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MobiAD News has conducted an interview with Pascal Thomas, mobile visionary and VP of Orange NExT (the mobile media division of France Telecom Orange), on advertising through social networks. You can read the full interview here, but here are some of the highlights:
- Segmentation – the traditional view is that all subs fit in to 6 or 7 categories – new thinking says that segmentation should be dynamic and that subs can fit in to one or more categories at the same time, and that over the course of say a week, these categories might change – either by the day, or even the hour!
- Collecting data – to identify these transient segments, data can be collected through the multiple social networks which people sign up for. Orange for example has been trialling a social network aggregator that connects subs to multiple social networks. Pascal says “This is something we will introduce as ‘Mobile Open Communities’”. Obviously the app is collecting usage data on you at the same time…
- Multi-play operator – because Orange is a multi-play operators, it should be possible to gather data across the various “channels” (bearers) people use to consume media. However, this is apparently not so easy to do. Pascal explains that the issue with identifying not with Mobile, but with who is sat in front of the PC or Television, which are often shared devices.
- “Rewind-TV”- the central thread here is tha Orange have chosen a strategy to record everything they broadcast, because then a user can pick the channel on which they access the content, at their leisure (often called “on-demand”). What is means for advertising is dynamic ad-insertion, because you always want the most up-to-date and targeted Ad, irrespective of when the content was from.
- New Metrics for consumer engagement – essentially, how do you correctly measure the effect of this new wave of advertising? There is a very interesting quote from Pascal here:
“What we want to do is to build a bubble, and have our customers sit within the bubble. We will bring outside services into the bubble so they get what they want. It’s the time spent by people on a service that’s important, that is where the value will come.”
Obviously some interesting stuf here, and a glimpse in to how one of the big Tier 1 OpCos in Europe in facing up to the challenge of next-gen Advertising…
[Via: MobiAD News]
About The Author
Ben Robinson
Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.
