Boost Mobile New Mobile Advertising Platform – Amobee Ad-Selling and Serving Partner

Boost Mobile,  the lifestyle-based mobile brand of Sprint Nextel, today announced the launch of a new mobile advertising platform for mobile phones. Acura (www.acura.com), the advanced luxury automotive brand, and Fox Searchlight Pictures, a specialty film company that both finances and acquires motion pictures, are among the first companies to advertise on Boost Mobile’s mobile advertising platform.

Boost Mobile and Amobee will work together to deliver ads to Boost Mobile’s 4.6 million consumers, the majority of which are under the age of 30, who will be able to interact and respond. The first ads, which are expected to appear today, will feature information on Fox Searchlight Pictures’ April 11 release of “Street Kings.” Shortly thereafter, consumers will begin seeing ads for Acura’s new 2009 TSX. Boost customers are not charged for viewing the advertisements, and they may opt-out from receiving advertisements by calling Boost customer service at 1-888-BOOST-4U.

Mobile advertising will appear initially on Boost Mobile’s BoostLIVE and Web Home. BoostLIVE is Boost Mobile’s handset storefront where customers can purchase digital content such as ring-tones, wallpapers, music, and games. Boost plans to expand advertising content to include messaging and key applications in the near future.
 
From the press release

“Mobile advertising is an excellent vehicle for reaching a growing segment of younger consumers who are drifting away from traditional mediums such as TV and print,” said Neil Lindsay, vice president of product development, Boost Mobile. “The unique advantage Boost Mobile offers advertisers is access to today’s under 30 audience – a massive and growing crowd of consumers who are more likely to embrace advertising on their wireless phones.”
“The Boost-Amobee relationship aims to show the power of Boost as a media company. Boost has an influence on the mobile media habits of the under 30 demographic in the US. This relationship was created to attract youth and lifestyle brands which haven’t traditionally invested in interactive advertising. Working with these brands will position Boost as a leader in mobile advertising,” said Zohar Levkovitz, CEO of Amobee.

What we think?

So Amobee has made the jump from being an ad server to an ad seller pretty quickly. I just listened to the MP3 of the interview I did with Amobee CMO Patrick Parodi at Mobile World Congress. Patrick was adamant that Amobee was a technology company. He mentioned that the company would start thinking about selling ads rather than just delivering them.

Well it hasn’t taken that much time. Now Amobee has two notches under its belt. The first is Winstar Interactive and the second US multi-brand Boost.

But what does it all mean?

Is there enough mobile ad-inventory for yet another company to join the ad market? Are there any advertisers? Also doesn’t this make Amobee a threat to AdMob and better still don’t they have exactly the same investors?

But then again, at the end of the day does it matter. The mobile advertising world is already full of that much hype inconsistency – it can only mean that the space is in a flux.

There is no real mobile advertising market as yet. Advertisers are testing the water, but not drinking it. Those that are testing it are creating a lot of nonsense in the arena by touting click through rates of 29% (Blyk) and today I even read about 39% from an in game ad company.

The mobile advertising market is still in its infancy and there is a land grab going on. Any company can succeed – just don’t trust any figures that you read. When you see a metric or a stat, half it and then half it again – that is the true statistic.

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