Glassbox TV on verge of new deal with Canada’s mobile carriers

Glassbox TV is expected to shatter expectations when a new deal with Canadian mobile carriers is announced later this month."Put it this way- the carriers are eager to promote their phones as music-friendly and because AUX has a lot of buzz, and could be the next big music thing there's a strong desire to create a partnership between AUX and Canadian mobile carriers,' Simon Foster, VP business development, tells Canadian New Media.While Foster shied away from details, saying only that the partnership will be announced "before the end of the year," there are hints that some of their content will be available on-deck.Glassbox - the Toronto-based multi-platform broadcaster has already had a busy quarter; with the re-launch of Bite TV and launch of AUX - Canada's first cross-platform channel dedicated to emerging music (see CNM, November 10, 2008). AUX, which launched on Bite TV and online only last week is already establishing a following."We don't know what the broadcast numbers are yet, but online, we've seen hundreds of new visitors to www.aux.tv," Foster said following Friday's Ontario Media Development Corp. and KPMG- sponsored iLunch 7.03 - a discussion and networking luncheon in Toronto focused on mobile content.Yahoo Tech reports that economic woes are poised to hit the mobile phone market by 2009, yet panelists - including Foster - seemed to exude optimism. "I think that even in this economy we're in good shape," Foster said. While traditional media companies like CTV and CanWest are experiencing well-reported financial troubles, panelists seemed to sense a period of growth around digital and mobile content platforms.Advertising-funded content seems to be gaining traction. Quickplay Media's Mark Hyland, VP marketing, tells CNM that "mobile marketing is definitely starting to become a more important aspect of our business.""We've worked with media customers from the beginning, but from an advertising perspective, our first big gig in advertising was in January of February of this year in Italy. We worked on a free, ad-funded service for VodaPhone Italy, and that was a really good trial for us to be a part of."Quickplay, he says, is working on a media and entertainment solution that will serve as a publishing tool. "It's still in beta, but we have customers that are starting to use and evaluate it. The goal is to make it really easy to publish to mobile. We're going to be rolling it out in a few months," Hyland says. Short on details, he explains, "it's still in really early stages right now."But mobile marketing's growth, Hyland says, is being stunted by less-than-ideal metrics."I think there needs to be more of an aggregation and normalization of metrics, especially if we're going to get more advertisers involved," says Hyland. "I think we're still fairly far away from having the richness in metrics (compared to) online.""There are so many different things that are being done that there's no easy way to measure advertising. We can do abstract metrics, like how much money people are spending on their phone, but we can't give the concrete measurements we need. It's just not put together in a normalized way, such as iPhone users who have a 42% share of applications use in Canada. We don't have it yet."One of the reasons he believes online advertising took off was the uniformity in third party audits from companies such as Neilson. Currently, most mobile marketing campaigns' remain self-reported.But poor metrics, and low mobile TV adoption rates - pegged at 1% in a recent Jupiter Research/Forrester Research report - aren't stopping organizations like Glassbox from targeting mobile eyeballs.Earlier this month Glassbox announced a partnership with OmniCom Media Group to co-develop new advertising opportunities on its multiplatform channels. "There is a whole idea that viewers don't care if they are watching an ad or not, so long as they are entertained. We are headed down the path of working with out new partners and their stable of brands is going to come into Glassbox . We're going to work with them to produce that kind of stuff," says Foster."We're not going to hide that it's a brand being promoted, but we will make it really entertaining and feel like content. At the end of the day if people want to decipher whether it's an ad or entertainment, well, they'll be entertained. It'll be on mobile, and people will watch it," he adds confidently.

Glassbox TV on verge of new deal with Canada’s mobile carriers

News | 12/01/2008 10:44 pm EST

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