Nokia introduces mobile ad services
Leading phone maker launching two features aimed at helping struggling operators take advantage of advertising revenue stream.
As mobile operators look toward offering more data services on their networks, they are quickly realizing that there is a lot of money to be made in advertising--a new revenue stream that could offset the heavy losses they are experiencing in their voice businesses. Operators also see advertising as a way to support new creative content.
According to market researcher Informa Telecoms & Media, advertisers will spend more than $11 billion by 2011 on mobile marketing. Operators could stand to take up to 50 percent of this advertising revenue as they negotiate deals with content owners.
Nokia believes it can help operators and advertisers get these ads on mobile phones.
"As advertisers struggle to reach personalized targeting with traditional media such as print and TV, mobile advertising is becoming an increasingly attractive channel for brands," Tom Henriksson, director of Ad Service in Nokia's emerging business unit, said in a statement.
Nokia Ad Service, the first of the new features, is a system for simplifying the mobile-advertising process that supports and manages a full ad campaign lifecycle. The service is built around a group of content publishers who have formed a mobile-advertising network. It also uses technology developed by Nokia that will be used to deploy, manage and optimize mobile ad campaigns. Nokia Ad Service is launching this week in Europe and will be available globally in the second half of 2007, the company said.
Nokia also introduced Nokia Advertising Gateway, a service for third-party content publishers and advertising aggregators that allows them to deliver targeted advertisements to mobile handsets. The service ties ads to specific multimedia applications like reading digital newspaper content, watching TV, listening to music or looking at directions on maps.
A key part of the service will be the easy-to-use reporting and analytics tools for publishers to manage their advertisers' return on investment. Nokia said it will run several pilots of the new Advertising Gateway service during the next few months. The service will be commercially available in the second half of 2007.
"Think of the gateway as a one-stop delivery point with intelligence," Matthew Snyder, head of the company's business development, multimedia and advertising business programs, said in a statement.