China Telecom chooses Madhouse for mobile local search advertising

Best Tone Information Service is the umbrella group for China Telecoms voice search and directory enquiry services. China Telecom regards it as a local search service – by ringing a 114 number, China Telecom customers can get info on places to eat, tourist info, road guides and a lot more.  Madhouse, one of China’s largest mobile advertising networks, has announced a deal with Best Tone to provide mobile ads for the service

The two-year partnership will see Madhouse acting as Best Tone’s mobile advertising platform. The platform will serve geo-targetted ads to users of Best Tone, and browsers who visit the Best Tone mobile website.

From the release:

“As the industry-leading local information services provider, China Telecom’s Best Tone is expanding its service on the mobile internet in order to provide our users with information that they need anytime, anywhere,” China Telecom’s Best Tone senior management stated. “Madhouse is recognized as the dominant leader in the mobile marketing industry in China, particularly in its mobile ad serving platform and innovative mobile marketing solutions. Combining our local information platform with Madhouse’s strength in mobile advertising will allow us to offer a high quality experience for our users and advertisers, and to increase our foothold in China’s burgeoning mobile marketing sector.”

“We are glad to be recognized by another leading mobile carrier partner and to have the opportunity to work with China Telecom’s Best Tone. We believe that Best Tone’s strong local information database, coupled with Madhouse’s strength in mobile advertising, will help develop mobile local search services in China. With the arrival of the 3G era, more applications and rich media ad formats will be available on the mobile internet and users will have improved browsing experiences. As the industry leader in China, we have the responsibility to share our experience with other players in order to further develop the country’s mobile ecosystem,” said Joshua Maa, founder and CEO of Madhouse.

What we think?

I have to admit – deciphering this release felt like a wrestling match. The translation was pretty poor, so a lot of details were lost in incomprehensible language. The most important thing I couldn’t figure out was what form this advertising will take. For a voice activated search service with attached mobile website, there are a lot of channels that could be used. Audio ads before or after a search result; SMS ads after the search result; interstitials during visits to the site; display ads on the site – and it looks like Madhouse is capable of service most if not all of these ad types.