MCN – a company that began by providing a platform for federated mobile search and has since extended its reach to providing a combination PPC content promotion and vertical paid search program – has chalked up another mobile operator win. This time it’s Avea, a newcomer mobile operator in Turkey that counts 11 million subscribers, that has signed up for MCN’s mobile search platform (for its WAP portal – wap.avea.com) for multi-category search. The deal will also see Avea implement allwords, MCN’s vertical paid search program.

But the real news is the traction MCN has built up outside Japan, where the company has quietly launched mobile search and “search merchandizing” with eight major off-portal sites and picked up another 50+ content providers for its allwords offer.

By way of background, MCN’s approach to what it calls “search merchandizing” combines MCN’s federated search (delivered via MobileSearch.net, MCN’s white-label search platform) and vertical paid search (delivered through allwords, MCN’s own PPC mobile content promotion program). The aim is to make it easy for users to find content from any source by providing a vertical paid search program that effectively connects users directly with the content item.

Avea is MCN’s first official search+allwords launch outside Japan, soon to be followed by a string of deals that will peg the needle. In fact, MCN CEO Marc Bookman, whom I interviewed during CTIA Wireless, has since revealed to me that the company has several Tier-1 operator deals under its belt (signed but not yet announced), including an impressive win in Europe.

Fortunately, the Avea announcement dovetails well with my meet-up with Marc at Mobile Content in London next week. He and Stephen Burke, MCN SVP Marketing, have agreed to walk me through the company’s recent deals and their future roadmap.

Connect the dots, as I have, and 2008 was the year MCN tripled (!) the number of distribution partnerships outside Japan, adding operators and service providers including Tele2 in Sweden, Smart Communications in the Philippines and BuzzCity, a global mobile social network that implemented MCN in Thailand. I look forward to getting the inside track on this and more during our meeting Wednesday and will circle back with what the company is prepared to reveal on-the-record.

Today’s announcement from MCN comes in just as MSG is launching its video jukebox feature together with bnetTV, the leading destination for news, analysis and buzz around must-attend trade shows and events including Mobile Internet World, Mobile Marketing Forum, Mobile World Congress and CTIA.

It was at CTIA that I joined the team to conduct interviews and produce a string of videos focusing on mobile search, mobile advertising, content adaptation and mobile social networking. The team is professional (and great fun to work with!), and I am 100-percent on board to conduct interviews at MWC and all other events we attend together. Special thanks to Michelle Sklar, Tony Sklar, Nicole Scott for arranging the streaming video jukebox and to Curtis Schmigelsky for designing the widget.

I invite you to listen into the MCN video and explore the other interviews in the jukebox. During CTIA I connected with 25+ companies including Infogin, JumpTap, Millennial Media, Snaptell, Seeqpod, Nuance, Spinvox, BuzzCity, The Hyperfactory, DeviceAnywhere, Bytemobile, Motricity, Medio Systems, Novarra, Movial, SinglePoint, and JYGY. (Not in any special order.) Explore and enjoy!

Disclaimer: JumpTap and MCN are MSG supporters.

Tags: Avea, bnetTV, BuzzCity, CTIA Wireless, MCN, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Search, Mobile World Congress, Tele2

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Content Discovery, Local Search, Location-based services, Mobile Advertising, Mobile Content, Mobile Search, Mobile Social Networking, Personalization, Usability, Web 2.0. 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.