New Mobile advertising Alliance? Anam, Cibenix, Mobile Cohesion, Openet and SLA Mobile. Good Grief

by: admin Tuesday, February 5th, 2008

Rating: now the software players are talking mobile advertising, what next

By Bena Roberts

I have to say it, Mobile Advertising seems to be like Acid. No one knows what is in it but everyone is willing to drive to a field in the middle of the night to try and get a slice of it.

So what is the new alliance?

Well basically its a Mobile Advertising Alliance between software companies Anam, Cibenix, Mobile Cohesion, Openet and SLA Mobile.

What are they going to do?

Apparently, its all about breast feeding. No, whoops sorry. Best of BREED – my eyes deceived me!
Best of breed companies offering a mobile advertising platform to operators. This will enable rapid integration of advertising software from this group into the mobile network to make advertising integration fast and simple.

From the press release
According to Nic Stirk of Alliance member SLA Mobile, “Our advertising solution is an easy-to-use platform that delivers both mobile advertising and direct marketing – something that has been very difficult to achieve in the past. The platform provides secure access to operator-owned demographic, behavioural and contextual profiling data and provides multiple media channels to deliver personalised and targeted campaigns. In the mobile medium personalization ensures that advertising is seen as appropriate and relevant for the mobile user – thereby overcoming the shortcomings of other approaches. Context is key.”

Gerry McKenna of Alliance member Anam agrees that the inherent flexibility of the platform is important for success. “Flexible campaign management and real-time feedback reporting ensure that advertisers can continually refine campaigns and only pay for results. From an advertiser point of view they get the analytics, reach and purity of audience that is so essential in one-to-one marketing. We are confident that our combined skills and integrated platform will, for the first time, make mobile viable as an advertising medium.”

What we think?
I hate to say this but the press release is so full of key words it sound as though it’s been written by a novice to advertising and it translates as though this alliance is about advertising because advertising is hot and little else.

I mean, context is key (very 2007). Contextual profiling – um, OK. Who is allowing profiling now and personalisation – (ohmigod). Hands up anyone in this consortium that knows the difference between personalisation and profiling?

I look forward to meeting them at Mobile World Congress.