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Berg Insight: Ad-revenue model to change the mobile industry

Categories: Research
By: , IntoMobile
Friday, October 26th, 2007 at 5:42 AM

We’ve heard numerous times telecoms will either have to change or die at some point. Now, we have Berg Insight predicting that ad-based revenue model is going to have a profound long-term impact on the development of the mobile industry.

Berg InsightTraditionally, carriers made (and are still making) their money by managing network traffic — i.e. selling minutes and data access to their users. However, with players like Google entering the space, things may shift away from the “old” business models, resulting in a free, ad-supported network access for the end users.

The problem is that even though there are close to 100 million mobile Internet users in Europe and North America, most of them don’t use it that frequently. Hence, they can’t be exposed to enough advertising to justify the free service. According to Berg Insight, in order for the ad-revenue model to work, the existing user base must become exposed to between 3–10 commercial messages every day and the industry still has to figure out a way to do that…

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About The Author

Dusan Belic

Dusan has been using smartphones since their introduction and is now following the latest trends in the industry. The "convergence" is what he's most excited about, and writing about it is the next logical thing to do. He thinks that using a smartphone is what everyone who cares about their time should do. In addition to his interests in mobile phones, Dusan also loves to experiment with the latest web and mobile 2.0 services. The idea of accessing and managing your information from any device no matter where you are simply amazes him. Whether it's an online to-do list, note taking service or a video sharing social network, he's there to try it out. He admits though, he's still searching for the ultimate web-based organizational tool, which "sings" perfectly with the mobile PIM application. Dusan used to run SymbianWatch.com which later became part of IntoMobile. He lives in Serbia, South-East Europe, from where he edits the site on a daily basis.