Vodafone announced that it has completed the rollout of mobile advertising services to 18 countries in the past 18 months.

Citing strong revenue growth, Vodafone also announced they would continue expanding both the portfolio of mobile advertising services and their reach.

Rick Fant, Head of Internet Discovery at Vodafone said “Mobile advertising offers a combination of great response rates alongside the opportunity for advertisers to reach out to and engage with their customers. We are pleased with the performance of Vodafone’s mobile advertising business and that more and more brands are moving spend to this innovative medium”.

Over the past year, Vodafone has run over 2,000 mobile campaigns for hundreds of major brands. It is a very impressive client list, including: Coca Cola, Diageo, General Motors, Mercedes, P&G, Unilever, Nestle, Cadburys, Burger King, McDonalds, BMW, Lufthansa, Disney, Adidas, Citroen, Sky, Cisco, Mercedes, HP, Microsoft, Heineken, Allianz, L’Oreal, Ford, Ikea, and Sony.

In addition to banner advertising, Vodafone stated that many of its clients are moving more towards new mobile formats such as branded content, sponsored alerts, or opt-in messaging. Vodafone plans to support this move by offering a number of new services over the coming months. Services which are currently in development or in trial include:

• Zonal marketing trial – This will allow opted-in customers to receive promotional messages from brands relevant to their profile and their realtime location. As they enter a pre-defined area they will receive an MMS or SMS message from Vodafone containing the promotion.
• Incoming voice/text alerts advertising trial – Full screen advertisements from a range of advertising partners will be shown to opted-in customers during the moments before they answer a call or view a message. Customers who choose to join the database, and who go on to view adverts will be rewarded with points that they can redeem against goods or services.
• Branded applications and widgets trial – Assessing customer acceptance of and interaction with, as well as brand marketing effects of, branded mobile apps.
• Location based advertising trial – Vodafone plans to trial customer acceptance of and engagement with branded Points of Interest, (locations of – for example – stores, restaurants and petrol stations) and branded locational search.
• Enhanced mobile internet browser trial– Vodafone is looking at how to simplify and enhance the mobile internet browsing experience for opt-in customers as well as investigating opportunities for mobile publishers and advertisers.
• Vodafone myCampaign – An online self-service platform for mobile advertisers. Currently in development in Germany and Czech Republic, with further markets planned, this tool will allow small businesses to set up and run cost-effective, and local mobile advertising campaigns. The service is designed to be simple, quick and easy to use - combining creative, reporting and online prepayment via credit card.

Read the full press release for further information and examples of some Vodafone mobile marketing campaigns.