In-brief: An overview of essential mobile advertising & marketing-related news and views. Companies include: AdMob, CBS Mobile, Microsoft,  Nokia & Verizon Wireless.

NOKIA: Add a new piece of mobile phone real estate to the mobile advertising mix. Just when the industry is getting its head around how to harness the idle screen for building brand presence and executing advertising campaigns, Nokia’s latest announcement speaks volumes about the next big thing: Advertising-enabled widgets.

In the case of Nokia, the focus is on WidSets, the content consumption, creation and sharing service the company launched late last year. WidSets uses mini-applications (widgets) to push updates from users’ favorite sites directly to their phone. The concept gets even more interesting when WidSets comes pre-installed on increasing number of Nokia´s new model phones. (To date WidSets is available for more than 300 Nokia and non-Nokia devices. Nokia also plans to embed the WidSets application on a range of devices starting in Spring 2008, meaning an even wider distribution network for brands that get on board.

Add advertising to the equation – that is, make it possible for brands to place advertisements within the service – and the industry has a new vehicle to deliver advertising campaigns to a global audience, regardless of their network or geography. Think of it as an essential and smart missing link. The WidSets service, currently available in 56 languages and featuring more than 5,000 widgets from brands such as Wall Street Journal, Twitter and Foreca, presents a perfect opportunity for advertisers that want to drive traffic to their own mobile content. Place mobile ads within the service and a new commercial proposition emerges.

As Mike Baker, VP and head of Nokia Interactive put it in a statement: “WidSets underlines our ability to provide our brand clients with richer consumer experiences and broader, coordinated reach across multiple markets.” Brands can choose between driving traffic to their existing mobile Internet properties or working with Nokia to build their own WidSets mini-applications with supporting advertising and promotion. Advertising can be targeted to people based on a range of factors, including device type, language and content preferences.

So far, Volvo and WWF, the global conservation organization, are the launch advertisers. (Volvo has placed a campaign in Finland to drive interest in the new Volvo XC60 before its launch later this year. WWF has unveiled a “Stop climate change” awareness campaign that is running on the start screen of WidSets globally.)

Good news: Nokia Interactive reports interest from an array of brands, and MSG is top of the list when it comes time to reveal the details. Better news: I had a briefing under NDA this week with a company coming out of stealth mode with a strikingly similar approach to widgets and mobile advertising. Will it give Nokia a serious run for its money? I can post the briefing early next week – so watch this space…

ADMOB: A look at the AdMob Mobile Metrics report for April. This time AdMob provides a chart that breaks down handset manufacturers share by mobile operator for all the company’s top markets. Seeing it this way gives a whole different perspective on the market and provides new visibility into channel dynamics as well as which handset manufacturers are the main draw. It’s an essential read if your business model is built on targeting certain handsets. Below is an example of the U.S. market, for example.

Speaking of handsets, AdMob has also added a breakdown of smartphone handset traffic by operating system (OS). Worldwide, smartphones have 24.9 percent of traffic but markets have a vastly different makeup. India, for example, is a heavy Symbian market; U.S. is into RIM and Palm; and Windows devices from HP and HTC have made their mark in both the U.S. and U.K. Going forward AdMob plans to use this data to track trends in smartphone penetration as well as who is winning the OS battles.

Finally, a look at the iPhone. iPhone traffic continues to grow 1) because there are more devices in the market, and 2) because more iPhone content is coming online. AdMob reports it serves more than 20 million ad impressions per month to the iPhone and more than 10 million ad impressions to the iTouch. The report also breaks down iPhone data by country and looks at the split between WiFi traffic vs. Wireless (EDGE) traffic in the U.S. A surprise: WiFi is pegged at 54 percent of traffic, which would seem to indicate that users choose to surf on WiFi rather than on the carrier’s mobile network.

CBS MOBILE: A detailed and well-written interview via MobiaADNews with Jeff Sellinger, who recently took over the role of EVP-GM of CBS Mobile. It connects the dots in how CBS Mobile is approaching mobile advertising and reveals three trends that matter:

• more “on deck” ads, as carriers open up their content portals to advertising. This would mean increased ad inventory for companies like CBS that publish their content on the carrier portals.
• better targeting in general, including more location based advertising.
• a more vibrant off-deck video market, along with a lot of experimentation with video ad formats. “You’ll probably see some new formats as people try to find something that is successful. It could be pre-roll combined with banner ads… and ultimately clickable video ads will be very interesting.”

The interview is also another welcome confirmation of the pivotal role of personalization in mobile advertising. As Jeff put it: “The more we can do to target and personalize, then the better service we have, as we will only be interrupting your life at that moment when it is completely relevant to you.”

VERIZON WIRELESS: A great read via MediaPost that indicates mobile ads have both reach and recall. According to data from Verizon Wireless — presented by Stephanie Bauer Marshall, the mobile advertising leader for Verizon Wireless, during a recent mobile advertising conference — on average, small banner ads on mobile devices produce the same level of brand recall as the typical 30-second TV spot. Marshall was quoted as saying that banners work well and produce click-through rates that are “exponentially higher than online” banner ads. In fact, mobile banners produce an overall click-through rate of 2 percent, even “slightly higher for entertainment brands.” Overall CPMs, while fluctuating, will be higher on average for mobile than other media because of the high level of engagement, evident in the click-through rates. Marshall told the audience that “over time the market’s going to find out where the balance is.” Today, CPMs range from $20-$30, and she reckons that “around $20 or so is probably reasonable.”

MICROSOFT: For the record, following the lead of Yahoo and, more recently, Google, Microsoft has announced it will allow advertisers to display banner ads to mobile users of Windows Live Messenger and Windows Live Hotmail. Mobile users in France, Spain, the U.K., and the U.S. will see the banner ads when using the Microsoft services.In related news, Microsoft will support keyword advertising on Live Search Mobile. The beta-test version of the keyword advertising service is available in the U.S., and Microsoft expects to expand it in the second half of the year. Microsoft also announced that Windows Live for mobile is now available in 49 markets, a significant increase from 22.

Finally, as I finish this post, the blogosphere is buzzing with news about Microsoft’s “Live Search Cashback” service. In a nutshell, the service rewards people who use Microsoft’s Live search engine to purchase products online with a cash refund. As Microsoft put in a statement: “We want to earn your loyalty and reward it with cashback savings for your everyday online shopping.”

It’s all about online search and shopping at the moment, but no reason why it can’t be extended to mobile search.

With new enhancements to Live Search for mobile that allow users to find products they want on the fly, and in view of the money-for-eyeballs business model pursued by MyScreen I just outlined in this post, it’s not far-fetched to assume Microsoft could indeed cash in on a cashback offer.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 21st, 2008 at 5:51 pm and is filed under Mobile Advertising, Mobile Research, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Networking, Personalization. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.