T-Mobile has announced that it will trial “proximity marketing” at several of its London locations in an effort to bring more people into the stores.

Bluetooth tags will be installed in six T-Mobile stores by Hypertag, a provider of proximity solutions.
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Although Microsoft has not really profited at all so far from the iPhone phenomenon, they may have their eyes on a different way of making money: providing the ad network that will serve ads into iPhone applications.

In an interesting post this week over at FT.com/Techblog, Chris Nuttall discusses this possibility and reports on a conversation he had with the head of Microsoft’s Massive marketing division.
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Tryvann Winter Park is a ski resort which is located just 15 minutes from the center of Norway’s capital city, Oslo. Even though they are very near, oftentimes there will be no snow in Oslo while at the resort the ski conditions are perfect.

So the problem is – how to convince Oslo residents that it’s a good day for skiing?

Advertising agency TBWA came up with a very innovative campaign which uses special snow-storm billboards in Oslo which are triggered by sms messages from the resort. more»

AdMob has released their latest network metrics report, with AdMob seeing 6.6 billion requests overall for the month of February.

This report also focuses on smartphones, where the iPhone is now seen as having 33% of worldwide smartphone traffic (50% in the US), and with Android representing 5% of the market.
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GetJar, a leading independent mobile apps store, released the results of their recent user survey, which revealed some very interesting facts about consumer behavior.

GetJar also announced that it has downloaded 400 million mobile applications, and that volume in the past month was 200% higher than one year ago. more»

The automotive sector has been one of the big early supporters of mobile advertising, with many interesting campaigns. The question people always ask though, is what has been the impact of the campaigns.

Nissan ran a campaign recently to promote the innovative features of their Murano line. At the same time they ran a detailed research project among consumers to gauge the effect of the campaign. What they found was a big jump in product awareness – over 30% – as well as a significant improvement in the overall image of Nissan.
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Looking at the scale of the mobile market in India can be staggering: over 350 million subscribers currently, and projections show it doubling in the next 3 years. This equals something like 10 million new subscribers per month!

And for most of these subscribers, mobile will be their primary means to access the internet, meaning India will rapidly become one of the world’s largest markets for mobile internet.

Read this overview of India’s mobile internet and mobile advertising market. more»

The results of a recent study by Orange on consumer mobile media habits shows that mobile has now become mainstream for consumers.

The survey followed more than 2,000 mobile media users from across all UK mobile networks, and focused on consumer consumption of mobile media and attitudes towards mobile when used as a marketing channel. more»

For fans of the incredibly popular US TV show American Idol, the 8th season promises to be something special.

Thanks to a new iPhone application recently launched by Freemantle and Zumobi, fans will have the opportunity for an even deeper engagement with the show, whenever they want to, where ever they want to. more»

Social Networks are rapidly becoming one of the major destinations for mobile and online internet browsing, and a big question today is will the social networks be able to monetize their traffic.

BuzzCity is an interesting combination: it runs one of the largest social networks (mygamma), but it also has a very large mobile ad network for revenue generation.

KF Lai is the founder and CEO of BuzzCity. In this interview, he gives some insight into the synergies he has found from running both a social network and an ad network. more»

At the end of March, the key players in the entertainment and advertising worlds will be heading to Cannes, France for the MIPTV conference, the world’s largest entertainment content event.

Over 150 of the biggest names in global TV and film entertainment, digital media and advertising will provide an up-to date perspective on the changes taking place in today’s rapidly evolving media landscape.

This year there is an especially strong focus on creativity and advertising including the increasing role of mobile in media. more»

San Francisco based Twitter, the third largest social network globally, has recently made improvements to its search functionality in a move that many believe will lead to Twitter search ads and a new revenue stream for Twitter.

The new search function would let consumers and companies scan the feeds of Twitter’s 6 million members in order to get up-to-the-minute information about key topics and trends. more»

Gartner, Inc has released their latest figures on sales of smartphone devices for 2008.

Overall unit sales grew by almost 14%, but Q4 showed only about a 4% growth.

Nokia is still the dominant vendor, but their share of Q4 units was 41%, down from 51% last year.

Samsung made it to the “top 5” list for the first time. more»

Although the world economic situation remains pretty dismal, another mobile advertising company has secured additional venture financing.

Premium mobile ad network Quattro has just announced $10million in Series C funding, with the money to be used for international expansion and to launch new services. more»

Airwide Solutions has commissioned independent research to poll operators about ‘what’s hot and what’s not’ in mobile messaging around the world.

The results include social networks, mobile advertising, and location services, and have been compiled in a white paper which looks at the opportunities and outlines operator investment plans for the next 12 months. more»

21 to 27 June, 2009
Cannes, France

The Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, the world’s only truly global meeting place for those passionate about creativity in communications. more»

Even in these difficult economic times, Greystripe has raised an additional $5.5 million in Series C round funding. The primary purpose of this funding will be to enable Greystripe to integrate mobile advertising into existing online media buying systems. To date, Greystripe has powered over 160 million ad-supported mobile downloads. more»

During MWC in Barcelona, we met with a lot of knowledgeable people from across the mobile marketing value chain. Although everyone was clearly uneasy about the impact of the current global economy, we found a strong, underlying optimism about mobile advertising and marketing.

In order to give you better insight into their thinking, we made a series of short, one minute interviews with some of these experts: publishers, agencies, developers, technology companies, venture capitalists.

We’ve also put together a quick round up of some of the top trends we saw at the show. more»

For the launch of their new horror film “The Unborn”, Universal Pictures has turned to mobile as a great way to communicate with their target audience, and to provide them with entertaining content they can enjoy no matter where they go. more»

Youth focused MVNO Blyk has partnered with Velti to launch a content service in the UK. The new service, named “On Blyk“, will be based around a messaging paradigm for content discovery rather than expecting consumers to find content by browsing. more»

Just one year after the GSMA launched their trial program aimed at generating cross-operator mobile advertising metrics, they have released some preliminary information from the collaborative effort. The joint project had all 5 UK operators (Vodafone, T-Mobile, Orange, 3, O2) providing usage data to the GSMA (see the MobiAD article announcing the program GSMA and Mobile Operators Join To Measure Mobile Advertising). more»

Flirtomatic, the UK based flirting and dating service, has decided to use the “social intelligence” solutions from Xtract to gain better insight into their customers, with the aim to eventually to offer more relevant advertising. more»

26 to 28 April, 2009
Malta

WT09 is about promoting, billing and delivering compelling consumer propositions – wherever and whenever they want them.

Discount Available! more»

19 to 21 April 2009
Valencia, Spain

The Festival of Media is dedicated bringing together global marketers, media agencies and media vendors in an advertising industry that is undergoing many profound changes. more»

23 to 24 June, 2009
London, UK

The MeM conference delivers world-renowned speakers to equip you with the insights, knowledge and relationships to advance your mobile entertainment business in 2009 and beyond. more»

Awards Event 23rd June, 2009
London, UK

As the industry’s official benchmark for measuring success and rewarding innovation, the Meffys honour the most influential players from around the world. more»

comScore, the digital measurement company, has reported that mobile social networks are a key factor in driving the growth of the mobile internet throughout Europe.

Social networking currently has about 12.1 million users in western Europe, with a year-on-year growth over 150%. more»

BuzzCity has announced that it will be opening up its popular mobile social networking site mygamma so that developers and advertisers can integrate their own applications into the service. more»

18 to 19 June, 2009
Barcelona, Spain

Mobile 2.0 Europe is a two-day event exploring the emerging Mobile Ecosystem and Disruptive Mobile Innovation. more»