Ad support for MMS
21 February 2007
Telecoms Vision
Finding ways of enabling mobile advertising to take place in the context of the sponsored advertisement model is a regular discussion point in these pages and was one of the major talking points in Barcelona. What does it mean for messaging - and specifically the slow user adoption of MMS? We asked George Yazbek, strategic director of next generation messaging and media processing specialist Jinny Software, to take a look at both business models and some of the technological aspects of the process.
"Mobile messaging advertising is well on its way to being an established tool in the marketing and advertising department portfolio," he says. The incentives for a number of parties are clear, he feels: mobile operators need new revenue streams, advertisers want new channels, and subscribers might be attracted to services whose cost may previously have been prohibitive or for which there may have been no other incentive for uptake.
But an even stronger point perhaps is the ubiquity of the mobile phone. "Advertisers are using this channel in the hope of connecting with the consumer in a way that media of other kinds - TV or radio for example - could never offer. And it is essential," he adds, "that messaging specialists like Jinny provide the enabling technology to make this happen."
Not least, of course, because of the likely effect on MMS take-up. Yazbek explains: "One of the reasons behind the slow take-up of MMS has been the high cost to the subscriber compared to SMS. However, if this cost for the subscriber were to be covered in all or in part by a sponsor or sponsors that would simultaneously support their advertising campaign, then there would be an obvious path to uptake and the clearing of barriers to MMS usage.
"This model would put the subscriber in the driving seat, reducing subscriber costs of sending SMS and MMS messages and the cost of WAP downloads," Yazbek suggests. "The sponsored message advertising model puts the subscriber in a position to opt in to sponsored advertising campaigns and allows advertisers to append targeted adverts to messages based on 'key words' within the message text, time or message origin location."
However, Yazbek says, even implementing an advert in SMS is not straightforward. "The simplest way is to embed an advert in the message text and provide a short code to dial, in case the subscriber is interested. A Flash SMS initiating a USSD session to the mobile handset ensures that there is interaction with the user. A WAP push message can allow the user to click through to the advertiser's web site." He explains further that graphical adverts can be sent by converting an original SMS message to an MMS and embedding the advert within it.
Having the advertising engine embed the advertisement within the MMS as an extra slide (a typical function of Jinny's Filtering Engine) is one way of handling MMS advertising. Web advertising, on the other hand, is done by redirecting the browser to the adverts for a certain period, and then returning to the original page. A filtering engine at network level would determine which messages to target. Such an engine would scan messages and append adverts if certain keywords appear.
However, even if the technological problems can be overcome, Yazbek points out that there are two other important factors critical to the success of the sponsored-message, advertising model. "Firstly, the message sender should be able to decide whether the message is sponsored or not. This opt-in model will ensure that serious messages are not hampered from going directly to the intended recipient. Secondly, the advertisement should offer benefits to the subscriber. If opting in to the advertising campaign allows the subscriber to send certain messages for free, or for a reduction in the normal or standard fee, then there would be strong incentive to use the service."
