Recently in Marketing Category

Recently O2 UK announced an in-house, opt-in mobile advertising platform that solves some of the issues associated with the entire mobile advertising concept – trust that advertisers won’t abuse access.

While the CTIA in the US has been offering a registration directory and a “monitoring” service for a short-code, mobile advertising organization’s adherence with Mobile Marketing Association’s guideline; the O2 offering is to manage “traffic” for the advertiser and “trust” for those O2 customers who opt-in for the service.

From a telecom service provider perspective, I like the movement from a dumb-pipe to a value-add service for both advertiser and consumer.  The handling of behavioral and preference profiles provide both increased access for the advertiser and protection for the O2 customer. 

However, I am not sure that the conservative nature (one SMS per day and only O2 customers) of the service will meet the needs of cutting edge advertisers or early consumer adopters of mobile marketing services.

What do you think of the “internal” use of mobile advertising divisions by telecom service providers?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly.

I am not a huge fan of “repeating” a press release, but I think that the Mobile Marketing Association’s (MMA) new direction for their definition of mobile marketing is important.

The essence of the new direction relates to these clarifications:

• The “set of practices” includes “activities, institutions, processes, industry players, standards, advertising and media, direct response, promotions, relationship management, CRM, customer services, loyalty, social marketing, and all the many faces and facets of marketing.”
• To “engage” means to “start relationships, acquire, generate activity, stimulate social interaction with organization and community members, [and] be present at time of consumers expressed need.” Furthermore, engagement can be initiated by the consumer (“Pull” in form of a click or response) or by the marketer (“Push”).

With the growth of importance and relevance of marketing to telecom business models; organizations like the MMA are going to be key in the establishment of trust and ‘standards’ ( … not a huge fan of ‘association’ standards either, but we’ll go with it… ) that allow consumers to “opt-in” to these marketing plans.

What do you think of standardized definitions and the MMA’s in particular?

Post your comments below or email (John.Myers@BlueBuffaloGroup.com) / twitter (JohnLMyers44) me directly.

What has the telecom industry been missing in terms of addressable and mobile advertising?

The ability to accurately track and manage those advertisements in the format and lingo of the advertising industry.  For too long, the telecom industry has told other how it would provide data and information to its customers and partner…

Now, the advertising industry has the ‘option’ of Google and other web-based advertisers to provide them with tailored data.  Jason Ankeny has piece about how a mobile advertising platform is attempting to provide a viable solution that completely cuts out the telecom service provider from the equation other than to be a “semi-dumb pipe” to the advert provider.

In a world when it seems that individuals worldwide are bombarding each other with trillions of text messages everyday, it looks like marketeer want to get in on the act.

A recent survey shows that mobile marketing comes in 2nd only to web-based marketing among marketeer.

In my opinion, these marketeer are only being held back by the lack of polished mobile marketing techniques and measurements.  When the telecoms or the advertisers ( … or perhaps an interested 3^rd party… ) figure out how to provide those all important addressable advertising techniques and platforms, mobile advertising will TAKE OFF… and some one will make lots of money building SMS spam software to block those advertisements from our phones.

As we come to the end of an election season where ( at least in Colorado... ) political campaigns have been "carpet bombing" advertisements on TV and radio. My particular favorites are the ones for congressional races that I have no standing in...

However, in the not-too-distant future, I might be spared advertising from races outside of the relatively, uncontested Colorado 2nd district. Time Warner Cable is moving closer to an addressable advertising platform with their recent partnership announcement.

But this addressable advertising doesn't come without a price... Perhaps one day my district will become contested and I will be targeted with very specific advertising....

NOTE - These addressable adverts aren't being limited to me ( an older folk... ). These types of digitial adverts are focusing on college students as well:

Get 'em while they are young...

Technorati Tags: Telecommunications, Telecom, Addressable Advertising, Traci Patterson, Time Warner Cable