Bulgaria’s M-Tel mobile operator embraces mobile advertising with Out There Media

The Bulgarian mobile operator M-Tel (with the Vodafone live portal) has chosen mobile advertising company Out There Media to launch a platform that will make Bulgaria open to mobile advertising.

How?
Basically, Out There media is the platform. That means that its Mobucks marketplace will enable brands or agencies to monetize their inventory via mobile. Out There media will do the sales and development of the new service in order to educate and build expectation in the market.
From the press release:

“Once again we are pioneers in introducing a new service with unlimited potential to the Bulgarian market. We are very confident that Mobile Advertising will revolutionize the Bulgarian advertising industry, especially as we are joined by our partners, Out There Media, who have an impressive track record in Mobile Advertising roll-outs across Europe”, commented Andreas Maierhofer, CMO of M-Tel.

Kerstin Trikalitis, CEO of Out There Media, commented: “Our partnership with a successful European mobile operator such as M-Tel is of great strategic importance, as it represents a decisive step towards unlocking the immense potential of the Bulgarian market for Mobile Advertising. We are looking forward to a strong and fruitful partnership that will establish Mobile Advertising as the new, successful chapter in the history of advertising in Bulgaria”.

What we think?
Now this is interesting. Which other agencies have an office in Bulgaria. I am not sure but it seems like a sure fire strategy of making yourself important in a local market. I have heard this think local be global strategy before from PhoneValley. But Out There Media isn’t global it is European.

I quite like that. Think local but Central European – it might pack a more powerful punch in the industry than a global player – especially when education is also vital in the market. Also the Bulgarian office is spearheaded by a local ex McCann agency type - Boryana Alexieva.

I remember how MCN won every mobile operator in the Indonesian market because it educated the market on mobile search and that knowledge sharing was later rewarded. I am starting to think that this tactic for the still very early stage mobile advertising market is vital.

I will be publishing an interview with Out There Media shortly and I am not sure how many operators (off the top of my head) but the company seems to have found a niche for itself with operators in central Europe.