Global mobile advertising network mKhoj has released some new statistics about mobile activity in South Africa, indicating a very rapid growth in mobile internet usage.

South Africa is a very interesting market, with a mobile penetration reaching 100%, and the need to serve a very diverse customer base that speaks 11 official languages. more»

You would think ordering a pizza is pretty straightforward. But even this simple task now has a dedicated iPhone application!

Pizza Hut, one of the world’s largest chain of pizza restaurants, has come out with a special iPhone app that let’s you design your own pizza, order it from a nearby store, and then play a game while you wait. more»

The UK branch of furniture giant Habitat has received much criticism and has had to apologize for their inappropriate advertising use of social media site Twitter.

In an effort to increase the number of readers of their messages, the company had attached “hashtags” that were related to popular topics such as #iphone or popular events such as #iranelection (this happened just after the disputed election in Iran).
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For those of you working in the mobile business, the market numbers change so rapidly that it is hard to keep up to date. And trying to get good historical information for comparison is almost impossible.

Now there is a solution – Tomi Ahonen’s Mobile Almanac 2009. Written by well-known author and speaker Tomi Ahonen, this almanac contains all the information you may want to find out about the mobile telecoms business. more»

Today Blyk and Orange UK announced a partnership that marks the end of Blyk’s initial operations as an MVNO, but perhaps is the beginning of a more scalable, sustainable, long-term strategy.

At the end of August, Blyk will be closing down its MVNO operations in the UK, and focusing instead on a partnership with Orange. We had a chance to speak with Pekka Ala-Pietilä, CEO and co-founder of Blyk, and Marc Overton, VP of Wholesale, Business Development & Partnerships at Orange about the details and the strategy behind this major announcement. more»

Global ad network AdMob has released their latest mobile metrics report, which analyzes the over 8 billion ad requests that AdMob receives each month.

The report indicates that close to half of all iPhones are now located outside the US. It also indicates that requests from Android phones have grown 25% since last month, and are now ahead of Microsoft Windows Mobile. more»

Location Based Advertising will be a featured topic at the upcoming MetaPlaces09 conference taking place on September 22 and 23 in San Jose, California.

The conference will examine the changing dynamics of the LBS market now that the worlds of location content, interactive advertising, and Geo enabled web services have collided. more»

Recently Google has been moving beyond its traditional areas of activity into territory more related to telephony. The beta launch of Google Voice a few weeks ago was a big step in that direction.

The question of course is how will Google generate a profit from these activities. The recent publishing of a Google patent application titled “Ringback Advertising” may give a good indication. more»

Blyk, the youth-focused, ad-funded MVNO and media channel has announced expansion plans into the Dutch market through a partnership with Vodafone.

Blyk originally launched their own MVNO operations in several countries, but this announcement apparently marks the beginning of a new partnership focused strategic thrust for the company. more»

22 to 23 September, 2009
San Jose, California

MetaPlaces is a new series of events bringing together LBS enablers to discuss how to monetize location data and services. more»

In a move intended to help protect mobile consumers from misleading advertising and commercial practices in the mobile environment, the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) has opened a special membership program targeted at mobile affiliate marketers. more»

Quattro Wireless, a leading premium mobile ad network, has released a new SDK (software development kit) which will allow developers of Android applications to easily integrate advertising into their apps.

Quattro has also released some data indicating that Android owners are very heavy users of mobile applications. more»

It has been just a year since Nike launched their PHOTOiD campaign. This campaign allowed consumers to use their mobile phones to choose colors they liked from the world around them, and have these colors incorporated into a customized pair of Nike running shoes.

This was one of the first campaigns to exploit visual interactivity to engage consumers, and although the campaign is no longer active, it is still a great example of creative use of innovation for marketing. more»

Veteran mobile advertising company Smaato has published an interesting white paper that focuses on how to optimize revenue from mobile advertising.

In this period of reduced CPM prices, lower fill rates, and proliferating ad networks, this white paper will help many people understand the dynamics among the various parts of the mobile advertising chain and what can be done do to maximize ad revenue. more»

One of China’s leading mobile advertising companies, Madhouse, has partnered with China Telecom to bring advertising to mobile search.

Best Tone Information Service is a wholly-owned China Telecom subsidiary that provides local search services. Madhouse will empower Best Tone’s mobile advertising business and serve as Best Tone’s preferred mobile advertising platform partner more»

When you receive an online or mobile advertisement that seems just too precisely tailored to your individual interests, does it ever make you feel a bit strange and wonder what else is happening with your personal information?

If this sounds familiar, then Yahoo may have the solution for you, as they announce an upgrade to their mobile service which gives consumers greater control over the use of their personal information. more»

Every month, Millennial Media puts out a SMART report on the US mobile advertising market (SMART=Scorecard for Mobile Advertising Reach and Targeting).

The May report shows that the US mobile internet market continues to grow at a monthly average of 3-5%. There is also some very interesting information on the mix of campaigns (for example, Retail Promotional campaigns increased 6% from April to May), as well as an an analysis of “Cost Per Engaged User” across various types of targeting methods. more»

18 to 19 November, 2009
Hong Kong

The GSMA Mobile Asia Congress provides mobile industry executives worldwide an important opportunity to meet, to discuss and to debate industry trends and issues, and to network with peers, partners and prospects. more»

Life’s Mobile is a mobile web marketing firm focused on building brands through effective mobile strategies. Life’s Mobile makes taking the step into the mobile channel an effective and profitable endeavor. Founded in 2002, the Life’s Mobile team is a seasoned and dedicated group, ready to join your team for mobile success.

Xtract delivers software products for social marketing and advertising intelligence. The company refines social interaction, personal behaviour and demographic data to create accurate 3D user profiles. These profiles for the first time enable companies to utilise data as a dynamic tool in the day-to-day business of marketing for effective and intelligent targeting of digital advertising, viral campaigns and predictive churn management.

Xtract’s products and solutions are automated, self-learning and capable of analysing billions of customer transactions. They make complexity simple with easy to use tools for marketers and advertisers to define accurate targets for their campaigns.

Xtract works with more than 50 blue-chip companies with intensive customer data.

Headquarters are in Helsinki, Finland.

UpCode™ is a highly developed Mobile Access & Interaction technology that turns mobile phones into intelligent optical readers (or ‘scanners’) able to read codes – simply by ‘pointing’ at them with a mobile. In everyday life 2d and 1d barcodes can be on any object or surface, or sent to mobile phones.

These new mobile technologies can improve efficiencies or profitability in businesses or in media, and can ensure measurable results.

Media Solutions: b2c and 1 to 1 targeted marketing for media, print (any printed surface or on-screen), brands and agencies. With access and interaction, anywhere in the world, in any language, 24/7/365. Including; crm, consumer analytics, mobile payment, mobile tickets, mobile barcodes and mobile coupons (on phone or printed), links to audio & video clips or 3dimensional advertising. A world of possibilities to communicate and interact with consumers.

Cross-Media campaigns can also be used in harmony with, or independently from…

Business Solutions: e.govt., control systems, authentication, packaging, brand protection & management, logistics, track & trace, anti-counterfeit or smuggling, supply chain management, crm, id & passports, transport & ticketing, parking, disability, tourism, e.learning.

Gorillabox is a mobile services provider offering Operators, Mobile content owners and advertisers revenue streams and channels to market.

Gorillabox develops mobiles sites and Iphone applications for international companies and with the ability and the skills to handle large and small bespoke projects. Its experience in this sector has led to some great clients requiring our unique capability of a tried and tested platform coupled with a willingness to create unique APIs or tools to meet their requirements.

Gorillabox marketing is a combination of both mobile search marketing and established high-volume advertising funded sites. With us, our clients are able to track the effectiveness of the campaign and we continuously improve and develop it to ensure they get the best traffic for your service.

Site: http://gorillabox.co.uk

Founded to meet the new technical and operational challenges of the communications industry when the U.S. government mandated local number portability in 1996, NeuStar Inc. (NYSE:NSR) creates customer-responsive technologies that deliver a broad range of essential clearinghouse capabilities for service providers.

NeuStar’s clearinghouse enables delivery of traditional services more efficiently and deployment of new services more rapidly than ever before. NeuStar is an essential component of the operations of service providers globally. No matter what segment of communications, NeuStar helps companies reduce costs, speed up time to market for new services and grow businesses. The company’s clearinghouse services enable customers to manage critical activities such as record exchanges, subscriber growth, network optimization, content management, and inter-network call origination and termination.

The company has also designed our automated solutions to evolve in response to the rigors of tomorrow’s communications services – including VoIP, wireless data, and law enforcement compliance.

FuturLink, founded in 2003 with its headquarters in Barcelona, is a pioneer in Intelligent Marketing Technologies.

The company manufactures equipment and develops applications to empower the interaction between brands and its target, using innovative digital platforms in the fields of Mobile Marketing, Digital Signage and Internet.
Since the initiation of the company, its R & D has been a leader in the development of technology platforms based on Mobile Proximity Marketing and now based on any technology that improves the interaction between advertisers and its target, including advanced audience and interaction metrics and analysis.

Its technologies related to Mobile Marketing and Content Distribution that enables interaction with mobile phone users via short-range technologies like Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and NFC. The solutions can be used, “out of home” with a variety of media and “at home” from any website.

InCent Pte Ltd specialises in designing direct marketing solutions and campaigns for advertisers to deliver targeted, relevant and interactive communication to their customers via the mobile phone. By combining proprietary segmentation technology with distribution over the mobile platform, InCent is able to provide advertisers and media agencies with a cost-effective and fast way to reach their target demographic. InCent offers the advertiser the platform to plan and execute campaigns as well as to follow-up with their customers.

Being part of the InCent Media Group, the company is set up in Norway in 2004 and located its headquarters in Singapore in 2006.

www.incent-media.com

Ultra-Net company is an EU company specialized in wireless technology. our fields of expertiese are: GSM, Bluetooth, DECT, WiFi, RFID and GIS.

Over the past 6 years we’ve been providing software, hardware and training services for customer in more than 30 countries worldwide in America, Europe, Asia, Australia and Africa.

For the past 4 years we’ve been study the market needs and usuage of mobile marketing and entertainment and we’ve developed such a platform, and currently this is our main focus.

Our new platform is a proximity marketing and entertainment solutions based on Bluetooth technology.
Based on this platfrom we’ve developed Marketing, Entertainment, Security and other products.

UltraNetSys.com

mobilemojo – mobile marketing and consulting agency.

Located in Würzburg, Germany, mobilemojo provides consulting for mobile marketing campaigns, mobile advertising and mobile application development for iphone and android handhelds.

www.mobilemojo.de

October 6, 2009
Omni Hotel San Diego, San Diego, CA

Mobile Entertainment Live! brings together the best and brightest from the wireless and entertainment industries to debate and discuss the barriers separating the mobile world from the rest of the digital universe. more»

September 22 to 23, 2009
London, UK

ad:tech is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition. more»

15 to 16 September, 2009
Amsterdam, Netherlands

OSiM World will once again equip you with all the knowledge and partnerships you could possibly need to succeed in the mobile open source space. more»

9 to 10 September, 2009
Berlin, Germany

The Mobile Marketing Association’s Mobile Marketing Forum series brings the entire mobile marketing ecosystem together under one roof to drive the momentum for mobile marketing adoption.
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September 1 to 2, 2009
Chicago, USA

ad:tech is an interactive advertising and technology conference and exhibition. more»