Jan's W2F podcasts at 3GSM

Just saw that Jan is blogging, as well as posting the podcasts...

Mike Rowehl's response to the Nokia thing - This is Mobility

Trying to Grok Nokia Ad Service

I heard about the Nokia Ad Service but didn’t have any concrete details. Does it tie into client software, is it an open publisher network, bidded marketplace, carrier integrated? It’s actually more my mobile geekery side more so than my interest as an employee of a competitor that’s driving it. Cause the initial info I got was pretty conflicted, and I couldn’t put the pieces together in a consistent way. And then I saw the post from Ajit, which added even more inconsistent pieces on top of what already didn’t fit together. I didn’t want to post about it though, cause I assumed everyone would just assume that I was whining about competition. Thankfully Eduardo Cruz has saved me the trouble and given me something to point at.

It’s the two parts about being off-portal and providing access to all Nokia’s customer base. Assuming that the system works like a traditional network of off-portal publishers (like what we do at AdMob) that definitely wouldn’t give access to “all Nokia’s customer base”. However if it operates outside of the publishers control, like the way that Openwave’s “Contextual Merchandising” solution does it can insert content anywhere and that would give a kind of universal access. I put Contextual Merchandising in quotes there cause that seems to be a mobile specific term, if we were doing this online it would be called framing, which is almost always frowned upon and frequently illegal.

I’m pretty concerned in general, and some of the points that James brings up on MoCoNews are some of the primary reasons. I actually don’t like advertising. There, I said it. I was railing against that part of my professional trajectory (I’m ex-”a number of advertising companies” on the technical side, one of them a little startup called Overture that the Yahoo folks in the audience might have heard of) because I considered much of the activity really detached from growing an ecosystem. The beautiful and envious outcome of Google AdSense was that it allowed lots of small publishers and individuals to fund and grow their business on their own terms and without having to compromise what they wanted to do as long as it lined up with a valuable audience out there on the Interwebs.

But it works because both ends of the system are hooked into the right endpoints and the incentives all around are aligned. Publishers bring in people, hopefully of high value, who advertisers pay to reach, and the publishers make money from the advertisers reaching those people. The publisher creates the value, reaps the value, and the network takes a share for facilitating the interchange. But what happens when the publisher creates the value and the facilitator collects the value with no feedback to the publisher? The publisher isn’t incented to create higher value content catering to a better audience, so the quality and value of the content out there goes down. So extracting the same value in advertising from the audience requires more and more intrusive and overbearing tactics. You end up with a Geocities type of problem, where the end results are a noxious mix of advertising and bad content that no one really wants to see. The goal of an advertising network should be to maximize the value being delivered to the publishers participating in the network, which grows the value of the system as a whole and helps to expand industries. That’s why I’m at AdMob, cause we have the chance to play that part in the system.

However I’m seeing more and more “advertising networks” pop up that don’t align incentives the way that the really successful efforts of the past have done. I worry about the users coming into mobile who might have to suffer through technologists figuring out that they don’t understand media. That’s always really painful.

Ajit covers the Nokia Ad Service Launch - Open Gardens

Nokia ad service is launched! A potentially revolutionary milestone for Mobile advertising..

Today Nokia launched Nokia Ad service

The Nokia Adservice may well be one of the most significant announcements this year and I believe, it will transform the industry.

Here is my analysis on the Nokia ad service.

To understand why this is a seminal announcement, we need to understand that the advertisement model is very significant. It is the main driver on the Web (web 20) (and that includes all forms of advertising like video).

I believe that the Ad model will also be a major driver to the Mobile Web as I indicate in my book Mobile Web 2.0.

But there is a problem.

The good news is: we have billions of devices - more than PCs
The bad news is: that they have nothing in common except Voice and SMS.

For most part, neither of these are programmable.

To make matters worse, the device stack is fragmented and brittle. By fragmented, I mean, a Wintel like situation does not exist on mobile devices. And by brittle I mean that layers in the stack are too tightly coupled - making introduction of new elements very difficult

For advertisers, this is bad because

a) It is almost impossible to target advertising to customer profiles
b) The target audience is fragmented

Clearly, an appetite for advertising exists with the success of both Admob and screentonic, both of whom have reported a billion ad impressions.

But the impressions themselves cannot be targeted because very little USER information is available to the third party (advertiser). Some limited device information is available through mechanisms like UAprof but that means, ads cannot be targeted to customers (using the equivalent of cookies on the Web).

The other end of the spectrum are the Operators. Traditionally, they have always thought of themselves being the key players in leveraging advertising. For third parties, dealing with Operators is very difficult.

Further more, Operators in the West do not have the leverage on the actual device stack (much as they would like to have).

The result is: Advertising, as I envisage in Mobile Web 2.0 has not taken off so far ..

The Nokia ad service provides a very interesting alternative to third parties because it is an Off portal initiative across all Nokia handsets globally.

This truly changes the game from an advertiser perspective because:

a) They deal with one entity(Nokia)

b) They potentially access ALL Nokia devices ACROSS operators globally

c) They can target the customer base because the Web/Mobile gateways are run by Nokia (off portal)

From a third party advertiser perspective, working with a company like Nokia would be far more preferable than working with the many Operators globally and not getting anywhere.

In fact, a while ago, one Operator told me that:
'The whole problem we have in the West is - Operators have no control over device manufacturers. In Japan, DoCoMo writes the (device manufacturer's) f*****g catalogue - and here in the UK - we are like 'Argos' - we just browse'

Note: Argos is a shopping catalogue service in the UK. What this comment means is - NTT DoCoMo in Japan tells device manufacturers exactly what to build - and thus controls the device totally. In the West, that does not happen. Their point being, if all the devices would only come in line (under control of the Operator) - all would be well (for the Operator of course!)

This does not affect 'On Portal' - but on portal initiatives are really not taking off for most people

Hence, I believe that

a) The Nokia ad service will revolutionise the Ad serving market for mobile devices

b) It would help many companies to actually reach global customers(all Nokia devices) and also target global customers(since much more about the customer is known in this scenario)

c) .mobi is also a beneficiary - this may legitimise the .mobi market

d) The impact on companies like admob and screentonic is probably negative because they cannot hope to achieve the reach and the targeting of customers as Nokia is doing. But on the flip side, they will get a lot of interest because of the impact on Mobile advertising

With both the Snake game and Ringtones, Nokia has created two industry segments. This may well be the third

I would be blogging about this a lot more. Watch this space!
Well done Nokia!

Some notes below from the Nokia site:
>>>>>>>>
Nokia Ad Service provides a worldwide reach to advertisers through its network. Nokia.mobi, one of the largest mobile portals with over 100 million monthly visits in 120 countries, has already joined the network.

Campaign messages can be customized to any mobile phone in many countries. Advertisers can optimize their spend by delivering specific ads to target groups.

Planning campaigns
Targeting: ads reach the right consumer based on categories and profiles through our ad platform.
Creative management: artwork is delivered in various formats - including text links and banner advertisements- to match consumers? mobile phone capabilities.
Campaign preferences: Nokia Ad Service builds a campaign for maximum flexibility. Advertisers can adapt their strategy based on performance whilst running campaigns. They can use service options such as frequency capping and time-based sequencing to deliver advertising messages effectively.
Run your campaign
Trafficking. You are able to closely monitor the traffic at any time during the campaign.
Reporting. The results of your campaign are available immediately, at any time, via a secured internet site.
Running campaigns
Real time reporting: advertisers can closely monitor the traffic at any time during the campaign through user-friendly traffic reporting formats and measurement visualizations.
Optimizing: Nokia Ad Service campaign managers continuously monitor campaigns to maximize the return on investment.
Learning from campaigns
Understanding: Nokia Ad Service helps advertisers learn more about consumers' response during their campaign with online monitoring and reporting tools.
Reporting: campaign results are available immediately via a secured internet site. Nokia Ad Service customers can personalize their reports by time, by publishers, by creative elements, etc. A simple, effective, and transparent service. The opportunity to reach a wider audience.

Our mobile ad server delivers sophisticated campaigns. Publishers can capitalize on the following:
Categorization in Nokia ad network to receive relevant ads
Flexible setup of any mobile publishing service
New source of ad revenue without deploying ad sales and operations
Full technical support to help with implementation
Detailed user profile while respecting users' privacy
Users' data is secure, protected and maintained in our ad platform

The implementation of the service is a 3-step-process:
Step 1: create the order form to outline different formats of advertising,
Step 2: receive ad tags from Nokia Ad Service and place them in the desired location throughout your mobile internet service,
Step 3: access full reports 24 hours a day. Metrics are available on a flexible set of cross relational rules.