Two major strands of news emerged from the world's largest mobile show this week in Barcelona; mobile advertising and hybrid handsets.
Communication service providers are thrilled. With revenues for voice in decline, they're welcoming the chance to claw back some revenue through advertising. Of course they may have to offer incentives to encourage their subscribers to tolerate pesky adverts on their handhelds - maybe free voice calls, or sending international SMS at a reasonable price?
It's evident that if you are building the latest, greatest handset (Sony Ericsson X1, Nokia 96) to compete with that upstart Apple iPhone, then as well as slick software you've realised that providing WiFi is a must. Afterall, browsing the internet even at HSUPA or EVDO rates (let alone EDGE) is not the same as the real thing - the speed of the WiFi connection that you have at home. So any handset worth it's salt must include WiFi.
Why should an advert be sent over the carriers network, what if it gets to the handset via WiFi? Consumers are used to being faced with display pages (and ads) just before, and after they login to hotspots. No need to offer any incentive, Pavlov's canine has already been trained.
Ah, you say, but subscribers won't have the patience to enter usernames and passwords everytime they pass Starbucks or MacDonalds - but with services like those from DeviceScape they won't have to. They'll have already entered all their subscriptions and passwords into a website from the comfort of their home, so that when they're out and about they'll be effortlessly connected to any WiFi that will let them.
WiFi's limited range makes it ideal for Location Based Advertising, and the faster connection speed allows for more stimulating music and videos to be used in the adverts.
What does this mean for the mobile carriers? Are they going to wake up to the fact that there is more than one way to get an advert on that handset? And whose customer is it, Apple's, Nokia's, Starbuck's, Wallmart's or theirs? Wherever there is a friendly WiFi network, there's a chance that the advert being served won't be coming from the carrier.
Now, mobile providers still know a lot about their subscriber, a lot more than the browser cookie on a handset can tell the WiFi advertiser, but unless they start to do something useful with all that information, they may have to wave goodbye to an income stream they wish they already had.
Tapping into the mine of knowledge that the provider has about their customers and how, where, when and why they use the network, is one reason that mobile carriers are turning to TeleSciences to analyze, and in real-time provide relevant information for the display of the 'best' advert to their customer.
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