Nokia buys Boston based mobile advertising company Enpocket

The price is unknown, the deal should close by the end of this year, but what you need to know is that Nokia (NYSE: NOK) is serious about offering services to consumers. They want to be to mobile ads what Google (NSDQ: GOOG) is to adsense online. Will they pull it off? Hard to tell, Nokia apparently has morals and does not want to endorse pornography or gambling on their ad networks. Will this attitude hurt or help?

Here is an interview with Enpocket CEO Mike Baker from March of this year:

Q. What can be learned or carried over from Internet content and marketing?

A. It is a different medium… You can’t port Internet experiences to the small screen. Internet companies like Yahoo had to fundamentally rework the product offering on the channel. To succeed in mobile is not a given for Internet companies like Yahoo, Google, and MSN because it does require them to produce different assets, different experiences. They’re still in a very good position to leverage an adjacent opportunity in the mobile space.

In general I would say the display advertising market for mobile is very early. That said, I see a definite appetite among brands to engage in that sort of mobile advertising. This is a building year, a learning year, a testing year. The difference between this year and last year is that there are a lot more people testing. We’re really looking at later 2007 and 2008 for a pretty significant pick up for brands and advertisers moving from test mode to a recurring spend in mobile advertising.

[Via: Nokia PR]