{"id":1828,"date":"2008-02-20T19:35:34","date_gmt":"2008-02-20T19:35:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/?p=1828"},"modified":"2008-02-27T11:37:55","modified_gmt":"2008-02-27T11:37:55","slug":"mobile-advertising-is-hot-in-barcelona","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.mobiadnews.com\/?p=1828","title":{"rendered":"Mobile Advertising Was Hot in Barcelona"},"content":{"rendered":"

barcelona.gifOnce a year, the \u201cwho\u2019s who\u201d of the mobile industry flies to Barcelona for the GSMA Mobile World Congress<\/strong> – a week of meetings, presentations, and deal making. 55,000 attendees, 1,300 exhibitors, 2,700 press \u2013 its a big show.

MobiAD News<\/strong> was in Barcelona again this year, keeping our eyes open for trends and interesting new mobile advertising plays. Here\u2019s some of what we found most interesting.<\/p>\n

\nticker_tap.gifMobile Ad companies redefining themselves as media companies.<\/strong>
\nThere are a lot of ad serving companies out there, and it\u2019s getting difficult for them to differentiate. Now, some seem to have realized that operators may in fact be happier to take on content with ads, rather than just ads. Rhythm New Media<\/a><\/strong> was one of the first to take this approach, by packaging together video content, providing it to operators with ads inserted. Recently Celltick<\/a><\/strong> has also gone down this path.
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Rather than providing simply an idle screen ad serving technology, Celltick now offers a variety of content services which fit well on an idle screen, with ads embedded. The uptake has been good from operators, maybe this is the way forward for other ad serving companies. (note: we\u2019ll have a full explanation and demonstration of Celltick in the coming weeks).<\/p>\n
\non_client_portal.gifMore focus on \u201cOn Device Portals\u201d and On Device clients.<\/strong>
\nAs reported several times, having an application on a subscribers handset opens up many more possibilities from an advertising perspective (see NRK interview<\/a>, NRK demo video<\/a> and MobiAd Opinion<\/a> piece). But so far there wasn\u2019t too much focus on this area. Now we are starting to see a lot of activity.
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Surfkitchen<\/a><\/strong> is a UK startup that builds an ODP (on device portal) that recently announced an agreement with Medio<\/a><\/strong>. I also had a chance to see Communology<\/a><\/strong>, a company that recently built an application for Mercedes<\/strong> to introduce their new C series car. Once the application is downloaded, it becomes a permanent \u201cMercedes Portal\u201d in the subscribers pocket.<\/p>\n
\nweb20.gifWeb 2.0 is meets mobile<\/strong>
\nThere has been a huge amount of discussion in the online world about web 2.0, but most of the mobile world is struggling to get even web 1.0 things working. This year we saw a couple of things that struck us as truly \u201cweb 2.0 meets mobile\u201d.
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The first is a new service from Unipier<\/a><\/strong>, an Israeli company that provides policy management systems to operators. They have a new system which enables users to publish their entire mobile lifestyle into their existing Facebook<\/strong> page. A mobile subscriber can let all their Facebook friends know what ringtones they have downloaded, what sites they have visited, what content they have bought, etc. Privacy and content control is all managed by the subscriber.
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And Unipier has another interesting service. One of the main reasons that Facebook has outpaced all the competition is that it provides open interfaces so many people can develop Facebook applications. To date, this capability has not really existed in the mobile world. Now Unipier has released a platform that enables operators to provide such open interfaces. Again, the big issue is privacy and control of data, but that is what the Unipier servers have been doing all along anyway.<\/p>\n
\nringback.gifRingback tones are taking off, and providing a new advertising channel<\/strong>
\nRingback tones* have been a bit \u201cbelow the radar\u201d, they have been growing but without much fanfare. The uptake is actually quite good in certain markets, such as Spain (10%), Korea (60%), India (40%), but very low elsewhere such as UK (1%).
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Some companies, such as LiveWire Mobile<\/a><\/strong> are now realizing that ringback tones can also provide new advertising real estate: when someone calls you, rather than the standard ring tone, why not play an advertisement? And if you don\u2019t want to annoy your friends with ads, you can put together a \u201cwhite list\u201d of your friends, so that only unknown callers hear the ads.
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(* a \u201cringback tone\u201d is a tone that you set up so that when someone calls your mobile, they hear a specific musical tone, rather than a standard ringtone.)<\/p>\n
\npyramid.gifFocus on the “rest of the pyramid”<\/strong>
\nTraditionally the Mobile World Congress has focused on new services and products at the high end of the market (one stand at the show this year was featuring HD TV on a mobile!).
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However, this year there was also a lot of attention focused on the fact that most of the developed world is already close to 100% penetration, and so the real growth will be in regions such as India, China, Russia, Africa, and Brazil where lower end phones will dominate.
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The key point is that in many of these countries, mobile will essentially be the only<\/em> means to access the internet. This hasn’t had too much impact on mobile advertising yet, but clearly these markets will be prime territories for mobile funding of content and services in the future.<\/p>\n
\nAnd in general, lots of publicity around mobile advertising<\/strong><\/p>\n