Vodafone rolls out mobile advertising services to 18 markets in 18 months but is it biting off more than it can chew?
Last week, I read with interest that Vodafone had announced that Yahoo! was no longer its exclusive display advertising partner. I didn’t write about this as when the agreement was launched it was said that this was a short term exclusive deal.
Yesterday Vodafone announced that it was Ms. Application.. and now it’s bigging up mobile advertising saying that it has launched services in 18 markets in 18 months.
Over the last year Vodafone Marketing Solutions has run over 2000 campaigns across its global footprint for hundreds of global brands*. While those brands continue to enjoy considerable success with mobile banner campaigns, they are increasingly trying newer mobile advertising formats including the use of branded content, sponsored alerts, opt-in push messaging and advertising on service based text messages**.
Rick Fant, Head of Internet Discovery at Vodafone said “In the current economic climate brands will look even harder at their budgets and how they spend them. Mobile advertising offers a combination of great response rates alongside the opportunity for advertisers to reach out to and engage with their customers. We are pleased with the performance of Vodafone’s mobile advertising business and that more and more brands are moving spend to this innovative medium”.
Services from Vodafone and What we think?
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Services from Vodafone |
What it does |
What we think |
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Zonal Marketing trial |
Users that opt in receive promotional message relevant to their profile and location. |
Zonal is a great name, but this is re-marketing of LBS SMS services Vodafone has had on its live! Portfolio for several years. |
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Incoming voice or text alerts advertising trial |
Full screen ads from a range of layers allowing users to click to view points or services when they are receive incoming texts. |
This is a points to click scheme. You get a call – so the message is pushed when the phone is active and ensures it has your attention. If you click you get points you can redeem for prizes. These sorts of things always get a high initial CTR but then that fades as relevancy is not pushed on services such as these. They depend on high inventory volume. |
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Branded applications |
Vodafone is trying to assess consumer acceptance of interaction with in the application. |
This is interesting but again very subjective and free mobile games have been pushed on Vodafone for over 2 years now. |
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Vodafone is testing a new mobile internet browser |
Voda aims to simplify mobile browsing. |
The company has been doing to for years (Novarra) and GoMo News site still looks crap when on Vodafone so this is nothing new either. |
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myCampaign |
An in-Vodafone service tool that will allow small business to set up and run local mobile advertising. |
SHRIEK! Finally something good from Vodafone. What a nifty new idea –but it is treading on the toes of brands, agencies and vendors with this…. nothing new there I suppose! |
This is a bit of PR rockstardom coming out of Vodafone. But kudos for trying to turn around PR in an economic downturn… Still the above is mission some stuff I have seen coming out in Austria, German and the East… not sure why?
“Still the above is mission some stuff I have seen coming out in Austria, German and the East… not sure why?”
????