There have been rumors for months, but it’s now official… AOL is now the proud new owner of Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising network and mobile ad-serving and management-platform provider that now will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL’s Advertising.com division.
“AOL is one of only four at-scale advertising businesses on the Internet, and the acquisition of Third Screen Media gives us a very strong position in the fast-growing mobile space,†said Randy Falco, Chairman and CEO of AOL. “It also lets us offer advertisers a more complete set of solutions, from display advertising to search and now a superior set of mobile solutions.â€
Recently, AdMob, the mobile advertising company teamed up with mywaves, a mobile video company, to build a click-to-video mobile advertising system.Coca-Cola will be one of the first advertisers to test out the new system.
Users who click on an ad on their phone will go to a landing page where they will have the option to watch a video, as well as save the video or pass it to their friends via MMS if they feel so inclined.The Coca-Cola landing page will direct users to Coke’s “Bottle Films†animated shorts which are also available on www.coca-cola.com.
I can’t wait to hear about the results.I personally wonder how long it would take in the US to load these videos and how many users will actually sit around and wait. Though, nevertheless, I think it’s a great idea and leaves a lot of room in the future for growth in mobile advertising.
At CTIA, Yahoo announced its launch of a mobile advertising network that will allow marketers to place ads not only on its mobile services, but also on those of other online publishers. The Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network will allow mobile publishers to have syndicated advertising served on their mobile content and services. Publishers will be able to select the ad formats they want to have run, such as display, sponsored links, video or in-game placements.
“Yahoo! has become a leader in the global mobile Internet by leveraging the reach and popularity of our innovative mobile services for consumers and our competitive expertise in digital advertising,” said Steve Boom, senior vice president of mobile and broadband, Yahoo!. “Now, we are enabling publishers to grow their own mobile businesses by taking advantage of our unique experience, technology and services.”
Launch partners in the Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network include MobiTV, the global leader in mobile and broadband television and music services, Opera, the leading provider of Web browsers for mobile devices, and go2, the leading location-enabled mobile content network in the U.S. The first advertisements will go live in the second quarter of 2007. Yahoo! plans to expand the number of partners in the Yahoo! Mobile Ad Network over the coming months.
Given Yahoo’s track record on mobile I cannot hide my excitement on this announcement.I think Yahoo will set the pace on mobile advertising.
Third Screen Media, a provider of mobile advertising software and services, today announced that the Fox News has joined the growing list of media companies enabling their mobile advertising initiatives through the use of Third Screen Media’s mobile ad management and delivery platform, MADX.
Jeremy Steinberg, Vice President of Digital Media Sales and Business Development for FOX News commented, “Fox News is always looking for new opportunities to expand the brand and the mobile sector provides many possibilities that will both benefit the viewers and advertisers.â€
A blog post by Simeon Simeonov, a VC and blogger, has been well covered in all the usual places this past week. Although it lacks any serious novelty, it’s a good compilation of a lot of known facts
and an interesting shot at guessing what Google’s most famous vaporware looks like. Things to note that are not covered are Eric Schmidt’s comment on cell phones being free, him being on Apple’s board, Google’s existing forays into mobile search, their US mobile portal’s recent changes (has anyone else noticed them because I haven’t heard much about it), their click to call ads, the new
integration with German BWM navigation systems, (mentioned but barley) previous Orange Google Phone speculation (mostly hyperbolic as seen here) among more. This is definitely something to keep a close eye on because just as many doubted the iPhone, you can never be too sure what who will do next.
Thank god football season is over!! Why? Because I HATE the sport and also because it means baseball is around the corner! Anyway, I am in the minority on that one. Over the last 20 or so years viewer-ship has skyrocketed and the Super Bowl has become much more than just the big game; it is also a chance for advertisements to shine.
Budweiser: Teamed up with Ipsh! to created real-time voting for fans who registered on the website. Once the commercials started, fans sent votes via SMS to voice their opinion on each Budweiser commercial. In return for the fan’s effort, they were given exclusive access to a secret commercial online or through their mobile. Results were fair. Each of the ads (10 in all) reviewed about 1,400 votes each.
Pizza Hut: Also teamed up with Ipsh! to conduct a mobile scavenger. Codes were displayed throughout the commercials and once found, fans simply sent in a text message and were automatically entered for a chance to win everything from cars to free music download. Many people missed the codes and were not able to participate.
Sprint: Offered a NFL Mobile product that provided daily made-for-mobile coverage from SBXLI host city Miami, with the carrier’s NFL Mobile service also delivering news and information, video highlights and a live, uninterrupted stream of cable’s NFL Network. Sprint will also launch Super Bowl XLI Navigator, a GPS-based application providing street-level maps and turn-by-turn directions charting the South Florida area. But little of this content was unique to mobile phones.
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Emerald Nuts: Gave fans extra mobile content like ringtones, but you had to go to their website to find it.
I have not seen many numbers on these campaigns yet, but I think the idea has potential. I mean, if you are at a Super Bowl party it is not likely you are going to run into the other room at your friend’s house and start suffering the web about products your just saw on TV, but alternatively, I can see people checking out additional content on their mobile phones while at parties. I think the reason we saw such a small number of votes for Bud is because they made people register ahead of time on the computer. Mobile needs to be more instantaneous, spur-of-the-moment impales engagement. Lets make it easy on our mobile users and not ask them to plan ahead too much. Maybe next year will be a winning year for mobile.
AlwaysOn Media is where cutting-edge technology CEOs from the back streets of Silicon Valley meet the global advertising and media establishment. This two-and-a-half-day executive event features CEO presentations and high-level debates on which forces are disrupting user behavior and creating new opportunities in the marketing, branding, advertising, and public relations industries.
Not in, NYC? No problem. There have a live webcast forum… where viewers can easily chat with one another, ask the moderator questions, and get in-depth information about the speakers. Check it out.
Here are my recommendations:
(Please note, all panels will be archived)
How Can Advertisers Go Mobile?
January 31, 2007; 8:30-9:30
Marketta Silvera, CEO, Apptera
Tero Ojanpera, CTO, Nokia
Ian Johnson, CEO, Ad Infuse
Marc Barach, CMO, Ingenio
Michael Baker, CEO, EnpocketDavid Carlick, Managing Director, VantagePoint Venture Partner
Mobile Marketing & Advertising
January 30, 2007; 9:30-10:15
DeWayne Nelon, CEO, Ortiva Wireless
Richard Marshall, Rapid-Mobile
Scott Beaumont, CEO, Refresh Mobile
Scott Hamilton, CEO, VoodooVoxJonathan Medved, CEO, Vringo
Mobile Marketing & Advertising 2 January 31, 2007; 10:30-11:15
Google has filed a patent detailing the process of serving ads to mobile phones and other similar devices.
The patent includes images of how the ads might appear as well as details on how users can interact and use the information given. Google Internet ads are mainly links to the advertisers website. Mobile ads need to be slightly different, as users tend to want immediate answers without browsing through websites on a small screen. They also want relevant personally directed content (based on location, activity, and patterns – something that has set Google apart in the past).
A method and system for presenting promotional content to a user of a communication device involves receiving information from a communication device, where the information relates to the communication device, and identifying a result relating to the information that is capable of being presented in a plurality of formats on the communication device, and dynamically selecting a format for the result from among the plurality of formats, and presenting the result in the selected format for display by the communication device.
Yep. Its taken a while but those clever kats at Google have slipped a “mobile option” into their Google Adwords option. The option will allow AdWords customers to place marketing messages—including clickable links—in listings retrieved through Google’s mobile search service.
This is just the beginning… soon this will join up with Location Based technology… and with the power of Google behind it… well…
which has been in stealth mode for the past eight months, has recently announced some numbers that make Third Screen Media’s reach look small. The folks at Admob are reporting 250 Million page views a month (they are ending up the month of August with a quarter of a billion pageviews per month in inventory in the advertising network). All this with average click-through rates of 3% to 4%.
Some people advertising with Admob include Adidas, Nokia, and MTV and their network serves ads in 156 countries with a majority of its traffic in the United States, Europe, and Asia.
Admob works a lot like the “Google AdSense of mobile” where anyone - regardless of size - can start advertising on thousands of mobile WAP sites, or sell advertising space on their own WAP site, and target campaigns by such variables as country, region, handset model, and many other facets to ensure that messages are truly hitting the right consumer. AdMob allows advertisers to run ads across a comprehensive set of mobile content channels, including communities, entertainment, news, and portals. With the recent addition of the contextual search channel, AdMob also allows advertisers to build campaigns that include mobile Web searches through Google¹s mobile AdWords service.
To celebrate the recent milestone, the company is offering free $20 advertising campaigns to new members of its network. To claim your $20 campaign and try AdMob.
Hot damn! I tell you, as soon as I make a mobile friendly version of MOpocket I am all over this. Now I just have to figure out how. Anyone wanna make a quick buck or to and build the MOpocket WAP site and CSS script for mobile recognition?
There have been rumors for months, but it’s now official… AOL is now the proud new owner of Third Screen Media, a mobile advertising network and mobile ad-serving and management-platform provider that now will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL’s Advertising.com division.
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