Mobile ads are best when they don’t feel like advertising: Female Friday with Claudia Poepperl

It’s Female Friday once again on GoMo News! This is the fifth installment in our series of interviews with the leading ladies of the mobile industry. Today we’ve got Claudia Poepperl, CEO of addafix – an award winning mobile content company that ads relevant, non-intrusive content around your phone calls.

What does Addafix do?

We create an app that runs automatically in the background on your phone. Once installed, adaffix runs without the user needing to be active. We attach local and social content to phone calls in real time, and I’ll give you a few examples of that. It displays the name of callers phone rings – even if they’re not in your contacts book! If you can’t reach a business on the phone, it instantly suggests other businesses in the area that can help you. And it lets you see the up-to-date status and picture of your Facebook friends when they call.

Enriching calls with contextually relevant content is the most natural evolutionary element to add to telephony, and brings the whole experience of phone calling into a new era. Since the start of telephony in the 1970s no other phone invention has provided an adaffix-like experience. I believe that adaffix has an impact on how people make phone calls. People will consider contextually relevant content delivered with a phone call a commodity.

Have you always been involved so heavily in mobile? Did you know from an early point that mobile was where you wanted to be?

Back in 1993, when I did a Masters degree in the US, a Professor suggested a career in the emerging mobile network industry would be a good idea. After I finished my studies I applied for jobs with network operators and did actually join one. Since then I’ve never really left the mobile space, with some side steps into social and local.

Why did you decide to create your own company?

After moving to the UK I saw so many people around me start their own businesses,something I found very inspiring. Luckily I came up with an idea that I thought had enough potential to base a business on. It took a while to get adaffix off the ground but together with my co-founders Mathias Schroeder and John Lisek we managed to do it – despite the fact that we started right in the middle of the financial downturn!

yellix recently rebranded and launched as adaffix – with a stronger emphasis on international growth. How have the markets been treating you?

We’ve made great progress with our international roll-out in the last couple of months. We are now live in 5 markets including the USA, Germany, Denmark, Sweden and Austria.

Do you think that operators and advertisers give enough attention the possibilities of voice advertising and enhanced call services?

I think that there is a big potential for carriers to monetize their call inventory. They just haven’t got their heads around it yet. There are some services combining ringback tones with voice advertising. Personally I am not convinced that people are very eager to listen to an ad while waiting for their friend to answer the phone.

Advertising works best when not perceived as such. And there are ways to be non intrusive, useful and convenient at the same time. We will be offering a solution for network operators in the near future.

Do you see any potential for combining call services with other growing mobile services like location, navigation or social networking?

Information is publicly available in phone directories and social networks. The obvious thing to do is combining this information with phone calls in a compelling way to bring more convenience to telephony. We do this already today.

Outside of advertising, what things are happening in mobile at the moment that you find interesting or exciting?

Anything that enhances the user interaction with a device.

What do you do to relax – if you relax?

I switch off my phone!