An Interview with Marko Ahtisaari

Blyk – the first completely ad-supported MVNO – launched this week in the UK market There has been a lot of controversy about Blyk’s innovative business model – providing free SMS messages and voice minutes in return for watching ads. Blyk services will be limited to their target 16 to 24 year old demographic, and they plan to recruit their subscribers on campus and through viral invitation.

Marko Ahtisaari is a key member of the Blyk team, responsible for the user experience as well as brand design and development. In this interview, Marko talks about the special advertising formats that Blyk will use, and explains why Blyk actually has to think more like a media company and less like a mobile operator. more»

Fox Interactive Media has announced that MySpace and several others web brands (inlcuding IGN, FOXSports.com, AskMen and RottenTomatoes.com) will launch ad supported mobile web sites that will be completely free to users on mobile devices. The sites will offer users a considerable amount of free content that was up to now only available to subscribers. The ads will be served and sold by Millennial Media. more»

Blyk, the world’s first ad-funded mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) has announced the launch of its UK service. The announcement was made at a press launch event in London by company founders Pekka Ala-Pietilä and Antti Öhrling.
(see a video of the event!) more»

DoubleClick, the provider of digital marketing technology and services, today announced the launch of DoubleClick Mobile, a new solution for media companies to extend their digital advertising business to mobile. DoubleClick is one of the world’s largest companies in the area of ad serving, rich media, video, search and affiliate marketing, and their entry into mobile is a big step towards bringing mobile into the advertising mainstream. more»

Vodafone Czech Republic (Vodafone CZ) and Amobee Media Systems have announced the commercial launch of a new mobile advertising service. Using Amobee’s Media System, Vodafone CZ will display advertising on its Vodafone live! portal, as well as its messaging services and games downloads. more»

M:Metrics and AdMob have released findings on audience composition for mobile advertising. The findings confirm the widely held view that mobile is the way to reach the elusive 18-34 age range, which represented 65.5% of respondents. more»

Gofresh, the company behind off-deck mobile community “itsmy.com”, has launched the world’s first mobile social ad-network. It is not a competitive product to traditional mobile advertising, but offers the opportunity to integrate targeted user profiles within the existing ad-channels of the big ad-networks. more»

According to Berg Insight the next big thing in mobile advertising will be mobile maps. It predicts that during the course of 2007 4 million mobile subscribers will access maps using their mobile handset. This will grow year on year by 60.8% in order to reach 43 million users by 2012. more»

M:Metrics released a report on the the use of SMS advertising in US and Europe. Spain has the highest level of SMS advertising, with 75% of Spaniards receiving ads, whereas the US had the most responsive audience, with a response rate of 12%. more»

Vmbc.tv, the video business unit of Versaly Entertainment, has announced a partnership with mywaves, the mobile video company that delivers Web video entertainment to mobile phones around the world, to offer the “Fast Lane” mobile video-on-demand channel to mywaves users. more»

Interview with Omar Hamoui, CEO of AdMob

Less than 2 years ago, AdMob served its first mobile ad. The growth since then has been phenomenal, and this month they should serve over 1.5 billion ads.

AdMob was founded by Omar Hamoui, who took a sabbatical from his MBA studies to found the company. Read this interview with Omar to get his view of the mobile advertising market, to hear the advice he gives brands that want to start mobile advertising, and to understand why he feels that AdMob can continue to outpace the competition. more»

mobiSolv is a mobile solutions organization specializing in Mobile
Marketing & Advertising.

They do the following services:

• myAdz (Mobile Banner Ads)
• mCRM (Text Marketing)
• mCoupons
• Store Locator on Mobiles
• Mobisites

Apple has announced that O2 will be the exclusive UK carrier for the iPhone. The iPhone will hit the UK high street on November 9th. It will come in a single model (8GB), priced at £269 (Nearly £70 more than in the US) and the tariffs start at £35 per month on an 18 month contract, including unlimited data usage. more»

Nokia has announced the purchase of Enpocket. Nokia hopes to accelerate the scaling of its mobile advertising business by using Enpocket’s platform and strong partnerships with advertisers, publishers and operators. more»

The mobile advertising market heated up even more this week, with Google at last announcing full commercial availability of AdSense for Mobile, the service which allows publishers of mobile content to earn money by including Google Ads on their sites. A week ago, Google announced they would begin showing AdWord ads on the Google Mobile Search page. more»

Apple and T-Mobile announced today that the iPhone would be available in the German market starting November 9, the same day it goes on sale in the UK (see post on iPhone in the UK). An announcement about the French market is expected for Thursday, September 20, with Orange rumored to be the selected operator. more»

After a successful six month trial, ITV has committed to extending its mobile advertising contract with 4th Screen Advertising. During the trial, 4th Screen Advertising ran multiple mobile advertising campaigns on the ITV WAP portal, for brands such as Orange, O2, Nokia, Lynx, EA, and Samsung. more»

Volantis has today announced that Ad Infuse has selected Volantis’ Framework to help deliver mobile advertising. Ad Infuse ensures optimal relevance for every mobile subscriber by inserting targeted ads at the moment of content delivery, and Framework will help them take full advantage of the capabilities of each handset. more»

Comedy Time has announced that it has chosen Rhythm NewMedia to sell and deliver personalized ads on their mobile video channel. The partnership will allow marketers to buy video ads through Rhythm that will be delivered to Comedy Time’s 3.5 million subscribers. more»

After months of trialling, Google will shortly begin showing AdWords ads on its Google Mobile Search page results. Only ads whose landing page can be adapted to fit on a mobile phone screen will be shown however. more»

8 to 12 October, 2007
Cannes, France

The third annual MIPCOM Mobile & Internet TV Awards, designed to reward new short form audiovisual entertainment content and cross media formats for Mobile and Internet TV. more»

Position: Chief Operating Officer
Location: Auckland, NZ
Company: A full-service mobile ideas and media company taking on the world.
more»

Interview with Mitch Lazar
VP Business Development

Yahoo is one of the biggest players in the online world, and arguably the most mobile focused of all the internet giants. We had a chance to interview Mitch Lazar, Vice President of Business Development at Yahoo to get an insight into how Yahoo views mobile advertising, and what plans they have in store. more»

Medio System, Inc, the mobile search and advertising company, has announced that T-Mobile will be utilizing Medio technology to bring mobile search to their “t-zones” customers in Europe. The service will also implement Mobile Advertising capabilities before the end of the year. more»

At the New York Fashion Week, Style.com, the Condé Nast fashion website that includes Vogue and W, launched a new mobile initiative. Carrie Seifer, Director of Emerging Technologies, CondéNet, said ”Style.com’s mobile application creates yet another touch point for our readers to enjoy our content and our advertisers to follow that devout reader.” more»

October 16, 2007
Grange Hotel, London, UK

Part of the 3rd Telco 2.0™ Executive Brainstorm, this Summit builds on the output from two Telco 2.0™/GSMA events held in March in London and New York. more»

This study from Arbitron and Telephia looks at the use of audio services on mobile phones, including listening to free or subscription radio, downloading music or podcasts directly to the phone, and “sideloading” audio files from a PC or MP3 player. As audio content becomes increasingly popular, it will have a growing importance for mobile advertising. more»

26-27 January 2008
Cannes, France


An invaluable update on how digital is driving the music business forward, changing it rapidly and radically. more»

Publicis Groupe today announced the acquisition of Paris-based Phonevalley, a leading European agency in mobile marketing and communications. Phonevalley will become the mobile marketing arm of Publicis Groupe Media, which includes the two global media networks Starcom Mediavest Group and ZenithOptimedia. more»

9 – 10 October 2007
Barcelona, Spain

Are you looking to add mobile to your current campaigns? Are you involved with mobile and want to add new technologies and initiatives? The MOBILE MARKETING FORUM is the premiere event to attend this year. more»

26 to 29 November 2007
Hilton Budapest West End
Budapest, Hungary


Mobile Advertising 2007 will show delegates how to take advantage of new revenue streams in order to drive growth in mobile data usage and generate highly profitable advertising revenue. You will hear case studies from operators, big brands, advertising agencies more»

Mobile marketing company Ping Mobile and exclusive fashion retailer Up Against the Wall announced outstanding results for their first mobile marketing campaign – a 63% double opt-in response rate. Another demonstration that fashionistas are truly a part of the mobile demographic. more»

29 November, 2007
Lewis Media Center
Westminster, London

This event will provide an essential insight into the development of mobile marketing in the UK. Including the latest case studies, research into consumer behaviour more»

22-23 January 2008
San Francisco, USA

Mobile Advertising & Marketing USA promises to debate all the key questions with the people that matter – brands and advertisers, agencies – traditional, digital and mobile, media buyers, carriers, content providers and solution providers. more»

17-19 September 2007
London, UK

This London based event is dedicated exclusively to Mobile Web 2.0. There is one session of particular interest from a mobile advertising point of view on Tuesday 18th in the afternoon: “Mobile Advertising: To What Extent Can Operators Enable Personalized Mobile Advertising – Identity and Location Information” more»

25-26 September 2007
Los Angeles

This Los Angeles based event is dedicated to Mobile Social Networking. There is one session of particular interest from a mobile advertising point of view on Wednesday 26th in the afternoon: “The Future: Using Advertising to make it more Affordable for the Consumer” more»

26 – 27 September 2007
Olympia 2
London, UK

ad:tech London specializes in interactive advertising and marketing technologies such as Internet Marketing, Search Engine Marketing, Email Marketing and Mobile Marketing. more»

2 – 4 October 2007
Grosvenor Resort
Orlando, Florida, USA

The Mobile Web Americas conference and expo will bring together industry professionals from around the world to discuss how to improve and capitalize on the mobile web. more»

9th to 11th October 2007
London, UK

This London based event is dedicated to Mobile Communities and User Generated Content. There is one afternoon devoted to Mobile Advertising on Wednesday 10th, and a session on Thursday 11th on: “Advertising to the mobile community – will it be accepted and will it be the main source of revenue” more»

22nd October 2007
BSG Conference Centre
London, UK


This one day Executive Briefing and networking lunch will cover the following topics: more»

October 23-25, 2007
San Francisco, California

CTIA Wireless I.T. & Entertainment focuses on integrating wireless data technologies into the enterprise and vertical business markets such as healthcare, government, automotive, retail etc. more»

25th October 2007
BSG Conference Centre
London, UK


This one day Executive Briefing and networking lunch will cover the following topics: more»

7 – 8 November 2007
Kingsway Hall Hotel
London

This London based event is dedicated to Mobile Communities & User Generated Content. The afternoon of Wednesday 7th November 2007 is of particular interest from a mobile advertising point of view. more»

12-14 November 2007
London, UK

This London based event on Mobile Advertising and Marketing, will provide a platform where mobile operators, handset manufacturers, agencies and global brands will meet to discuss methods to drive sustainable revenues. more»

4 – 6 December 2007
london, UK

The Mobile Advertising & Marketing Awards inaugural ceremony organized by Visiongain will be rewarding the technical innovation and artistic application in the mobile advertising industry. more»