Velti Rolls Out Mobile Marketing Platform 4.0 At Mobile World Congress

Mobile Communities, M-Commerce and Personalised Marketing Are Key Enhancements To Class-Leading Mobile Marketing Technology

London, UK, Mar 5th 2008: Velti, (LSE-AIM: VEL), a mobile marketing and advertising technology service provider, launched version 4.0 of its Mobile Marketing Platform (MMP 4.0) at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.This latest version features enhanced advertising and marketing templates enabling Velti’s customers to reach consumers through new interactive mobile mediums including mobile communities, games and applications. Building on more than seven years of experience in mobile advertising technology development, MMP 4.0 allows advertisers and operators to create campaigns that offer consumers a unique mobile marketing experience rather than simply putting adverts in front of eyeballs. Loyalty schemes, mobile coupons, social networks and other interactive templates can now be easily designed, deployed and measured giving marketers new ways to reach customers through their mobile phones and other portable devices. “MMP 4.0 allows companies to bring the mobile phone into the wider marketing mix,” says Alexandros Moukas, CEO, Velti. “Rather than just experiment with mobile advertising and marketing, advertisers now have the technology platform to engage with customers in new ways to create brand awareness, build loyalty, offer new content and interact in ways that traditional advertising can not.” Velti’s founding principal for its technology platform is to offer enhanced interactivity with end users, taking mobile advertising and marketing beyond the banner ad and other Internet advertising staples. MMP 4.0 enables advertisers to develop more sophisticated SMS and MMS campaigns offering integration with online games and social networks that allow mobile communication. MMP 4.0 also includes a new version of the Personalization Engine, capable of retrieving and processing real time data from consumer behaviour resulting in real-time dynamic segmentation and user-targeting. This advanced facility results in phenomenal response rates to campaigns, such as in the campaign developed with mobile operator MTEL on a short code competition led to the country’s most successful mobile campaign with over 12.5m messages from a subscriber base of just 4.5m. Adds Moukas: “Our customer base of global brands, mobile operators and media companies want to reach out to consumers in new and exciting ways. They’re thinking way beyond the banner advert but need a technology and service partner that gives them the platform and the confidence to invest in new mobile campaigns. MMP 4.0 builds on the incredible success story of Velti as a company. As mobile advertising evolves into a crucial part of the marketing mix, Velti will continue to offer customers new and innovative ways to exploit the market to its full potential.” Velti is offering demonstrations of its innovative Mobile Marketing Platform at its booth 7C86 in Hall 7.

Case Study - Absolut Bling Bling WAP Campaign by Madhouse

Company: Madhouse Inc. (www.madhouse.cn)
Client: Absolut Vodka via The Hyperfactory

Background:
Having taken the fashion world by storm, this iced-up obsession with luxury and "Bling Bling" has proven its longevity. Absolut hopped onto the ice wagon to celebrate the holiday season with a special edition Absolut Bling Bling bottle, full of sparkly goodies to "dress up" the bottle of booze.

Goals:
Have consumers associate luxury and exclusivity with the Absolut brand and promote the special edition Absolut Bling Bling bottle in China to the desired target audience.

Solution:
Madhouse, in partnership with The Hyperfactory, created an exclusive WAP campaign site promoting the Absolut Bling Bling bottle via ringtones, wallpapers, drink recipes and nationwide event information.

Meanwhile, to drive more traffic to the site, WAP ads were also served by the in-house intelligence mobile ad serving system, MadServing, to specifically target GoTone users (China Mobile sub-brand targeting business travelers) or consumers whose handsets are valued at 2,000 RMB and above in Shanghai, Beijing, Guangdong, Chengdu, and other select tier 1 cities across a breadth of large WAP portals on the China's largest mobile ad network, MadNetwork.

Results:
During the 9 days of mobile media production, the targeted ad served by MadServing achieved over 1,800,000 total targeting impressions resulting in over 3.2% click-through rate to the Absolut Bling Bling mobile campaign site.

For study click here

Mobile Advertising: One-To-Many Multicast Would Pay Dividends, So Why Aren’t We Doing It?

Mobile advertising may be a hot topic, but few have really got their head around how to deliver it in such a way that it makes sense – and money – for the companies involved. The answer may have been there all along in the example set by print and cable companies that have built their bottom line on delivering advertising to a mass markets – cheaply and effectively. As Tom Wheeler, a managing director at VC firm Core Capital Partners, writes in his latest column on TMCnet: “Mobile advertising is a one-to-one operation, and as a result relatively costly to deliver.” Sending one message to mass audience (as is the practice in print and cable) costs “virtually nothing to deliver compared to the one-to-one unicast of mobile distribution.”

Full article here

Mobile Marketing Briefing - New Report

The latest trends were discussed at a recent E-consultancy roundtable and have been written up in this briefing (free to registered users).

Here is a SWOT analysis for mobile marketing based on the discussion we had.

There is more detail in the full briefing which also contains the latest statistics and some useful resources.

(It's important to keep in mind that mobile marketing covers a range of disciplines and types of marketing including brand advertising and direct marketing but this hopefully at least gives a flavour of what is happening in this 'sector'.)

Strengths

• Adoption of the mobile internet is speeding up and consumption of content is growing.
  
  
• The experience of using the internet to go online is getting more agreeable all the time due to better technology, including handset improvements.
  
  
• The 'walled garden' approach adopted by mobile operators is being consigned to the dustbin with the likes of T-Mobile and 3 signing deals with the big search engines.
  
  
• Fixed price 'all-you-can-eat' deals for mobile content are helping to drive content consumption.
  
  
• There is more leadership from bodies such as the Mobile Marketing Association.
  
  
• It is getting easier to pay for things by mobile, especially small-ticket items.

Weaknesses

• The mobile internet is not yet mass market which means that brands / advertisers are only dipping their toes into this rather than committing serious budget. It's where 'internet marketing' was several years ago.
  
  
• In terms of handsets, the market is actually getting more fragmented which means that it is getting harder rather than easier to work towards a user experience which is satisfactory across the board.
  
  
• The fact that mobile marketing is not a discrete area of marketing means that there is no body with a mandate to oversee the various constituent parts. It can be hard to know where to go for best practice, advice etc.

Opportunities

• Mobile Search - there is a great opportunity for advertisers to get traction on mobile search engine listings as many brands haven't jumped on board yet. Duncan Jennings has done a great blog post on mobile search.
  
  
• Local search / listings ... phones with GPS. Huge potential.
  
  
• The mobile phone is a very personal device and a great opportunity to get personalised marketing messages across - if done properly.
  
  
• Acquisition and Retention....
  
  
• Branding and direct response....
  
  
• Flash Lite means that more designers and developers will get on board with mobile with something which is familiar.

Threats

• It continues to get more difficult for companies to provide a consistent experience across different browsers and the ever expanding variety of handsets and personal devices on the market.
  
  
• Abuse of mobile marketing damages the industry (i.e. consumers being ripped off and permission marketing principles being ignored). It could get worse if the offenders are not punished properly.
  
  
• From the point of view of the mobile operators, there are numerous threats which boil down to any disintermediation from the value chain, whether because of VOIP or the fact that consumers don't want their content.
  

There is more detail in the Mobile Marketing roundtable briefing. This isn't meant to be exhaustive so feel free to contribute things which have inevitably been missed...

Thanks to Incentivated, Kodime, New Media Edge and Sponge for their input.

Article here

Spending on Global Mobile Advertising to hit US $14 Billion by 2011

SINGAPORE : Companies worldwide are increasingly seeking to reach their customers via their mobile phones.

And the Asia-Pacific is seen as important as it has the fastest growing number of new mobile subscribers.

On Monday, the Mobile Marketing Association set up its Asia chapter to establish advertising guidelines and best practices to help the industry grow in the region.

Whether it is getting one's exam grades through SMS or activating a discount coupon, marketing professionals are keen to explore advertising via mobile phones.

For entire article click here

Microsoft Moves into Mobile Ad Space

With Google snapping up DoubleClick and Yahoo acquiring Right Media, putting pressure on Microsoft to play its hand, analysts have been predicting Microsoft would make a major move in the online-advertising arena.

Microsoft is betting on the next frontier: mobile advertising. Mobile advertising and marketing opportunities could grow to reach $10 billion a year by 2010, according to The Shosteck Group. And mobile search is now accessible to more than 85 percent of mobile phones, according to wireless market research firm M:Metrics.

Full article click here