Rating: pop-up ads in IM - sounds awful
By Bena Roberts
This is something I am going to have to try and test next week – its difficult to judge something that you haven’t seen.
But, NeuStar has been testing IM advertising and pop-up banners in IM via a “presence-enabled Ad Buddies”.
Continue reading "Contextual Mobile advertising – NeuStar uses innerActive ads in IM application" »
Rating: We have ways of knowing what you're thinking
by Tony Dennis
In a move which I personally think smacks more than a little of desperation, ratings giant – Nielsen, has decided to invest in technology developed by boffins at MIT and Berkeley. NeuroFocus claims that it can very accurately track brain responses to stimuli – which would include advertising, naturally.
When you look at how NeuroFocus achieves this capability – by checking skin condition (for sweating); by tracking your eyes (to see if your eyes look shifty); and monitoring your brain waves (for tell-tale patterns) – it really does sound like lie detection, doesn't it?
Rating: take off in Asia
By Bena Roberts
Celltick is partnering with GroupM.
GroupM?
GroupM is a media investment company. It is the parent of the WPP media agencies. (So its very very big then).
Continue reading "Idle screen company Celltick partners with GroupM in Asia for mobile marketing" »
Rating: advertising on email is awful
by Bena Roberts
I had a hotmail account and every time I sent a mail – hotmail would add an advert. When I use the new mobile yahoo oneSearch for my gomonews (at) yahoo account I get the odd advert. But I can live it with it because it’s a quick fix of email on the move. But this (Amobee and Funambol) sounds as though it is an ad-based mobile email service.
What?
Basically an ad-funded mobile product to drive adoption of mobile email.
Continue reading "Funambol teams with Amobee for ad based mobile email" »
Rating: now the software players are talking mobile advertising, what next
By Bena Roberts
I have to say it, Mobile Advertising seems to be like Acid. No one knows what is in it but everyone is willing to drive to a field in the middle of the night to try and get a slice of it.
So what is the new alliance?
Well basically its a Mobile Advertising Alliance between software companies Anam, Cibenix, Mobile Cohesion, Openet and SLA Mobile.
Rating: super human growth
by Bena Roberts
Everyone I meet seems to be joining, about to join or interviewing for the Nokia Ad Business. The goal is to have nearly 300 (I think the exact figure was 280) new employees by end 2008.
So why is Nokia going mad for mobile advertising? Well basically, it has to if it’s going to be an Internet business.
Apparently via the recently acquired Enpocket, Nokia already ran 450 campaigns in 2007. When I quizzed Nokia’s Mandeep Mason during a panel session on mobile ad inventory – he said it wasn’t as much an issue for Nokia. Why? This is because of the Enpocket acquisition and because Ovi was opening up many doors for a new strategy in an inventory rich multimedia environment.
Continue reading "Nokia’s Mandeep Mason on the Advertising business" »
Rating: No mum, not Hoover – Hovr
By Bena Roberts
Hovr will partner with The Times in India to launch GameZone. This will be India’s first ever free mobile gaming portal.
The portal is supposed to be a social network where gamers can also chat and meet and interact and is not solely for free game download.
Continue reading "Ad supported mobile games in India with Hovr and Times Internet" »
Rating: mophap is now ringleader tra, la, la, la la...
MoPhap has changed its name to Ringleader Digital and has won USD 6 million in Series A venture funding led by the W2 Group.
We are not sure if the name change had anything to do with the funding –but in any case Ringleader is significantly better than MoPhap which sounded a bit hapless.
Continue reading "Mobile Advertising company MoPhap now re-branded gets USD 6 million funding" »
Rating: But is this a wise move, Captain?
by Tony Dennis
I didn't think I'd ever hear an acquisition by Microsoft as a "Good thing for competition", but that's exactly how some industry observers are describing news of Microsoft's unsolicited bid for Yahoo!
The general consensus is that the regulators would let the pair combine even though Google's proposed acquisition of DoubleClick is still under investigation.
The logic seems to be that Google is commanding far too great a share of the emerging online advertising market and that advertisers would welcome a strong opponent. Yeah, but Microsoft as a White Knight? Am I dreaming?
Continue reading "Microsoft/Yahoo will send out shockwaves" »
Rating: Mobile Search Analyst February
The first four articles of the Mobile Search Analyst have been published and the final ones will be live by Monday. If you would like more information on the Mobile Search Analyst - please don't hesitate to contact me.
Apple propels browsers up the agenda, Google wins the Grand Prix
According to internal Google data published by The New York Times, over Christmas the volume of incoming traffic to Google from iPhones was such that it outstripped incoming traffic from any other type of mobile device. Within days, iPhone traffic to Google remained higher than that from all mobile devices except those running the Symbian operating system. While Yahoo! remains a long way from getting its mobile offer right (see analysis Fiddling while Rome burns, below), it seems that Google has found a highly satisfactory way of moving what it does on the desktop onto mobile after all.
Mobile barcodes could and should be a major force for new apps and services
Whether you want to buy the latest TV from Uniden or call a K-cab taxi in the Iwate prefecture, mobile barcodes are part of everyday life for millions of Japanese. Perhaps even more surprisingly for most of the rest of the world, they have been since the late 1990’s. So why have mobile barcodes been staggeringly successful in Japan and made precious little impact elsewhere when could and should be a major force in m-commerce, mobile marketing and advertising, and more?
Yahoo! Go 3.0: fiddling while Rome burns
Yahoo! is in big trouble and looking to mobile to shore up its ailing online business. Certainly its home page (http://beta.m.yahoo.com) is clean and fresh, and navigation is easier, but it isn't nearly enough to make Yahoo! the indispensable starting point for all types of access to the web – the company’s stated aim? There are lots of good ideas poorly executed or not sufficiently developed. Yahoo! needs to address these points as a matter of urgency.
Microsoft buys Fastsearch and Transfer for USD 1.2bn
Norwegian company Fastsearch and Transfer is an enterprise search provider. Its focus from the start has been to provide industrial strength search technology for the mega-web sites run by the world’s biggest corporations. The company’s recognised expertise in this arena was reflected in the fact that it was chosen to power Vodafone’s mobile search in 2002.
Rating: Revenue Share Wins!
Big companies are partnerng with other big companies and saving money by using the revenue share model. This way - the sales process seems to get easier and Yahoo! can win (much needed) ground on rivals.
After display ad deals in the UK and Germany (Voda and T-Mobile) Yahoo is now loving AT&T. The new portal for AT&T content att.net will be powered by Yahoo! and display adverts will fund it.
Continue reading "att.net powered by Yahoo! Ad-Funded content rules." »
Rating: um, Yes. That is your business model
by Bena Roberts
Eric Schmidt thinks that the mobile web is reaching tipping point and I have to say, I agree with him.
As long as value is including in the mobile advertising.
Rating: who?
Every day I learn about another company in the mobile ad space. This time its AdStar and Relevantis. Basically Relevantis has licensed AdStar’s Mobile Advertising Dashboard.
Continue reading "AdStar and Relevantis collaborate on Mobile Advertising" »
Rating: I look forward to seeing you there and blogging it as much as possible
I will be at this W2Forum event on Monday 28th in London. I am moderating two panels and am looking forward to it!
08:30 Registration and tea/coffee
09:00 Opening Remarks: Graham Brown, CEO, Wireless World Forum
09:15 Presentation: Hugh Griffiths, Director of Mobile, MSN
09:25 Case Study Presentations
10:15 Panel Discussion “Innovative mobile search”
• Mobile search technology and applications: location-aware browsing, voice
recognition, text messaging
• How to improve the mobile search experience?
• W3C POWDER: Describing content for accurate discovery and targeting.
• Hugh Griffiths, Director of Mobile, MSN
• Supratim Biswas, Vice President - Products and Technology, Infospace
Continue reading "Mobile Search and Advertising Forum London next week" »
Rating: gomonews.getmobile.com we have been juiced!
by Bena Roberts
Earlier on this week the Quattro Wireless a Mobile Advertising company that squeezes and re-renders websites to mobile sites launched GetMobile. GetMobile is a self-service website to WAP maker that literally juices the website to a mobile site.
Rating: Claims unique mid-stream ad capability
by Tony Dennis
Three briefings in four days all on the
same subject – mobile advertising – by three separate companies
each with Israeli R&D units must set some kind of record. But
that's what just happened to me.
Today's briefing came from Surf Communication Solutions who's come up with a very hardware approach to tackling the nugget that is cracking the mobile advertising market.
The approaches which differentiate Surf with OnSurf from its rivals include the fact that this is an unashamedly a pitch to the mobile network operators. Not surprisingly several Tier One operators feature as Surf's ecustomers.
The company also claims to be unique in offering mid-stream mobile advertising.
Continue reading "Surf joins mobile ads mix with hardware" »
Rating: juice it up!
Quattro Wireless has unveiled GetMobile.com. This is a self-service Website “juicer” that squeezes existing websites and makes them WAP sites.
It’s for anyone with a ASP, PHP, JAVA website.
Continue reading "Quattro Wireless juices the WEB with Getmobile.com" »
Rating: I thought i-mode wasn’t that big anymore?
OK, i-mode was the rage in Japan but then FOMA 3G arrived. NTTDoCoMo was the king of i-mode but since its rise uptake has stalled and is it now banking on Google to help to revive the service?
Maybe I am wrong as it seems that DoCoMo is banging the drums for i-mode with Google.
The plans are:
Rating: Target ads
I keep going hot cold hot on Amobee. Just as I think that they are going to be stuck under the thumb of Vodafone for the rest of its days before one of the operators swallows it – some thing new happens.
This time its in Canada and Amobee and Target Broadcast. Basically Amobee will manage the ad-inventory for Target Broadcast.
Target Broadcast is Canada’s only independently owned national sales organization.
(All articles written on Amobee here)
Continue reading "Amobee new ad and sales partnership with Canada Target Broadcast" »
Rating: the focus is on the ad-inventory
Mobixell has launched an new ad delivery engine which it touts can smartly inject and enhance mobile ad inventory.
(See first article on Mobixell here)
Rating: personalization is in
Ad Infuse the mobile advertising company has won USD 12 million from SoftBank Capital, ComVentures and Strom Ventures.
The investment is aimed at positioning Ad Infuse as a leader in premium mobile advertising and to push the adInMotion network.
(All articles on Ad Infuse here)
Continue reading "Ad Infuse raises USD 12 million in funding" »
Rating: you wanna piece of me?
I got this email from JumpTap this morning. It’s the company campaign pushing its services at the Mobile World Congress.
Rating: this is poor customer service, confusing and even more downright confusing
This morning I received this email from out of the blue.
Hello bena basudev roberts,While going through our records recently, we found that your AdSense account has posed a significant risk to our AdWords advertisers. Since keeping your account in our publisher network may financially damage our advertisers in the future, we have decided to disable your account.
Please understand that we consider this a necessary step to protect the interests of both our advertisers and our other AdSense publishers. We realise the inconvenience that this may cause you and we thank you in advance for your understanding and cooperation.
If you have any questions about your account or the actions that we have taken, please do not reply to this email. You can find more information by visiting https://www.google.com/adsense/support/bin/answer.py?answer=57153&hl=en_GB.
Yours sincerely,
The Google AdSense Team
Well. Blow me away? I am very confused as I haven’t done anything wrong. I have never clicked on my own advert and have no idea what Google is going on about.
All I can see now is a white mark on the page where the Google adverts were – but via the other online adverts I am currently testing – Google is still there?
The only difference is that this section of the site is managed by Adify; a competing ad network and that might have something to do with it.
To be honest, I find this terrible, poor and unfortunate customer service.
No real explanation is given. You can’t respond to the email you are offered a link to a site that gives you a list of what might be the problem and you are asked to reapply.
So I checked stats on the Yahoo! owned myblog log.
Yesterday I managed 30 clicks on that particular Google banner and they day before 13 and the day before 54 clicks. That is not staggering the PPC for advertisers was extremely low how this can financially damage anyone – is beyond me.
I only expect that our hits have increased because of Mobile World Congress. Last year when we became media partners with the conference (and we didn’t have any advertising at that time) we managed 1 million hits in the second month of business. Our traffic has started to take off again and more traffic means more clicks. I am not sure why Google doesn’t like this – I use Google Analytics, Webmaster tools, Maps and nearly every other service so analysis of my use and site is particularly easy.
Anyway – I am now on a Google downer (the mobile search is bad enough and it seems as though online is going the same way).
I just checked and my Google Mobile Adsense also seems not to be working – just as I was testing it.
Hmmm. More on this conspiracy as I get feedback.
Rating: ads to fund free mobile IM service
by Tony Dennis
Crickey. Another day and another company claiming it's got the best ad serving technology for the mobile sector. Fortunately, innerActive's demo was very impressive.
What the company's two founders Offer Yehudai and co-CEO, Ziv Elul, were itching to tell me is that they've broken out of just offering in-game ad serving.
Their technology has been ported over to another field – IM [Instant Messaging]. We're going to have to wait for MWC in Barcelona for the provider's name. But a Redmond or Newbury based company is probably in the frame.
Rating: Some of our mobile videos are missing
by Tony Dennis
It's a standard phrase which all vendors of mobile advertising solutions seem trot out. "The brand name won't be compromised," they claim. I've lost count of how many times I've heard this particular mantra uttered by executives with regards to their mobile based ad platform.
It was only during yesterday's conversation with ad newcomers, Mobixell, that I realised I'd actually encountered an instance of this promise going very horribly wrong. Nothing to do with Mobixell, mind you.
Rating: BKI’s publication The Mobile 2.0 Analyst is out now. Here are the highlights.
If you don’t already subscribe to this publication make sure you do to get the inside scoop and knowledge about mobile advertising, mobile marketing, barcodes, the mobile Internet and portals.
Mobile marketing - why it’s so hard to make it happen
No matter what the premise – whether mobile advertising in the case of the likes of JumpTap and Medio Systems, or more innovative and immediate clever bundling and response to what customers do in real-time as promised by Pontis – any company working within operators to up ARPU faces some tough challenges indeed. These range from a lack of scale to poor content, their customers being acquired by larger operators and piecemeal deployments.
Music is making itself heard on mobile, but it’s a faint echo
M:Metrics has just published figures concerning the growing audience for music via mobile. However, closer investigation of the figures makes less encouraging reading and they are set against the backdrop of EMI, the world's third largest record company getting rid of one third of its staff and scrapping multi-million pound advances to its top artists. Can mobile save the music industry or is it all over for the industry as we know it?
UK Operator O2 changes O2 Active, but it isn’t enough
O2 has redesigned its mobile portal to make it more attractive. It does look more appealing, but the downside is that it has failed to accommodate or shape the way users navigate. Even worse, it has made several fundamental design errors. How hard can it be?
Running a mobile advertising campaign with Decktrade
It is a common belief that text ads are more popular than banner ads online, but this is not necessarily the case for mobile. Mobile is a new medium and analysis of our USD50 Decktrade campaign found that a creative (graphic banner ad) achieves a greater click-through rate than a text link. A great deal of thought has gone into Decktrade, making the set-up fantastically easy (part from payment), but the reporting leaves much to be desired.
Are Western Europe’s consumers ready for mobile marketing?
The Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has just announced the results of its inaugural Mobile Attitude and Usage Study for five markets in Western Europe. The study surveyed 1,535 participants in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain. The MMA claims that it “provides actionable insights into the region’s consumer mobile usage by demographic group and awareness”.
Here are the key findings, followed by BKI’s observations.
Rating: well shiver my GoldSpot
I am sure that GoldSpot is a breath freshner (not that I have ever needed one, of course!)
But GoldSpot Media is also a mobile ad insertion start-up focusing on TV adverts. It has closed USD 3 million in Series A funding from EXa Ventures.
From the press release
"This funding allows us to execute on the company vision to make mobile broadcast a profitable business case for the entire value-chain," said Srini Dharmaji, GoldSpot Media's president and CEO. "GoldSpot Media is uniquely positioned to influence the future of mobile broadcast TV by offering the potential for an entirely new advertising revenue model."
Rating: Amobee kisses QuickPlay and goes DA DA in Italy
Amobee Media Systems will offer ad funded video services to Vodafone Italy’s 29.1 million subscribers. (Amobee also has a deal in Spain)
The service is called FreeVideo. It will offer free video to 3G customers in return for adverts being pushed into the video.
In order to offer this service Amobee has teamed with QuickPlay for its OpenVideo Platform and Dada Mobile Ad services to manage the advertising partners. The first brands to have signed up are: ActionAid and RCS Media Group.
Dada has been working with Vodafone Italy since March 2007
Rating: it all the words, man
allwords is part 2 of MCN’s assault on the mobile advertising world. Part one consisted of introducing banners into the federated mobilesearch.net platform.
Part 2 or allwords is a mobile advertising manager similar to AdMob.
So GoMo News readers are switched on to know what an ad network so I am going to cut to the chase and highlight the differentiation only.
Continue reading "MCN launches allwords.net Mobile Content Advertising Network " »
Rating: Claims unique 'self-targetting'
by Tony Dennis
My initial reaction to a requested
meeting with Mobixell was "here's yet another company claiming
it can do mobile advertising." Until I discovered it was a
company that could number 85 per cent of Tier One European operators
as its customers.
What Mobixell does is build on its existing
software strengths – especially its own database of handset
capabilities.
The result is Ad-It! - a tool which will enable
operators to sell multiple channel access to ad agencies and
publishers. The company also claims to have developed a unique
'self-targeting' tool.
Rating: ik will mi sprek ob u
Indian company mobiSolv has added a new feature on its myAdz platform. Basically ads can now be served using regional language. So basically in language rich countries or dense urban or rural areas the ads will be served as to the local language.
Continue reading "mobiSolv announces regional language advertising" »
Rating: I’m smaato’d
GoMo News is delighted for Smaato. I have met Smaato a few times most recently at CTIA (see here)
During our interview at CTIA I quizzed Harald Neidhardt on the Smaato value add what yet another mobile advertising company could bring to the value chain. He impressed me and obviously he impressed Aeris Capital too!
Rating: this is the future
We are finishing the Mobile 2.0 Analyst which is really a cutting edge business intelligence ezine on the hottest issue in mobile services that anyone with a Mobile 2.0 business model can’t afford to miss.
We will start publishing the articles over the weekend and some of the areas covered are:
Decktrade mobile advertising campaign
O2 Refreshes Active Portal – why it isn’t enough
Musicphone analysis
…
More details Monday
Rating: whooooo
I keep going hot, cold warm on Celltick as a company in the idle screen space as I feel that it has underachieved – despite an incredible early mover advantage.
One itchy spot for Celltick has been the demand for new SIM cards for use of the service. This can be a nightmare to manage and a headache for operators and consumers. So, in an article I wrote on Celltick mid-last year I suggested that the company move to a client format and about six months on… its been achieved!
Continue reading "Celltick idle screen service LiveScreen Media no longer needs special SIM cards" »
Source: Reuters
Yahoo!’s aggressive sales strategy seems to be working and according to Reuters T-Mobile has signed up Yahoo! to provide display advertising on T-Mobile’s Web ‘n’ walk service.
What we think?
This is the mash-up of the year as T-Mobile gets jiggy with nearly all the mobile search advertising providers out there.
Continue reading "Yahoo! T-Mobile Mobile display advertising" »
Rating: isn’t Amdocs about billing?
Hmm. Amdocs has hooked its claws into Mobile Search and Advertising by providing a solution that is supposed to make targeting adverts – better than ever.
How?
Apparently this new solution leverages mobile operators existing valuable assets such as subscriber data to improve the targeting of the advertising.
The solution consolidates search and digital advertising – so that providers can push user data into the search results making adverts more personalised to the user.
Continue reading "Amdocs launches Search and Digital Advertising Solution?" »
Myxer has announced the launch of its European operations with the debut of www.myxer.co.uk. The website hosts a armory of ad-supported content – from ringtones to wallpapers, video and images.
According to Myxer its key strengths are:
1. Help deliver unified ad campaigns from PC to mobile. Helping advertisers to pinpoint ads via user preferences.
2. For artists the company can provide a way of promoting new sounds
3. For consumers users can get down dirty and creative adding and mixing ringtones on Facebook.
Continue reading "Myxer UK new Ad-Supported Mobile Content" »
Rating: it’s a grey day for games!
Greystripe has announced early results from its partnership with Opera, to bring free mobile content faster and easier to consumers browsing on their mobile phones. Opera is the latest of 20 distribution partners to use Greystripe’s AdWRAP.
Continue reading "Mobile advertising: Opera and Greystripe partner for ad funded mobile games" »
Rating: I luv u mobile marketing
The Mobile Marketing Association has launched Usage Study results for Western Europe aftery surveying 1,535 participants in the UK, Germany, Italy, France and Spain.
Findings
One in ten mobile users in the Western European markets is highly interested in mobile marketing and another three in ten indicate moderate interest. This level of interest translates into an overall growth opportunity for mobile marketing.
Rating: good vs bad
I started doing some research on Bytemobile for an article on mobile advertising that I am writing. I was looking at the company as a potential business model for mobile operators but (frankly) found more negatives than positives on the new service.
To be fair, I gave Bytemobile’s Adrian Hall the opportunity to answer some questions before we meet at Mobile World Congress and for me to understand the new content adaptation advertising push service.
Rating: custom version of its instant mobile internet presence service
by Tony Dennis
A sure sign that mobile advertising is coming of age has been provided by WAP conversion specialist, Wapple. The company has introduced a tailored offering which has been quite simply named its Wapple Advert Package.
I asked Anne Thomas, business development director with Wapple, what had inspired her company to target advertisers. Her answer was simple. "The industry has moved on," she said. "Initially we were being asked for our help with content, now we have lots of requests to do mobile ads."
Rating: ping it
Ping Mobile, a full-service mobile agency is partnering with Cox Media to offer mobile marketing and advertising options to its advertising and media clients.
So what is new?
Rating: 1, 2, 3, 4
The UK mobile advertising company 4th Screen has expanded its off-deck advertising network and signed new deals with Teletext and the Associated Newspaper Group
Continue reading "4th Screen mobile advertising wins publisher deals " »
Rating: the French way
Expway is working with Screentonic to develop advertiseing management solutions for mobile TV.
Expway and ScreenTonic?
Exppway has as solution called FastESG which allows users to find and watch TV content. ScreenTonic is an advertising company (purchased by Microsoft) with a solution called STAMP which allows the delivery of mobile advertisements.