CTIA: ilovemobileweb party, Medio, Smaato Star Trek and PepCom where I won a phone!

by: Bena Roberts Sunday, April 6th, 2008

I arrived about an hour late at this ilovemobileweb party and it wasn’t packed. So I had the opportunity to sit down with sponsors of the event (and of GoMo News) Smaato and Medio and exchange some important views mixed with a bit of gossip about mobile search and advertising.

I had a great chat with:

Ben Tatton Brown Medio Head of Advertising EMEA
Michael Cox Medio Director of Marketing
Tom Anderson Medio Account Executive Publisher Sales
Harry Dewhirst Medio Advertising Sales Manager EMEA

I had been out or met the Smaato guys nearly every night at CTIA, but I never get bored of meeting CMO Harald Niedhardt or Sales Director Jorg Anhalt. Yikes, I can’t remember the third guys name although I also see him too!

But anyway – what did we talk about?

Basically, I was quizzing Ben on Medio’s Mobile Advertising services. The company is playing catch-up in advertising and what I had seen last year was only OK. Ben told me to take another look (and I will). He said that they had a new mobile advertising team and Harry Dewhirst was a prodigy and strong fresh innovative blood and features were now available. I asked about the focus of mobile advertising vs search and Ben and the rest of the team said that they were “married”. Medio might offer individual search and advertising solutions – but to benefit and maximize the experience a combined solution from Medio would give any brand an effective and strong identity in the mobile arena.

Similarly, Jorg Anhalt from Smaato said (when I said he was very friendly with the competition), he didn’t see Medio as a threat to Smaato but could see partnerships with everyone moving forward. The Smaato differentiator is an open system that even white labels could deploy to facilitate new multimedia services and growth of existing in house or outsourced services.

This is very interesting. Mobile Search is very competitive. But the advertising eco-system seems open. Medio and Smaato are not collaborating. But I believe that mobile advertising players will collaborate more moving forward to build and drive the market.

After this party, I went to the Pepcom event. I was lucky enough to enter the FindWhere Location Based Tracking services company competition and I won! A detailed report on FindWhere is up soon, but I got a groovy Nokia N95 device.

Super! Thank-you.