or the Entertainment channel. And they select what they’d like to pay per click because it is a per click model. Then ads start running across the channels that they’ve bid on.

mytreo.net: Will there be a limit on sites as to how many ads they’ll run?

AdMob: Sites are running one ad per page. We don’t set limits on the sites, but I don’t know of any running more than one ad. I just think from a usability perspective and also with it in mind that these are per click ads that owners want to encourage usability and not have people feel like they’re being bogged down with advertising.

mytreo.net: As a mobile user I think it would be nice not to have a whole bunch of them on there.

AdMob: Exactly. And out of one hundred and fifty to one hundred and sixty I don’t know of any that have more than one ad per page.

mytreo.net: Can you tell me who a few of your partners are?

AdMob: Yes. In the Community section we have sites like Ebay and Mocospace. In Entertainment there’s Mobile MTV. We have couple in Portals like Click4WAP and Techxcell. We have a Contextual Search channel, Google is one of the sites running there. (http://www.AdMob.com/network.php)

mytreo.net: How does one create this kind of an ad?

AdMob: You come to AdMob and you type the text of your ad. You type the location your ad should go to. You can also create a mini-landing page if you don’t have a WAP site. Then you bid. It’s like a 5 minute process to create an ad.

mytreo.net: Was there anything else you wanted to add at this point?

AdMob: I think just generally say since you come from a Treo site that we’re really cognizant of the fact that the Treo is well suited for mobile web browsing. Part of what we’re doing is trying to make the availability of content on the mobile web more compelling. I think Treo owners and users will probably be excited about that.

mytreo.net: So you think that there are sites that haven’t had mobile sites before that will create a mobile site now that this is available?

AdMob: That’s what we’re hoping. Part of the idea behind the company is to act as a catalyst for mobile Internet and mobile content in general. Part of that hope and part of what we’re shooting for is to attract big content providers who don’t have mobile sites yet and to have them move on to a mobile platform.

mytreo.net: For me, I think it’s about time some of them do.

AdMob: I agree.

AdMob is being hailed as the “Google of Mobile”. Anyone who has used Google’s pay per click advertising will be immediately familiar with AdMob’s design. The company announced it’s extending the $20 free advertising promotion.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Mobile Web Advertising Revisited
By Laura Marriott | November 2, 2006 | ClickZ    

To View Direct Article, please click HERE.

Perhaps one of the most talked about initiatives in the mobile marketing space is mobile advertising. And though I recently wrote a column on the subject, given the excitement around it I think it's time for a brief update focused on the mobile Web.

In the U.S. market, advertising is roughly a $300 billion annual industry. There are over 200 million wireless subscribers in the U.S. with high penetration (over 70 percent) in most urban centers. The mobile device, always on, always available, presents a unique opportunity for marketers to engage and interact with consumers like never before. Given this channel's uniqueness and ability to create the long sought-after one-to-one dialogue with consumers, the expected reach and effect of mobile advertising is, and will continue to be, significant.

Although mobile advertising is being tested in all mobile media areas, including mobile Web, mobile video and TV, and mobile downloads and messaging, the most predominant form is currently mobile Web.

So let's talk about mobile Web and what that means. Mobile Web (or WAP) enables a subscriber to access the Internet through mobile-optimized sites from a mobile device. Mobile Web provides access to a variety of news, information, and entertainment sites, much like what subscribers find in the wired world. For publishers, the mobile Web environment provides an opportunity for brands to extend their reach to consumers through a highly targeted personal device.

How do you buy mobile Web advertising? It's similar to buying advertising on the Internet. Mobile Web banner impressions can be purchased by CPM and can be bought either from publishers who maintain their own mobile Web sites or through a mobile ad network. And contrary to many published comments on mobile advertising, there's inventory available. What's unique about mobile advertising is that due to devices' varied sizes, mobile Web banners are optimized to fit the handset the ad is viewed on. Publishers often request multiple mobile Web banner sizes to ensure multiple devices can be supported.

Critical to the development of the mobile advertising industry are guidelines and best practices for the mobile Web advertising experience. The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) launched the first mobile advertising guidelines in September 2005 and continues to update the guidelines in response to changing trends. What's helped ensure the success and adoption of these guidelines is the MMA Mobile Advertising Committee comprises leaders across the ecosystem: wireless carriers, publishers, technology vendors, handset manufacturers, and media companies.

Collaboration between key players has been instrumental in ensuring global adoption and acceptance of the mobile advertising guidelines (unlike other channels, mobile requires broad, cross-ecosystem cooperation to ensure success). If you're interested in mobile advertising, check out the guidelines. Not only do they contain the formats for mobile Web and messaging, they also contain content guidelines and technical requirements for mobile advertisers.

Once you've bought mobile Web inventory, what types of campaigns can be run? Options marketers can deploy include click to call, landing page information, e-mail capture, and the ability to send text, picture, audio, or video directly from the device. Real world examples of these campaigns have been discussed in earlier columns. These can include mobile coupons, banner ads with location information, ads with e-mail registration capabilities, and so on. Options are limitless.

Mobile campaign performance can be measured and evaluated in a number of ways to evaluate success. The main mobile Web measurement is impressions, but rates on click-through, click-to-call, and other interactive mobile metrics can also monitored. More information on measuring mobile advertising success is here.

Mobile advertising is only one of many options available to marketers interested in implementing mobile in cross-media initiatives.

Mobile provides the opportunity to not only repurpose existing content for the mobile device but also create new channel content. There's always the option to refine a campaign after it's been deployed. I encourage marketers to get involved and add mobile to cross-media initiatives. Mobile is a process of iterative refinement. Start today.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Mobile Advertising: What's In It for the Consumer?
By Laura Marriott | October 5, 2006 | www.clickz.com

To View Direct Article, please click HERE.

With the launch of some of the latest mobile advertising campaigns, there's been much talk in regard to the value and impact advertisements will have on all players in the mobile marketing space. What's not been discussed recently is how mobile advertising may impact the consumer. As the head of the leading trade association for mobile marketing, I've been approached by many consumers who simply want to understand, "what it means for me."

They ask questions such as, "Will my phone start to receive as much spam as my e-mail account?" Consumers want to know what they can expect when mobile advertising begins in earnest. This column, through interviews with two mobile advertising experts, outlines opportunities and realities around the consumer experience.

First, there's a belief that mobile advertising has only just begun. While I agree we're in the early days, rudimentary advertising on mobile devices has been in play for a few years. USA Today began offering mobile advertising when WAP 1.0 started a few years back. Granted, these were very basic, plain-text sites, but it was mobile advertising, nonetheless.

What's gotten us to where we are today? Improved data networks, richer media enabled handsets and more content. Matt Jones, mobile products director at USATODAY.com (and one of the leaders in the mobile advertising space), tells me these increased capabilities allow content providers to provide more compelling services into the hands of the consumer. USATODAY.com's mobile version is fully ad-supported, and the content provider is one of the leading companies embracing the mobile channel.

So let's discuss what mobile advertising means for consumers. Perhaps the most significant benefit will come through consumer access to richer content and media. Content is expensive to generate and offer to consumers, and advertising provides a means to offer richer content at more reasonable cost. John Styers, general manager of mobile advertising at Sprint, explains that given the increasing costs to generate content, carriers are developing new methods to subsidize or recover costs on the more expensive content. Mobile advertising may also provide consumers with access to content they previously were unaware of. Lots of new content providers will want to pay to be featured on the carrier deck (again, lots of opportunity for consumers in terms of broader access to rich media). According to Jones, "Mobile advertising allows us to have a viable business," by adding more content, features and richness to their site – ultimately, improving the experience and opportunities for the consumer.

Sprint launched targeted mobile advertising this week. The company will deliver advertisements via the mobile web to the consumer which are highly relevant by using demographic information (age, gender, past spending behavior, etc). Sprint will ensure the information used for targeting is in no way shared with the advertiser. Styers promises "consumer privacy is assured at all times."

Let's walk through how Sprint may deliver its mobile Web banner advertising in a manner that's minimally intrusive to the consumer and the screen space. From a mobile Web page, the consumer will see a banner at the top of the page. The banner is scaled to not dominate the screen. Once the consumer elects to click on the banner, they're taken to the bottom of the page where the full ad and more information outline details of the offer (a mobile poster so to speak). At this point, the consumer can choose to engage with the ad or continue their mobile Web experience. The consumer is in control of their interaction. There's no "push."

Remember, we're still in the early days of mobile advertising. We're taking a measured, exploratory approach to ensure the right experience for all players in the value chain: consumer, carrier and brand. At this stage, all customers are actively engaged in providing feedback on the long-term acceptability of the ad services. This ongoing consumer feedback is vital to ensuring the most positive experience.

Check out a couple of mobile sites to understand the experience. Marketers have recognized the power of the mobile channel and have developed full-blown mobile capabilites to take advantage of the opportunities. Examples are wap.bk.com, wap.usatoday.com (or simply usatoday.com when accessed from a mobile handset), or textmessaging.usatoday.com (USA Today's consumer text messaging site). If you're a Sprint subscriber with mobile Web capability on your device, I encourage you to try it and experience targeted mobile advertising.

We're hosting the Mobile Marketing Forum in Istanbul, Turkey on October 10, 2006. My next column will feature learnings on how mobile marketing has been deployed in Turkey and the broader EMEA region.<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

AdMob Gets Backed By Sequoia Capital, Adds to its Board of Directors
As posted on Adotas.com
September 8th 2006

To View Direct Article, please click HERE.

It has been announced that AdMob, a global online mobile ad network formed earlier this year, will be receiving Series A funding from Sequoia Capital. The capital will be used to support continued growth, expand sales and marketing efforts, as well as to accelerate the development of Web-based products and services.

In addition to the funding announcement, AdMob will also be adding two investors to its board of directors. Jim Goetz of Sequoia Capital and Maynard Webb, a Silicon Valley investor and the former COO of eBay, will be joining the board.

“Jim and Maynard are world-class business partners and their leadership will turbo-charge our growth. We’re lucky to have their talent and counsel,” AdMob CEO Omar Hamoui said in a statement.

AdMob has also confirmed that eBay Wireless and Nokia are actively participating in its network. To continue building its advertiser base and help advertisers get started on the marketplace, AdMob will be extending its $20 free advertising promotion that began last week. <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

Profile Specific Ads Make the Difference
By Bob Walczak, CEO of Mophap.com

The trend that is breaking out in the mobile advertising world is opt-in, non-intrusive advertising. The missing component in the current equation is “profile specific.”

The mobile marketplace has reached a magnitude that is demanding global attention in the advertising community. 1.5 billion subscribers have a small computer in their pocket capable of voice, text, image and internet communications. As an advertising vehicle, mobile devices have the potential to play a significant role in target marketing. Each phone is primarily used by one subscriber giving each device a unique profile for targeting demographics. Because a phone is linked to one person and not a general group, that person should no longer be subject to useless advertising messages. Age, sex, geography and key words will play into the distribution of every ad. The concept is to actually make advertising an enhancement to content distribution not an intrusion. What this equates to from an advertising prospective, if leveraged correctly, is that a message can be delivered to the exact profile that it was created to reach.

Keeping this in mind, Mophap has taken the next evolutionary step in mobile advertising and has produced a platform that will take this market segment to the next level. Our product integrates interstitial advertising with SMS, email and webpage content delivery vehicles. Through combining these advertising vehicles, we have created an advertising format that fits the constraints of the mobile device.

The image based ads appear through an interstitial format, delivered in an otherwise blank space during the connecting period between two pages. If an ad interests a subscriber, they can opt to click on it and be taken to a page that will request an email address, an SMS number or just serve them more content from the advertiser. If they are not interested in the ad, they do nothing and the requested content page will appear automatically. Through our proprietary ad delivery system, we have managed to ensure that the content arrives in the same amount of time as it would without our ad delivery system.

The product determines what ad to send to a specific user based on the phone subscriber’s profile (age, sex, main geography) and cross-references that information with its key word ad database to deliver the most useful and relevant ad possible. The concept is to deliver relevant information to the end user that will enhance their surfing experience and feel less like an intrusion of time and space.

By filling the space between WAP pages where a subscriber would otherwise be looking at a blank connecting screen, we have maximized the efficiency of the mobile web. By using an interstitial format, we can maximize the constraints of a small screen and deliver full-screen, color, and interactive ads. If the ad information is linked to the personal profile of the subscriber and the content being searched, its effectiveness and usefulness will increase exponentially.

Mophap has added the missing piece to the equation and the end result is an Opt-In, Non-Intrusive, Profile Specific advertising mechanism that enhances the effectiveness and usefulness of mobile communications. 
 

24/7 Real Media, Vindigo Mobile Ads
Monday, February 28, 2005
By Roger Park, Associate Editor, imediaconnection


24/7 Real Media, Inc. and mobile media company Vindigo announced a partnership to deliver wireless applications protocol (WAP) advertising services. WAP is a technology that enables mobile phones to access website content.

Customers with WAP-enabled phones can view third party advertisements distributed via 24/7 Real Media's Open AdStream platform within Vindigo's WAP products

"Mobile marketing is the next evolution of online advertising. As online advertising continues to gain its share of marketing dollars, advertisers will continue to push the boundaries of online marketing. Using 24/7 Real Media's Open AdStream platform with Vindigo's products and services will demonstrate the benefits of standardized trafficking, tracking, reporting and targeting for mobile marketing," says Robert Tas, senior vice president, technology and media, 24/7 Real Media.

According to the Cellular Telecommunications Industry Association, the United States is the second-largest single pool of cell phone users in the world with 175 million mobile consumers. The Mobile Marketing Association also estimates that mobile marketing in the US will increase to $5 billion by the end of 2005.

"Vindigo's partnership with 24/7 Real Media will provide advertisers greater reach through a turnkey ad model and result in an optimal experience for the consumer," says Peter Fuller, executive director of the Mobile Marketing Association.

"What's interesting about this deal is that it demonstrates we're getting closer to the next 'holy grail' of marketing -- location based ad-serving. The first priority in today's mobile market is to standardize the ad formats so that major brands will allocate the bigger bucks to this sector. Advancing hardware including 3-G enabled handsets and video-enabled personal media players is driving content producers and marketers to chase an audience hungry for the latest in mobile imaging and even TV-2-Go," says Joyce Schwarz, author and head of JCOM and a frequent contributor to iMedia about emerging platforms.