Celltick, the company that takes advantage of the mobile “Idle Mode”  will soon open the gate to all advertisers.
Celltick’s platform Livescreen displays ads on the mobile screen while the device is not used by the user, once he takes a look at the screen and sees the ad he can choose whereas to interact with the ad or not.

According to the company, the ads overall do not interfere the users and  “more than 80% of all users keep LiveScreen Media on, while 35% use it regularly, averaging 8-10 clicks per month”.
Until today Celltick has disclosed agreements with marketing agencies, but soon anyone would be able to run an ad campaign using their technology.

The Livescreen platform can segment the users by location, behavior and demographics, Moreover advertisers can also schedule when the ad will be displayed thanks to the nature of  the client that comes pre-loaded on a SIM card or a handset.

There are many issues with “automatic” display of ads. Although it is not as intrusive as telemarketing campaigns, it is still “taking control” over your mobile screen. Users behavior and even regulation direct to opt-in advertisement only when the user asks to be subscribed to a certain service and the only way to get users do it and actually react to the ads is by providing a strong incentive. Another aspect that should be considered is the difficulty in providing real accurate information about the users besides their location and their past interaction with the system (if any). If the user did not provide personal details in a process that verified the details (age, gender, income, preferences etc) the speculated data is usually not accurate.

We think that providing another platform for advertisers to launch their mobile campaigns on is a good move. Celltick actually offers advertisers a technological solution and an audience which is a great offer for advertisers. Still,  Celltick will need to increase the distribution of the platform to appeal more advertisers.
The ad network will be available at www.livescreen.com

The mobile advertising market holds a big promise.
According to eMarketer, mobile search ad revenues will reach $715 million in 2011 whereas mobile advertising in general  is estimated to generate billions of dollars.

Having said that, mobile advertising is still in early stages and there is no verified and long-lasting model for ROI.
We sat down with Moshe Vaknin founder & CEO of Toda!Cell to learn more about the company and to understand where mobile advertising is going.

Activity started at – May 2007
Entrepreneurs – Moshe Vaknin
Invesments – seed – $1M AfterDox and Fore-Group
Targeted markets – Japan and USA
Customers – ( not yet public) Mobile Content search Provider and Mobile Instant Messaging.

Q: Companies like Microsoft (with its dedicated platform), Media Layers, Amobee, adinfuse etc. supply Platforms that offer the management of advertisement in SMS, MMS, Wap, and Video. What is Toda!Cell’s offer to its clients?

A: Toda!Cell , does not target carriers at all. Our solution has been developed from day one only for off portal content providers. Toda!Cell believes that off portal browsing over the mobile internet is going to grow rapidly. Premium content providers don’t like to be associated or accessible via mobile carrier.
Publishers can benefit from our solution because our core system has been developed to increase their CTR; therefore, increasing the inventory value for them and providing high ROI to advertisers; so both publishers and advertisers are beneficial from the solution significantly. Unlike others we do not push ads, but only pull mode.
Our major differences  from our competitors are that we focus only on premium content that was optimized to the mobile medium and we collect data for six months activities, then we generate an optimization process to target accurately the users based on their behavior and not based on content. With the cooperation of the content provider, we use advanced profiling to enhance their inventory to achieve the maximum value for their ads.

Q: It seems like you chose to work in Japan which is an unfamiliar and distant market. Can you please share with us your insight about the Japanese Mobile advertisement market?

A: the Japanese market is the most advanced  mobile market in the world. With 3G all across the country, flat fee to access the web, and advanced mobile devices, it is a perfect market for off portal mobile advertising market. The Japanese people access the web over the mobile more than PC. Another important factor is that revenues from ad placement in Japan is about 70 percent from the 700M dollars marker while the rest is in other forms. In USA for example it is 50%. The mobile advertising as of today in Japan is about 1% from the total advertising budget while in USA it is about 0.3 percent. In Japan the off market mobile content portals already serve about 100B ads a month!

read more

Fring has announced that an ad trial is now running on some of the users around the world.
Fring,  a free IM and VOIP client, did not seem to clock-in  much revenues, although the application is very popular.
The ads are banners at the end of the chat window as show in the picture:

The announcement is truly good news to Fring’s Business plan and business model, moreover it is an ultimate test for  the mobile advertising market.
Ads that will be displayed on millions of Fring clients, to users that come from different backgrounds, different languages, different geographies, different age groups Etc.
So how do you create an advertisement campaign on such a personal device to such a varied audience?!
Will the users click on the banners and actually perform or initiate transactions?!
Will they use the integrated VoIP engine to create calls to the advertiser?!

One thing is for sure, the mobile advertising market will have much to learn from this move, and Fring will be the first to know.

Nowadays mobile services struggle to generate income but maybe the user just asks for more, not a value added service but just to save him some money.
No I am not talking about either Blyk,  Sugarmama or Cellcom’s Zmoney, It is about a new VOIP service called PokeTalk.
Parrot-Media’s new service PokeTalk offers users free calls using their own phone, just write your number and destination and talk for free.
Jajah offers the same service for cheap rates but PokeTalk is absolutely free, while targeted advertising is shown on the screen.
PokeTalk has also a Facebook application, one click and the user can talk for free, one click and Parrot-Media can build the advertisers a complete profile of the user.
In the future Parrot-Media will offer free sms and wake up calls as a return you will watch some ads, understood?

The service is launched for US, UK, Japan, Singapore, Germany, Chanda and Israel users. You can try the service at www.poketalk.com

Related articles by Zemanta

• Listen To Ads, Earn Minutes On Jajah