Four tough questions to Bytemobile on the new mobile advertising inventory channel

Rating: good vs bad

I started doing some research on Bytemobile for an article on mobile advertising that I am writing. I was looking at the company as a potential business model for mobile operators but (frankly) found more negatives than positives on the new service.

To be fair, I gave Bytemobile’s Adrian Hall the opportunity to answer some questions before we meet at Mobile World Congress and for me to understand the new content adaptation advertising push service.

1. Can you please give me a three line overview of the new service and how you pitch it to mobile operators.

Bytemobile’s Unison Advertising Module (UAM) enables operators to serve targeted ads in off-portal web pages on virtually all mobile devices. Inserting ads via the Web Fidelity Module allows carriers to monetize subscribers’ off-portal experience, in addition to on-portal traffic as well as subsidize the cost of data delivery. UAM includes an in-network ad server for insertion of targeted ads in the header and footer of content-adapted web pages, click-through to content-adapted PC websites and optional integration with media sales engines or third-party ad networks that currently serve on-portal advertising.

2. I was very interested in the new announcement but had some concerns.

Do you have to get permission of publishers before injecting adverts off-portal? / How do you push adverts and what is the relevancy? Is it based on the website?

All of these issues are controlled by the network operator, which has sponsorship agreements with the advertisers. Per those agreements, sponsors’ ads would be inserted in the operators’ headers and footers appearing on the mobile device display rather than in the site itself, which is controlled by the website publisher.

3. Is pushing adverts via transcoding - legal or ethical?

All advertising content and delivery would be subject to the usage and privacy policies of the operator.

4. Transcoding has had a bad run in 2007 with the likes of Novarra facing the brunt of it. This transcoding advertising service sounds great for generating revenues how is it managed. Is there a business model and where do the adverts come from? From a third party, Byte or the operator?

In terms of managing the advertising service, we are currently evaluating partnership opportunities with a few third-party ad networks, which will enable us to provide a full-service mobile advertising solution to operators. By partnering with an ad network, we can deploy a joint solution that serves mobile advertising across all of the operator channels, including on- and off-portal. The Bytemobile value proposition will remain the same – we create a new inventory channel, which enables operators to monetize the off-portal browsing experience.

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