Nokia gets into advertising

Mobile manufacturer Nokia announced this week two mobile advertising services designed for targeted campaigns on the handset.

Nokia Ad Service and Nokia Advertising Connector will, according to the Finnish firm, allow companies to personalise advertising on the mobile in a way that is much harder to do on traditional media.

Nokia Ad Service consists of a group of mobile publishers forming a mobile ad network and a platform to deploy, manage and optimise mobile advertising campaigns Nokia said in a statement. The company said the service will suit advertisers deploying global mobile campaigns, agencies offering mobile advertising to complement traditional media initiatives, and publishers seeking new business models and a larger consumer audience.

“As advertisers struggle to reach personalised targeting with traditional media such as print and TV, mobile advertising is becoming an increasingly attractive channel for brands,” said Tom Henriksson, director of Ad Service in Nokia’s emerging business unit.

Ad Service will start its European operations in the second half of 2007. Henriksson added that Nokia had completed several pilot campaigns with advertisers and mobile publishers using the ad serving technology. “The feedback has been very positive from all parties,” he said.

Nokia Advertising Connector, enables delivery of targeted ads to mobile devices. Nokia said the ads will be closely tied and optimised to specific multimedia applications, such as reading digital newspaper content, watching TV, listening to music or looking at directions on maps.

The company will offer access to the platform for third parties and enable their ad sales teams to sell for the mobile channel. Nokia Advertising Connector supports the so-called CPA (cost per action) model and provides usage data from mobile devices for enabling targeted ad selection and delivery to users’ devices.

Eden Zoller, principal analyst at Ovum said: “Nokia is positioning itself as a mobile advertising service provider, which is a bold move as the market is becoming very competitive from the platform and provisioning side of the equation.

“There are a lot of partners for the advertising community to choose from and Nokia will have to fight to stand out from the crowd.” 

Zoller warned that Nokia’s move could make some operators “uncomfortable because Nokia wants to place itself at the centre of a mobile advertising community that it controls in terms of provisioning and, presumably, revenue flows.”

Nokia Advertising Connector will run several pilots during the coming months and is planned to become commercially available by the end of 2007, Nokia said.