Wireless carriers searching for the right mix with mobile advertising

Mobile operators and other players are looking for ways to monetize the mobile Web through advertising—but consumers are leery of spam on their cellphones. Toronto mobile advertising provider MyScreen Mobile Inc. says it has the right approach—one that benefits consumers, carriers and advertisers. MyScreen CEO Maurizio Angelone said the company has a deal with Wind Mobile, a recent entrant in the Canadian market, to provide advertising. “We have an agreement to deploy our mobile advertising in the 20-odd countries that Wind Mobile operates in, and we’re also in talks with another major Canadian carrier,” he said. MyScreen is going live next week in Brazil, Mexico, and Argentina, and is in talks with American carriers. The company also has an agreement with consumer products company Unilever and is in talks with other potential advertisers interested in the Canadian market. MyScreen provides opt-in, non-intrusive mobile advertising to consumers, allowing them to collect points that can be redeemed for free phone features with carriers every time they click or react to an advertisement. Carriers get revenue from advertisers and increased cellphone usage. Advertisers can develop targeted marketing campaigns, as consumers agree to provide general demographic information such as age, gender, and interest areas. “It’s a win-win situation all round,” Angelone said. Cellphones’ small screens mean that typical Web advertising strategies like banner ads and text messages are too intrusive, Angelone said. “With MyScreen, at the end of a call, consumers receive a full-screen, branded image that invites them to click to take a survey or perform an action to get points. They get the image when the device isn’t being used, and they can push a button to make it go away if they’re not interested.” Angelone said MyScreen recently conducted a commercial trial in Turkey, and the average clickthrough rate for its service was about 20 per cent, contrasted with the typical clickthrough rate of two per cent for Internet advertising. The advertising can translate into significant revenues for carriers, Angelone said. “If the service is deployed aggressively, the increase in the average revenue per user (ARPU) can range from five to 15 per cent.” Wind Mobile says it hasn’t yet decided on the timing of its introduction of mobile advertising, CEO Ken Campbell said. “We just launched our services, and at this stage we’re focused on building our subscriber base. But we see mobile advertising as a potential source of revenue, and we may introduce it later this year. We believe it’ll become a standard part of the medium over time.” The future of online revenues lie in mobile advertising and monetizing the experience, said Carmi Levy, an independent technology consultant in London, Ont. “This is where future battles will be fought. Google is looking to replicate its success in monetizing the Internet on the mobile platform. It explains why it has launched its Android mobile operating system and Chrome browser—it hopes to control the strategic gateways consumers use to access the mobile Web.” But these are early days, and incumbent Canadian carriers aren’t yet involved in mobile advertising. “Different companies are piloting different ideas, but nothing has stuck to the wall yet. The form factors, applications, and so on, are very different for mobile compared with Web advertising,” Levy said. Mobile wireless is expensive in Canada, and incumbents tend to offer limited data usage plans. Consumers can sign onto mobile advertising to reduce their phone bills—but the incentive to do this in Canada isn’t strong for the incumbent carriers. “If consumers use more data, then it pushes them into a higher rate plan, where they pay more. So as long as incumbents don’t offer unlimited plans, they’re happy for now,” Levy said. The big question for the wireless industry is how fast operators can build out their networks to sustain growing services and keep up with consumer demands. Incumbent Canadian carriers want to grow at a controlled pace without dealing with wildcards such as mobile advertising, he added. Mobile advertising represents only one revenue source, Campbell said, adding that Wind Mobile is the only operator offering unlimited data plans. “I wouldn’t say mobile advertising is a panacea for anything—it represents a piece of the puzzle as we build up long-term revenue streams,” he said. Mobile advertising continues to look for its Google to monetize the mobile Web and motivate carriers to sign on, Levy said. “That game-changing player could be Google again. It wants to be , but other players are also jockeying for position at this point.” news@thewirereport.ca

Wireless carriers searching for the right mix with mobile advertising

News | 03/12/2010 9:41 pm EST

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