Regular readers will recall that MSG and bnetTV partnered during CTIA Wireless in San Francisco to produce a series of interviews. I was on board for the mobile search, advertising and networking companies, and had the pleasure of connecting with 25+ companies including Infogin, MCN, Millennial Media, Snaptell, Seeqpod, Nuance, Spinvox, BuzzCity, The Hyperfactory, DeviceAnywhere, Bytemobile, Motricity, Medio Systems, Novarra, Movial, SinglePoint, and JYGY. (Not in any special order.)

I’m proud that bnetTV has asked me to develop an opinion/news column for their newsletter (which has millions of loyal readers!) around my favorite interviews and the key takeaways. Many of the interviews are posted on the site, so I encourage you to browse. Others (such as MCN and Seeqpod) are still in production and slated to be posted next week.

So allow me to kick off the series with Dan Olschwang, JumpTap CEO. The purpose of the interviews (and my involvement) was to make sure we’re on the same page in understanding the issues/trends in the mobile search and advertising space. (And as you can see, I made a real effort to view the industry from Dan’s rather higher vantage point!)

JumpTap didn’t announce news at CTIA (fresh from a funding announcement, there wasn’t much it could add). However, Dan assured me that significant announcements about the technology and “new partner engagements” are in the pipeline.

Here is an excerpt of our interview and you can click here for the video. We also had an interesting chat about Verizon-Google, a topic that is all the more current if we consider yesterday’s G1 launch and the potential impact of a platform/device that is also (unsurprisingly) a delivery mechanism for tightly integrated services such as Google Search (for local and Web searches), Maps (including Street View), Gmail, Youtube, Calendar, and Google Talk.

Q: So how many operators does JumpTap have in total?

A: We have today 17 mobile carriers [counting] North America and Europe together.

Q: What are the mobile advertising trends?

A: I think the mobile industry’s at the point where it starts to connect the dots between mobile search and mobile advertising. Search is advertising. There is one part of search that provides discovery service, but really the way you make money out of search is through advertising. And basically, JumpTap has built a platform that has search with all of the elements; the traditional elements of search advertising, but also enables [our] understanding of consumer [behavior] to be applied elsewhere.

Search advertising is targeted. We apply it to other formats of advertising — banner ads or video ads, or many other different formats of advertising that basically utilize the brain behind the scene.

Q: Speaking of the brain behind it all; you’ve got some interesting technology in the pipeline to make certain that we just don’t get spammed. Please walk me through it.

A: The simple answer: We apply all kinds of rules. For instance, we don’t show more than one display ad on a page. We don’t ever show more than two sponsored links on the page; text ads. So we keep it to a very, very limited amount of ads.

Q: We just had an announcement from Yahoo with AT&T. We still hear about Google and Verizon. What do these tie-ups and talks say about branded and white-label mobile search?

A: It’s a good thing, and in some cases it’s a dangerous thing; depends on how you address it. The mobile industry in general proves to be able to support multiple, diverse, and sometimes contradicting business models simultaneously. And I think what you see today in the industry is, on one hand, [operators] go to a white-label, or go to some branded approach where they basically hand over all of their content and discovery business to a brand, or somewhere in between.

Many [operators] will choose something in between because there is a power in those [search] brands. The [brand] familiarity and the expectation is that [it will enable consumers to] transition [their search] experiences from online to mobile. However, it’s a very dangerous road for the carrier because it has a very clear and tangible potential of basically commoditizing the carrier and making them a dumb bit pipe. I believe the companies you mentioned are smart enough and sophisticated enough [to avoid this] and [the] proof is in their actions to protect themselves. What JumpTap does is actually provide this layer of protection. So no customer information; no customer behavior data is actually going away and disclosed to those [search] brands.

JumpTap has what we call our monetization platform, which is the engine of our targeting and monetization tools. We put it within either the carrier’s premises, or provide it as a service. Basically, [there is] no disclosure of consumer behavior to a third-party. This means - from a consumer perspective - that they can get the Google or Yahoo services [but] none of their personal data and behavioral matrix will be disclosed to those [branded search] companies.

* * * *

After the interview, Dan and I revisited one of our new favorite topics: Google, and more broadly speaking the evolving relationship between mobile operators and branded search providers. We ended up trading views on the Verizon-Google talks reported by the Wall Street Journal - buzz that still has the industry guessing.

I must preface this discussion with an invigorating exchange I had just prior to CTIA with David Dalka, a mobile search marketing and advertising startup consultant from Chicago on a mission to create impact and transform mobile search.As David put it: “That article opened a Pandora’s box of journalistic questions as it had no sources, no validating quotes, and no real insights into how such a deal might impact innovation, companies, competition, revenue models or consumers. Was it classic Google PR making perception reality, or was it Verizon using the WSJ to negotiate via the media? Time will likely tell.”

It’s a disregard for facts that David recently discussed when he pointed out that The Washington Post had falsely reported that Jason Calacanis, CEO of the mobile search engine provider Mahalo, had stopped blogging. An observation that, once analyzed fully and completely, proves to be technically incorrect.

Nonetheless, many in the blogosphere took the bait and struggled to analyze what it would mean for mobile marketing, for mobile search engines, and for Medio Systems, which handles mobile search for Verizon and which VentureBeat tells us would be involved in the partnership, receiving a portion of the search revenues. That bodes well for Medio, which VentureBeat hints has “had trouble getting enough search queries to sell ads into.”

I did a little digging myself during CTIA, collecting on and off-the-record observations. Could it be that Verizon must ally with Google in order to avoid a much worse fate at the hands of the FCC? (Translated: Net neutrality and violations thereof that could - if Google proceeded to push the issue - cause a drop in stock prices, brand image and consumer goodwill.) Go figure…

Predictably, this is not a topic Medio wanted to address on the phone or in-person at CTIA. What we did discuss in the course of our bnetTV interview (search trends, voice input and the tie-up with AdMob) will be posted later on in the week and likewise featured on MSG.Dan went on the record with his take. In his view, the fact that Verizon and Google are reportedly at odds on the role and control of customer data speaks volumes about the bigger picture. “The access to such information enables an advantage in the evolving mobile advertising market. Google’s main objectives are to facilitate the movement of traffic off the carrier’s deck/portal and to replicate the wireline model in the wireless sphere. Enabling Google visibility into customer information will, over time, give a sufficient understanding of user behavior that will allow Google to bypass and disintermediate Verizon.”

He added that he has the “the utmost respect for Verizon, and we are sure they understand that once they let Google into their network, they run an increased risk of losing valuable placement in the mobile advertising ecosystem and diminishing their value all together.”

Dan’s takeaway: The cash that GYM (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft) offers is a Trojan horse.

My takeaway: Analytics is indeed power - and one reason why I’ll continue to monitor this. In the meantime, I prefer to chalk it up to the hard reality of mobile data services today - and the acknowledgement by mobile operators that they won’t likely survive if they don’t improve their off-portal experience. Reports (and even today’s Opera stats which reveal users search for and access a long tail of Internet sites on their mobile phones) tell us consumers are becoming more aware of off-deck content. It’s a wave Verizon thinks it could ride (and sell loads of mobile data in the process) if it ties up with Google, a familiar brand that stands for Web search. The strategy is sound enough provided mobile data is the prize and the mobile operator wants access not audience.

Disclaimer: JumpTap is an MSG supporter and has co-produced a series of sponsored podcasts.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 24th, 2008 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, 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.