As mobile phone penetration rates steadily increase around the world, with smartphones leading the rush, advertisers are embracing the mobile space. The latest entrant into the mobile advertising game is Fring.
With Fring clients peppering mobile phones across the globe, Fring serves up instant message and VoIP calling services countless times per day. Fring has gained a strong following among iPhone, Symbian, and Windows Mobile users around the world, but has remained largely ad-free… until now.
In a bid to capitalize on all those eyes viewing Fring clients, Fring has announced a new advertising trial program that will splash banners across select Fring clients. The new monetization strategy will have Fring using advertisements to help avoid passing on costs to the user.
Says Fring:
We wanted to give you the heads-up, as you may soon see small clickable advertising banners in the fring chat window, beneath the chat itself. Clicking the ad will open your browser and take you to the advertiser’s site; you may even find extra special offers, cool promos & other nice surprises behind the click from time to time And, more clicks mean happy advertisers; and happy advertisers mean more resources for us to develop cool new stuff for you to play with in fring!
So, if you happen to see a new mobile advertisement in your Fring client, you might want to go ahead and give it a click.
On the 29th of October, 100 of Europe’s toughest and craziest music fans will embark on the biggest FanWalk in music history, the Sony Ericsson (NYSE: SNE) FanWalk to the MTV Europe Music Awards ‘08. Together, they journey the 400 kilometres from London to Liverpool (October 29th to November 6th), to be at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2008!
For the biggest FanWalk in music history we searched for the toughest and craziest music fans in Europe. The lucky 100 were selected from 3000 die-hard applicants from all over Europe through a rigorous casting process in search of the most creative, passionate and dedicated music fans.
The road to Liverpool will be packed with adventure as we challenge the FanWalkers to prove why they are Europe’s biggest music fans. Watch them as they go through crazy hair-cuts, drastic make-overs and other exciting challenges to prove why they are Europe’s biggest music fans! One lucky FanWalker will also have the honour to get on stage at the MTV EMAs ‘08 to hand over an award to one of the esteemed music acts – what could be a greater honour for a true music fan?
Keep up with their progress ONLY at www.fanwalk.tv as our cameras track their every step. Watch the daily webisodes, explore the picture gallery and read the FanWalkers blog to get the latest news on the road to Liverpool.
Don’t miss out on the fun and adventure! Follow the FanWalkers on their journey on www.fanwalk.tv and you could also WIN great prizes such as cool Sony Ericsson music phones and accessories!
Sounds crazy doesn’t it, but you’ve got to give it to Sony Ericsson for innovative marketing campaigns – there is some serious advertising exposure going on there, and having been to previous events of theirs, I am sure it will be incredibly well-organised. Sony Ericsson rocks (literally) !!
Major brands in the financial services, retail, and maunfacturing sectors will invest heavily in Mobile Marketing in the next 5 years, says UK OpCo Telefonica (NYSE: TEF) O2 (NYSE: TEF).
Apparently two-thirds of businesses state that mobile marketing campaigns generate a higher response rate than traditional methods, due to the personalisation/targeting element. Interestingly, 88% of marketing directors anticipate that behavourial targeting will be an important new element for customer insights by 2010.
On the reception side (i.e. the customer) however, 46% of those in the study were concerned about text messages as spam (I’m not worried, my friends send me enough messages that I regard as spam anyway!).
Of course marketing messages can take many forms, such as competitions, info services, booking confirmations (with extra promo text), appointment updates (agan with the promo text), and call backs / email campaigns.
Speaking of text messaging, this would also be the most popular medium for Mobile Marketing – probably due to it’s ubiquity.
O2 commissioned Vanson Bourne in May 2008 to survey IT directors and marketing directors in 100 leading brands about their current and future plans for mobile marketing.
Vodafone Hungary has chosen the mobile advertising technology company MADS as their partner for “targeted mobile advertising“, on their Vodafone (NYSE: VOD) Live! portal. There are a good bunch of well-known brands, such as Nivea, EA, and Gameloft, that have already launched campaigns on since the pre-launch of the service in the summer.
MADS is an Amsterdam based company that offers multi-channel mobile profiling, analytics & ad server solutions. The mobile advertising channels include WAP, SMS, MMS, Mobile Video and Ring back tones within a single platform and interface.
So Advertising presses on – it’s a solid revenue stream for Operators, and shows no signs up slow-down!
Internal RIM and AT&T documents have floated up, discussing the competitive points between the iPhone and the upcoming BlackBerry (NSDQ: RIMM) 9530 on Verizon (NYSE: VZ). The long and short of the arguments is that the BlackBerry Storm has all the back-end security and support, while the iPhone 3G has the panache of multi-touch and iTunes integration. A lot of AT&T’s points haven’t been really well-researched, like the HTML e-mail viewing (avaialble as of BlackBerry OS 4.5), AppStore (BlackBerry has plenty of 3rd. partysoftware outlets, and they aren’t ruled with an iron fist), maps and GPS (hasn’t been ruled out, and it will likely be on the GSM version), and Wi-Fi (a 9520 model will likely follow shortly after the initial Storm), but hey, we all know what camp I’m in. To be fair, the Storm’s selling points will only really appeal to the IT admin that cares about locking down devices, although they are trying to make a pitch for the benefits of data compression as a means to save on wireless costs and battery life.
See, when the BlackBerry Bold came out, everyone was making a big deal over the iPhone vs. Bold, but the Storm and the iPhone is going to be the real fight to watch out for. My only real worry for the BlackBerry Storm is the quality of their touchscreen. It looks like they’re doing some funky stuff with pressure sensitivity, as the keypad will light up as your finger goes over the virtual keys, but not actually press until you push down on them, and small vibrations will confirm keystrokes. It’s a bit of a gamble, but I trust RIM to polish the experience and get it up to the snuff of their traditional tactile keypads.
Mobile consumers these days aren’t going to take text message spam lying down. The precedent has been set, forcing spammy text message senders to pay heft sums to angry mobile users. In that light, shoemaker and clothier Timberland has offered to settle a class-action lawsuit filed against itself and GSI Commerce by mobile customers complaining of being sent unsolicited SMS text messages.
The two companies have offered up a $7 million fund to reimburse angry mobile phone users for their text messaging fees. The class-action lawsuit accuses Timberland and GSI Commerce of sending out SMS text messages in violation of the U.S. Telephone Consumer Protection Act. Both companies announced that they would put $7 million in cash into the fund to help pay back customers who received the unwanted text messages.
The settlement is pending court-approval. Customer can apply for a $150 reimbursement by filling out the application here. Claims must be filed by Feb. 2, 2009 in order to qualify.
The settlement has ugly implications for the future of targeted mobile advertising. If consumers have the power to sue over unwanted SMS text messages, advertisers may be forced to consider other advertising solutions for the mobile space.
You know you are getting old when you derive pleasure from accruing reward card points with a supermarket. Fortunately, I didn’t derive any pleasure as such, but am doing from letting our UK readership that you can both accrue points, AND get some BlackBerry goodness at the same time!
Nectar (which is a consortium of retailers in the UK, who have a common reward card system) have emailed me to say that if you get any BlackBerry on a UK network, with a 24 month voice and data tariff, they will give you 2000 Nectar points (once you have registered the purchase with them).
Unfortunately it’s not 2000 pounds, but hey, it’s a good deal if you have intentions of getting a BBerry soon – and let’s face it, that could easily be the case if you are eyeing up the BB Bold, as I am ….
If you wanna check out the offer, go here and login to your Nectar account.
If you’re not excited for the T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) G1, maybe some fresh-squeezed Android ad material is what you need. The video shows the G1’s browser, Google (NSDQ: GOOG) Street View in Compass mode, messaging, calendar and YouTube in full prerendered goodness.
T-Mobile is no doubt enjoying the wave of popularity caused by the G1, but we hear the exclusivity will apparently only last a week, which means carriers could have just as much free reign with Android as the programmers. T-Mobile’s run with the G1 will give us an idea of how well Android performs outside of the pipe dreams of programmers, and could easily pull in carriers and manufacturers after seeing it take off, which is likely to happen with proper marketing like this behind it.
Well, the show that is known as IBC 2008 (this year at least), sure was busy! As I mentioned in a previous post, this is where the illuminati (and other people too) of the broadcast world get together, to show their wares, and present information directly to peoples’ brains.
This year, as is usually the case, there was a Mobile zone, and it was full of a veritable ecosystem of Mobile TV companies. Big names, little names, and some companies where I couldn’t decipher the name – you really can never recover from the usage of bad fonts…!
The one take-away from this event that I personally got was that Mobile TV is really mixed – on the one hand, broadcast should be the way things are going, but unicast (3G streaming) is also still popular. Ultimately, this points to the diversity between the various different operators/providers that are out there actually doing it. And also the fact that techological solutions need to fit the requirements of the customer (typically an operator) AND the end-user.
X Factor website video player, sponsored by Carphone Warehouse
In past years, it has been Nokia (NYSE: NOK) who have taken on the mantle of sponsoring the X Factor, but this year sees new blood, with Carphone Warehouse stepping in to the breach. They have adopted quite a cartoony visual style, which is applied to all the in/outs on the Ad breaks, plus the online properties of the X Factor – as can be seen above from the X Factor website video streamer. Unfortunately when I checked, the video player didn’t seem to be working properly, but nonetheless, the Carphone visual ID is all over it.
Of course, CPW sponsoring the X Factor is perfect, as it’s just the demographic they want in their stores, buying devices and contracts. A quick flight over to the CPW website, and they have some attractive tariffs, and devices – notably the iPhone 3G, and the Samsung i8510 (the 8MP, Series60, 16Gb, uber-device!).
So if you want to take a look at the X Factor site, go here.
If you’d prefer to see the Carphone Warehouse site, go here.
As mobile phone penetration rates steadily increase around the world, with smartphones leading the rush, advertisers are embracing the mobile space. The latest entrant into the mobile advertising game is Fring.
Mobile consumers these days aren’t going to take text message spam lying down. The precedent has been set, forcing spammy text message senders to pay heft sums to angry mobile users. In that light, shoemaker and clothier Timberland has offered to settle a class-action lawsuit filed against itself and GSI Commerce by mobile customers complaining of being sent unsolicited SMS text messages.
