UnwireIndia

With an ever-growing population of mobile phone users in India, advertisers see the handset as a potential medium for reaching consumers with their targeted messages. “Unlike television and print, mobile phones provide a much more focussed and assured access to consumers,” says Subho Ray, president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, or IAMAI. “One always knows that one’s ad has been seen by the consumer, which is not the case with TV or print.”

To be sure, mobile phones are not a new phenomenon in India and advertisers have been experimenting with the medium, albeit cautiously. “We realize that the mobile is a powerful tool in targeting consumers but we are cautious in tapping the medium because it could amount to intrusion in consumers’ private space,” says Sajid Shamim, executive director, marketing, Reebok India Co.

To tap this growing medium while managing the challenge of spamming, many a young SMS (short messaging service) marketing company has come up with technology and plans that deliver the goods to both advertisers and consumers.
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Toronto-based MyScreen Mobile has continued to make significant moves in hopes of dominating the mobile advertising space. This time they have taken their technology to India and filed a patent application. Myscreen has filed patents for its technology in the USA, Canada and other parts of the world.

MyScreen recently secured a $10 million investment to grow the company in other countries and it seems like India is the first move. If you are unfamiliar with MyScreen, they are a permission and incentive-based advertising for your mobile phone. It allows mobile subscribers to be compensated for the advertising (images, text or video) that shows up on their device. Supposedly you’re in control of when, what and how the advertisements shows up and the payout is in cash, ring tones, extra air time, music downloads, and games.
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The latest tussle for grabbing maximum eyeballs for advertisement will be fought on the mobile platform. The drop in the average revenue per user is forcing telecom and related industries to find new avenues for growth.

The value-added services industry is still fragmented and advertisement within it still remains a small revenue stream. Serious steps ,however, are being taken to increase this. One of these is the formation of mobile advertisement networks.

Mobile ad networks are just like ad networks on the internet. They comprise a publisher, an advertiser, agency and a technology platform provider. Consider the case of Mumbai-based mKhoj, a mobile ad network provider, which last week served its advertisement number one billion. On a monthly basis, the company serves 225 million ads on the mobile platform, has 300 partners and has worked with 42-50 brands. All the numbers have been achieved only in the last six months or so.
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Cellphone advertising is witnessing the first few signs of how it has the potential to become big in the near future. Hindustan Unilever and Coca-Cola, two of the biggest advertisers in the country belonging to the fast moving consumer goods sector, have launched campaigns this month to tap mobile users.

Today, Coca-Cola announced a mobile campaign for its clear-lime fizzy drink Sprite. The campaign will encompass as many as 230 million mobile subscribers across all telecom operators in the country. Similarly, a week ago, HUL launched a mobile advertising campaign for its ice-cream brand Cornetto. Both these campaigns, executed by integrated value-added service provider for mobiles Oxigen, have gathered momentum.

The initiative by Coca-Cola comes after it discovered in an in-house research that there was an overlap between 230 million mobile users in India and Sprite consumers. It was also found that the largest segment of mobile users in India are college students with pre-paid mobile connections. Read the rest of this entry »

A new player in the mobile advertising segment, Airvoice Infocom Pvt. Ltd, says it is confident of changing the trend in mobile advertising. It has introduced a technology, which allows subscribers to listen to 10 to 15 second advertisements before connecting to the number they call.

What’s more, subscribers will earn money for every call they make - a win-win situation for the telecom service providers, advertisers and subscribers. As the subscription is at the user’s choice this model is said to be non-intrusive.

Expected to be launched first in Chennai by mid-2008, the technology works by integrating the mobile switching centres of telecom service providers with the technology created by Airvoice that allows a smooth transition between the advertisement and call. Read the rest of this entry »

India will have 500 million mobile consumers by 2010 with 60 million mobile users having video capability, 100 million music capability, 200 million radio capability, 250 million camera capability and 250 million with internet capability. (more)

These were some of the facts shared by D Shivakumar, vice-president and managing director, Nokia India, at the Goafest conclave.

He said, “Mobile phones are not just about voice anymore. Services delivered through mobiles would open up a big opportunity for the advertisers in India with a huge untapped potential.” Read the rest of this entry »

IMImobile, the global provider of value-added services to mobile telecoms operators and content owners, today announced that it has commenced pre-launch trials of its ‘Ad-Ring’ mobile advertisement platform. Ad-Ring is the industry’s first fully integrated mobile advertising platform. It provides an environment in which multi-format ad campaigns can be created and delivered to consumers via a full range of mediums covering SMS, MMS, voice, WAP portal, caller ring back tone and video streaming.

Furthermore Ad-Ring is delivered as a module within IMImobile’s ‘DaVinci’ service delivery platform (SDP) and is provided as a fully managed service. DaVinci has enabled 4 billion user interactions worldwide in 2007 alone. Read the rest of this entry »

ZestADZ a pioneer in mobile advertising space in India, today announced that will now sell ads on facebook mobile platform allowing facebook developers to integrate mobile ads with their facebook mobile apps. ZestADZ will be the first mobile ad platform from India to offer such service for Indian mobile developers.

Using this service, facebook mobile developers can monetize their mobile applications by embedding ads from leading advertisers from India. Through this development mobile developers can now tap into the Indian mobile market which currently has more than 200 million users, many of them moving upward using mobile Internet. The facebook India network has hundreds of thousands of users from India and it is expected that just like Orkut, facebook’s popularity will soar in India especially on their mobile sites. Read the rest of this entry »

CellSerf and Candid Marketing joined hands today to enter the mobile advertising space in India. This provides an opportunity for advertisers to reach out to customers with video, audio, picture and text ads on the very personal mobile medium.

CellSerf, a mobile media and technology company based out of New Delhi, India and Sunnyvale, CA, has partnered with Candid Marketing, a leading marketing services company, for developing the mobile advertising market and business in India. Candid Marketing is a division of IMSG Plc. (www.imsg.co.uk) with a presence in many of the high growth markets worldwide. In India, Candid Marketing is a leading marketing services company and is widely regarded as the pioneer in innovative below-the-line marketing solutions. With its offices in six major cities, Candid executes marketing and sales programs across more than 120 cities for most major international brands with a presence in India.

The recently launched CellSerf mobile application optimizes advertising spends by offering a variety of options for the advertisers to connect with the end users. Read the rest of this entry »

Onmobile a popular Indian Vas company has rolled out its mobile ad network. They are certainly providing a unique method of mobile advertising, rather than the conventional method of having advertisements placed on searches, onmobile has taken the “Voice” route.

How does/will it work?
Callers will get to hear advertisements when they call, just like how you are used to hearing caller tunes, in the same manner there will be advertisements.

Going ahead they plan to offer more interactivity by allowing users directly connect with the call center while listening to the ad. In phase two, which will roll out in Read the rest of this entry »