MSearchGroove

The hype around mobile advertising turns up the pressure on brands and Web properties to get their message out on mobile – fast. The options are many and confusing (one reason why I’m researching a strategic white paper on mobile advertising and also interviewing c-level execs to make some sense out of all the hyperbole). As the experiences (and some major hiccups) of the last weeks have shown, formatting Web content to fit the phone (let alone match the user) is a tall order. So, you have to ask yourself: If the mobile Web is going to look a lot like the fixed Web – and mobile operators are going to be gateways to the likes of eBay, MySpace and Co. – then why not simply pursue an approach that dynamically converts Internet content for delivery to the mass market of mobile phones in real-time?

This brings me to Singapore’s Global Mobile Technology (GMT), a nimble newcomer that has recently filed a patent for a new technology (aptly called Push-It) that will let Web destinations deliver their rich content and ads to IP-compatible phones. While some low-end phones don’t support IP, the company estimates some 1,000 devices do – and that makes for an addressable base of some 2 billion users to start.

Intrigued by the concept and frustrated by the lack of detail in the press release, I caught up with Don Stern, the company’s CTO, to learn more about how Push-It pushes live Web content & advertising out to – even if the user hasn’t opened the phone’s browser. Integrated within that delivery mechanism is also the ability for users to respond.

Put simply, a push via Push-It from an eBay on an item, for example, will include options for users to make a bid, ignore a bid, or take whatever action the site owner has approved. (Naturally, part of the package can be interactive advertising bundled with the option to click-through and/or call-through.)

The technology is under wraps at the moment, but is has been demoed at several trade shows including Adtech. The plan, Don says, is to do “some data testing programs” in 3Q2007 and roll out by end-year. To date the company has tested the solution on a “couple of dozen carriers.” It supports “over 400 carriers in over 100 countries.” The focus on mobile operators adds up (no pun intended.) After all, mobile operators are the ones scrambling to deliver Web content to users and monetize the traffic through advertising. GMT is well-positioned to benefit from this trend.

But before we get to the business model, let’s cover the basics:

Who: GMT sees itself as a tool provider. “With this tool companies can effortlessly deliver content to mobile phones. We get around the browser problems and limitations, the formatting problems and the spamming problems.”

What: The Push-It app is 25KB, and “does not require the preparation of WAP pages to deliver the data to the subscriber’s mobile device.” As Don puts it: “We download a small piece of software that sits on the phone….We are not a connected client-server application and we don’t require that the phone is always on and connected to a server. We just take content as it happens and push it out to the user#s phone.”

Where: The GMT website will soon offer a software development kit. Details are thin, but one part will be a registration API that content companies and brands can put on their Web page, allowing mobile users to sign up for content they want delivered via Push-It to their mobile. Users are accustomed to signing up for alerts, so no new learning necessary here. Moreover, allowing users to sign up for content on their terms means they won’t reject the content – or the ads that accompany it – as spam.

How: GMT has created “a kind of extension to http and xml called Global Mobile Language” (GML) that allows it to “take raw Web content and convert it on the fly for the phone.” Don says comparisons to Flash are off the mark. In fact, GMT converts Flash– like everything else – to GML and delivers it directly to the phone. (BTW: Don tells me his company is not just sold on GML to solve the Web content conversion dilemma; it will also propose GML to the W3C as a candidate for a WAP replacement.)

And how will GMT make money? Don says he’s mulling over several models. One could be a “subscription-type service” that would charge subscribers a monthly fee for access to Web sites and their functionality. At the other end of the spectrum, it could also be a rev-share of the advertising GMT delivers. “Advertising space on the mobile is more valuable than it is on TV or radio because of the personal nature of mobile. You can profile users and target ads and that fetches a higher premium.”

And then there are the social media schemes. Don could envision enabling users or individual content creators to alert their community to when they’ve posted new content to Friendster or Flickr – or simply push it automatically to the phone. Going forward, there are all kinds of events and developments that users will want to access as they happen. (Not to mention a slew of mobile enterprise apps – GMT began with a sharp focus on delivering business users content in real-time without their companies having to reformat Internet/intranet content.)

Judgment will have to wait until GMT’s technology makes the rounds, but a tool that can bring real Web content to mobile phones in real-time provides mobile operators a mechanism to both increase data usage (by signing users up for their favorite web content and services as they happen) and generate ad revenues (by delivering the Web’s interactive ads to users as part of the package). Granted, the scheme will need some work before it can deliver the right ad to the right user, but that’s a shortcoming common to most mobile content/advertising strategies these days.

• Posted in
• Usability, Mobile Advertising

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