Vodafone and Yahoo! Form Strategic Alliance
RATING: on your marks, get set, predictions are on the way
A press release out this morning states that “Vodafone and Yahoo! have formed a strategic alliance to pool their expertise to create an innovative mobile advertising business that will enhance the customer experience on mobile phones while providing both companies with a new revenue stream.”
STOP the press. We’ve heard this before – but with Google?
Yahoo! will now work with Vodafone to derive unique mobile advertising opportunities and retain the strongest consumer experience? The initiative will roll out in the first half of 2007.
This is very interesting. Just a few weeks after Vodafone Germany made Google the face of its off-deck experience. Vodafone UK cosies up to Yahoo! for similar advertising services. Also – shock horror- advertising might appear on the lord almighty Vodafone live! platform?
BKI Media is not sure whether we should be scratching our heads or applauding Vodafone and Yahoo! Vodafone has obviously been reading criticism about Google and opened its eyes to Google’s threat. So the good news is that it teams up with Yahoo! as well. But isn’t this jumping from the frying pan into the fire?
Yes and no. Branded search engines do want to dominate the mobile space and advertising is a way of finally making money from mobile. But when vendors and operators tout “user experience” and “advertising” in the same breath – blood runs cold.
We agree that advertising will create a huge revenue stream for mobile., but feel this is too soon. There are so many issues and concerns with the overall lack of WAP and mobile Web uptake that adding advertising is likely to put users off even more.
Hang on though: Vodafone UK was the first to offer free browsing and is painfully aware that MVNO Blyk, which is to offer free calls (paid for by advertising, will be breathing down its neck soon.
Bets are that Vodafone will soon offer free content to Vodafone live! subscribers after a splashy 3GSM World Congress party next February. Vodafone, with the help of Yahoo!, will probably try to trump Blyk and put the free ad-model in place first. Its highly unlikely that this will be for voice – but it is a definite for data services.
Its sound easy – but it isn’t. Any reaction to services such as these will probably be handset-specific meaning that some devices will be tailored for advertising, 3G, content, rendering etc, while others will be Google-only devices.
Or perhaps not? Dual brands survive on the Internet and could survive on the mobile. The biggest worry is that once a customer clicks through to the advertisers site they are “lost” to the mobile operator and might find a better experience.
Which is when mobile operators start to look like bit pipes and Google and Yahoo! begin to dominate.
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2 Responses to “Vodafone and Yahoo! Form Strategic Alliance”
HI Bena,
Comment made on November 15th, 2006 at 6:50 amI think it is for lower cost voice calls!
yes! This puts a whole new perspective on things. Is it worth reducing the cost of calls for adverts? Data I can understand but pursuing a home zone strategy might be a stronger and better initiative?
Comment made on November 15th, 2006 at 6:52 amLeave a Comment