Many a business plan has been written based on the concept of trying to insert ads into some popular consumer activity. But there is always the question – “Won’t customers object to seeing ads while they are engaged in some other activity?”

That question seems to have been answered, now that Amazon has reported that the ad-supported version of the Kindle Reader is the best selling device on the site! more»

Mobile operator, 3, has announced that it has launched an ad-funded mobile TV service in Hong Kong.

The service called Planet TV will include 28 channels covering Children’s shows, entertainment, lifestyle, music, news, sport, technology and travel. more»

Grameenphone case study:
An interview with Kazi Islam

At MobiAD News, we usually look primarily at the business impact of mobile marketing and mobile services. But there is another trend, perhaps even more important, which is the critical role that mobile can play in reaching the billions of people in emerging regions that are not yet connected via internet.

This week Ferhan and Jim Cook had the pleasure of speaking with Kazi Islam, CEO of Grameenphone IT about the amazing projects they are working on in Bangladesh. In this interview, Kazi talks about his vision of how mobile can be used to address issues such as health and education in emerging nations, as well as the important role that mobile advertising will play.

Kazi will also be a keynote speaker at MLOVE, taking place June 23-25 in Berlin. more»

Blyk, the youth focused mobile messaging service has announced that it has launched its service in the Netherlands. The service will run on the Vodafone network and the consumer offer will include 1,000 free SMS and 1,000 free Blyk-to-Blyk minutes per month. more»

Mobile advertising company Greystripe has announced that it has secured a further $2 million in funding from NBC Universal’s Peacock Equity Fund. This brings Greystripe’s round C investment to $7.5 million, following a $5.5 million investment from Disney’s Steamboat Ventures, Incubic Venture Capital, and Monitor Ventures. more»

Telefonica Mobile Group has announced the launch of a new mobile marketing service built around the LiveScreen Media idle screen advertising platform from Celltick. more»

The Fox Mobile Group is part of News Corporation, one of the largest media companies in the world. News Corp owns such well know assets as 20th Century Fox film, FOX TV broadcasting, National Geographic cable channel, part of B Sky B and Sky Italia, newspapers such as The Times and The Sun in the UK, The Wall Street Journal, and social networking site MySpace.

With such a wealth and diversity of media assets, understanding how to monetize them in new channels such as mobile is very important. In this interview, we talk with Mauro Montanaro, CEO of Fox Mobile Group about branded content, mobile advertising, and how Fox is setup to take advantage of this emerging distribution channel. more»

Ad-funded games company Cellufun seems to have a talent for coming up with unique, topically relevant mobile games.

Last year they released the world’s first “Mobile Political Boxing Game” for the US presidential election campaign.

And now they are releasing what must be the world’s first Mobile Scam Simulation, called “Made Off” (as in “I made off with your money”).
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Metro and 123play.com have announced a partnership to bring more ad-funded mobile games to the UK market. Metro is the UK’s largest free urban daily newspaper, with a combined paper, online, and mobile readership approaching 5 million people daily. 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»

Amobee Media Systems has extended its mobile advertising platform to support handsets built on Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android operating systems. Phones based on these two are rapidly becoming very popular, especially with a demographic that is attractive to advertisers. more»

With over 100 million game downloads, ad-supported mobile games distributor Greystripe is uniquely positioned to share consumer insights metrics.

These statistics have been collected from Greystripe’s internal database of users, and reveal a deeper look at the consumers playing their games, along with mobile gaming demographics, click-through rates and exclusive iPhone statistics. The results provide a meaningful inside look into the advertising potential of mobile games. more»

House of Fraser is a leading clothing store, who wanted to “re-launch” a number of their retail stores around the UK. To do this, they ran a campaign on the youth-oriented Blyk mobile network.


(from our recent interview with Shaun Gregory, CEO of Blyk UK.) more»

The Department for Children, Schools, and Families in the UK wanted to understand better how teenagers felt about free time activities. This group is normally very difficult to communicate with, so the Department tried the innovative approach of running a survey on the Blyk mobile network which focuses on youth, and has recently launched a market research product.

(From our recent interview with Shaun Gregory, CEO of Blyk UK.) more»

Blyk launched their youth-oriented, ad-funded MVNO into the UK market just over a year ago with much fanfare. Since then it has generated a lot of discussion in the industry about the viability and potential success of the “Blyk Model”.

As a year has now passed, we took the opportunity to talk with Shaun Gregory, CEO of Blyk UK, to hear about their first year of operation, what they’ve learned, and to get some insight into the new products that Blyk is working on. more»

Dizzee Rascal (a hip hop MC from UK) was launching a new single, “Dance wiv me”, and he wanted help to get to number one in the UK charts. So he ran a targeted campaign on Blyk.

From our recent interview with Shaun Gregory, CEO of Blyk UK. more»

The ad-funded MVNO Blyk has raised an additional € 40 million ($50.4 million) from its existing investors. This is a big vote of confidence in the youth-oriented company that has been rolling out operations across Europe.

CEO Pekka Ala-Pietilä was quoted as saying “like everyone else [we] are feeling the impact of the world’s financial situation,” and “have taken decisive steps to cut costs and streamline our organization.” more»

Blyk, the free mobile network for 16-24 year olds funded by advertising has chosen Nokia Siemens Networks to host its core network as it expands into the Netherlands and Belgium. Prepaid charging, messaging systems and device management will also be hosted for those two countries. more»

3G mobile operator 3UK has announced that it will begin offering a variety of ad-funded video content later this year. Mobix will manage the content relations and serve the video and ads, while 4th Screen Advertising will sell the advertising. more»

Ad-funded services seem to be a rapidly growing part of the mobile advertising landscape. The Telco 2.0 Initiative, a leading telecoms consultancy, offers some interesting insights into what lessons the industry can learn from observing Blyk, the ad-funded MVNO. more»

MTV Networks (MTVN) announced that it will launch its first-ever mobile video ads on mobile operator video-on-demand services. The U.S. Air Force will be the first advertiser. more»

GoTV Networks, the first multi-platform new media networks, has announced strategic mobile advertising partnerships with three of the industry’s leading companies: Millennial Media, digital SIDEBAR and Ad Infuse. more»

Getting something for free is always attractive for consumers, and it is the driver behind many of the ad-funded models we’re seeing these days.

One of the first mobile companies to give away free services in return for watching ads was Virgin Mobile US, with their SugarMama program. The youthful demographic of Virgin Mobile was the perfect group to offer free airtime in return for their subscribers’ attention.

We had a chance for an in-depth discussion with Scott Kelliher, Director of Mobile Advertising at Virgin Mobile US. Scott explained the details of the service, what works the best, and how customers feel about it. more»

One of the big drivers for mobile advertising will be ad-funded content and services that satisfy the desire for consumers to get something “for free”. This thought provoking brief from Universal McCann takes a look at the “Free World” phenomena and some of the implications for the future of advertising and marketing. more»

Bringing easy-to-use and effective email to the billions of mobile phone users with “mass-market” phones (i.e. not smart phones) seems to be an idea whose time has come. We’re seeing quite a few announcements in this area, the latest being that email provider Blue Whale has selected Smaato’s Mobile Advertising Platform to enable them to provide free email and Facebook services. more»

A new survey in the UK, commissioned by Mobixell Networks, reveals that a sizable opportunity exists among the 16-34 year-old demographic to offer ad-funded mobile content via rich media services like multimedia messaging or mobile video services. Download the full survey results. more»

Sony Pictures Television has announced that its Minisode Network is now available on Sprint TV. The multi-platform video network features four to six minute versions of popular television shows. Sony Pictures has also announced that Honda will be the launch sponsor for the ad-supported network. This follows a successful trial as sponsor of the Minisode Network on MySpace and Crackle.com. more»

Ad-funded mobile content is a hot topic – many companies are now basing their business plans on the ad-funded model. The Mobile Entertainment Forum (MEF) recently published a report that takes an in-depth look into the impact of ad-funded mobile entertainment (AFME) on the on-portal mobile entertainment market in the UK. Download an extract of the key findings. more»

The Associated Press has announced a new advertising supported service for mobile phones. The service will target smart phones such as the iPhone. more»

Mobile operator 3 UK announced the launch of the first ad supported, commercial mobile music video service in conjunction with Sony BMG Music Entertainment (UK). The service, powered by Rhythm NewMedia, is available to all 3 UK customers and is accessed through 3’s music homepage. Customers can now watch their favorite music videos from artists on their mobile phones anywhere and at any time. more»

The mobile market in South Africa is a challenging environment for mobile advertising, but also ripe with opportunity. Vodacom, the largest operator in South Africa, has very quickly established a very successful mobile advertising business. Read this in-depth discussion with Rick Joubert, head of mobile advertising & social media at Vodacom, and download a presentation from him “5 Principles for Mobile Operators, Some advice from an early mover”. more»

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is investigating the use of advertising as a means of funding its new mobile portal according to an article in The Australian. more»

Providing free wifi access all across a city has often seemed like an attractive idea, and a number of cities have projects in that area. But the question always arises as to what is the business model, and who eventually needs to pay for the infrastructure and operations. more»

German software developer Rock Your Mobile launches Call’n Cash technology. It allows ads to be distributed to mobile phones based on specific target consumer needs and profiles. more»

Ford has signed a deal with Channel 4 to run ads in front of the mobile video content on the Channel 4 mobile site.

Channel 4 has added expanded their mobile site to include a range of ad-funded video content, including clips from Desperate Housewives more»

ADIO magazine reports that a survey across 6 Asian markets found a willingness by consumers to download content if ad-supported. The number of respondents willing to download a TV episode jumped 40% if the offer went from $2 without ads to $1 with ads. There was more»

RingTales will release animated versions of world-famous cartoons from The New Yorker magazine. The ad-funded service will be free, more»

A new ad-funded gaming community was recently launched by Hovr, Inc. The service includes over 100 game titles all of which will be available for download at no charge. more»

2 long time veterans of the LA cartoon industry have announced that their company, RingTales, will release animated versions of world-famous cartoons from The New Yorker magazine. The ad-funded service will be free, with subscribers receiving 3 new animations each week.
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American broadcaster CBS has formed a mobile division and announced the launch of 3 mobile WAP sites. Two of the sites provide ad-funded content, more»

Greystripe, a major distributer of ad-funded mobile games, recently added additional games to their portfolio, as well as adding additional distribution channels.
Greystripe announced that 6 new mobile game publishers have agreed to distribute their games on the ad-supported mobile game portal GameJump.com, offering consumers over 400 games titles
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Channel 4 has reported a tremendous increase in the number of video’s downloaded from their Celebrity Big Brother WAP site since the clips became ad-funded. (video) more»

Virgin Mobile USA announced several new well known brands were joining its Sugar Mama marketing program. With Sugar Mama, subscribers can gain free airtime minutes by watching advertisements. more»

Amobee Systems announced recently that they have launched a mobile advertising trial in the French market, running on the Orange network. Orange France will be using the Amobee’s Media System more»