Wireless Advertising
Hassim Mohamed Yunos, Jerry Gao, Ph.D.
Department of Computer Engineering
San Jose State University
San Jose, CA 95192-0180
Contacting email: [email protected]
Abstract
Wireless advertising is becoming a hot topic due to the fast development of wireless
networking and technology and significant increase of mobile device users. Recently,
eTForecasts1 and Global Mobile2 quoted that in year 2000 Mobile voice use, which has
468 million users, is surpassing 365 million wired Internet users. This makes wireless
advertising a new and hot marketing channel to reach the potential customers for
marketing. Company research like Windwire5 and SkyGo6 indicate that permission-based
alerts delivered to wireless phones capture consumer attention, drive action and build
brand awareness. This paper provides a tutorial of wireless advertising by discussing the
different perspectives of wireless advertising, including its needs, characteristics,
presentation formats, business issues and technical problems. Moreover, it presents an
overview of the existing business models, vendors and their products in wireless
advertising. In addition, the paper reports our survey results about the perspective users’
view on wireless advertising. Finally, the remarks of future challenges and solution are
given.
1.
Introduction
Wireless advertising is becoming a hot topic in the advertising and marketing community
due to the fast development of wireless networking technology and the significant
increase of mobile device users. According to eTForecasts1 and Global Mobile2, in the
year of 2000, there are 468 million mobile users. This number is much higher than the
number, 365 million, of Internet users in 2000. The Kelsey Group estimated that the U.S.
wireless advertising market would be $35 million in 20003. However, Jupiter Media
Metrix predicted that the market would be 600 million by 20034 while worldwide
1
wireless advertising market will be 6.5 billion. Company research like Windwire5 and
SkyGo6 indicated that permission-based alerts delivered to wireless phones capture the
attention of consumers, drive responding actions, and build brand awareness. Large
companies, such as Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL, have created a subsidiary to focus on this
market.
What is wireless advertising? Intuitively, wireless advertising refers to advertising and
marketing activities that deliver advertisements to mobile devices using wireless network
and mobile advertising solutions to promote the sales of goods and services, or build
brand awareness. Wireless advertising creates a new media channel to conduct product
and business advertising and marketing through mobile devices, such as mobile phone,
PDA and pocket PC. Besides promoting the sale of goods or service, wireless advertising
also increases product awareness and disseminating information. As shown in Figure 16,
currently United State has only 0.9% of the world’s wireless Internet users while Asia has
close to 94% of the world’s wireless Internet users. Part of the reason is because the
Internet infrastructure is well established in U.S., and the Internet-based web access has
been widely accepted by American.
Source: http://www.eurotechnology.com/imode/faq-wap.html
Figure 1: The World’s Wireless Internet Users
2
As outlined in Wireless Commerce: Marketing Issues and Possibilities8, wireless devices,
the platform behind wireless marketing, have three main characteristics over PC’s and
other conventional platforms.
•
Accessible – since a wireless device is becoming a personal device because it is
handy and portable, and available for use at all time.
•
Personal – it carries the user’s identity that can be used to track down to an
individual, unlike PC computers that only carry a household's identity.
•
“Location Aware” – it is easy to track down where a user's physical location is as
long as the device is on and connected. This is very critical for conducting a useroriented marketing and advertising.
The three characteristics provide unique features that do not exist in traditional and
current advertising media. Wireless advertisements can be highly targeted, flexible and
dynamic. The targeted audiences are vast, and they can search information, issue
inquiries, and make purchases at any mobile location. Some early applications of wireless
advertising in mobile commerce are local entertainment information, stock quote, dining
and restaurant reservation, and wireless coupon.
Since wireless advertising is one of hot topics in mobile commerce, people want to know
more about wireless advertising, including business models, advertisement formats and
presentation styles, technical issues and solutions, infrastructure systems, and standards.
Hence, we need a) tutorial papers discussing its basic concepts, issues and general
methods, b) research projects addressing technical problems and solutions, and c)
wireless advertising systems providing wireless advertising services. This paper provides
a tutorial of wireless advertising by discussing the different perspectives of wireless
advertising, including its needs, characteristics, presentation formats, business and
technical problems. Moreover, it presents an overview of the existing business models,
vendors and their products in wireless advertising. Furthermore, this paper reports our
survey results about the perspective users’ view on wireless advertising.
3
Our paper is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses different types of wireless
advertisements. Section 3 presents the five different types of business models in wireless
advertising. In Section 4, existing wireless advertising approaches and techniques are
discussed. Section 5 addresses business and technical issues in wireless advertising.
Section 6 discusses four major vendors. In Section 7, we report our case study results on
user perceptions on wireless advertising based on a conducted survey. Finally, our
conclusion and remarks about future direction are given.
Table 1. Vindigo's Wireless Advertisements
For Media Company - Vindigo offers a
fully hosted solution that enables
publishers to extend their brands and
content to mobile users with ease.
For Wireless Carries - Vindigo gives
wireless carriers a perfect solution for
generating user demand and encouraging
frequent use of wireless internet.
For Directory Publishers - Vindigo For Hospital Providers - Vindigo allows
enables directory publishers to parlay their hotels to provide their guests with valuebrands and advertising relationships into added service by offering branded ads.
the wireless arena.
For Real Estate Firms - The Vindigo's
platform can support the entire home
search phase of the real estate sales process
by integrating location-based services with
contact management, process tracking, and
open house scheduling.
For Field Technicians - Vindigo's
dynamically
generated
maps
and
directions will help field service engineers
identify the precise location of service
needs and expedite the repair process.
4
2. Wireless Advertisement
Various kinds of wireless advertisements can be delivered to different types of mobile
devices, such as a mobile phone, PDA, or Pocket PC. Unlike traditional and Internet
advertisements, wireless ads have the limited screen size for display. In this section, we
present current existing wireless ads from a number of major business vendors in wireless
advertising.
•
Vindigo's location-based application advertisements
Table 1 summaries different kinds of wireless ads provided by Vindigo. Vindigo is an
award-winning location-based service, available to anyone with a Palm OS, Pocket
PC device, or an Internet-enabled cell phone. Vindigo enables individuals on the
street to find the best and closest places to eat, shop, and play. In essence, Vindigo
software equips people with radar for the world around them. Table 1 displays
wireless ads on a mobile device for media companies, directory publishers, travel
agencies, real estate firms, wireless carries, as well as field supporters.
•
SkyGo's advertisements
SkyGo delivers wireless ads to any mobile phone, PDA or pager. It supports a wide
range of operating systems and protocols for delivering phone ads (including WAP,
SMS, and iMode) and PDA ads (including Palm and Windows CE). Figure 2 shows
two SkeyGo's wireless ad examples on a phone and PDA. They demonstrated that
wireless advertising could be a very effective channel for brand building ads.
Wireless Ads build brand
effectively by compelling
concise messages within
content.
Palm Ads build brand
effectively with compelling
concise messages
Figure 2. SkeyGo's Wireless Ad Samples
5
•
Avantgo's channel-based advertisements
AvantGo's wireless users can access more than 1,000 premium channels from
wireless-enabled handhelds and smart phones. These channels provide an effective
mean to deliver wireless ads for various businesses, such as bank and finance,
entertainment, health care, publishers & media, retail shopping, sports, computer
technology, and travel. AvantGo provide two types of wireless advertising services.
•
Wireless home page ads:
Advertisers can place wireless ads on the AvantGo's wireless home page to
achieve unsurpassed visibility with premier placement header and anchor ads.
They can easily achieve a high level of awareness, because this is the first page
for users to see when they access AvantGo's wireless service. Unlike typical web
pages with a multitude of ads, your message is showcased in a clean, uncluttered
environment. Figure 3 shows a wireless home page ad sample.
Source: http://www.avantgo.com/products/businesses/marketing_commerce/pdf/wireless_ad.pdf
Wireless Category Ad: Use high–visibility placement to boost click–through to ads for branding,
lead generation, promotions, and more!
Figure 3: Wireless Home Page Ad Sample
Source: http://www.avantgo.com/products/businesses/marketing_commerce/pdf/wireless_ad.pdf
Wireless Category Ad: Deliver your targeted message based on users’ interests and geographical
location.
6
Figure 4: Wireless Category Ad Samples
•
Wireless category ads
Advertisers may choose AvantGo's wireless category pages to place ads that
easily reach to the desired demographics using messages focused on
consumers who are browsing the channels within a specific interest category.
Figure 4 shows several Wireless Category AD samples. AvantGo's wireless
categories provide customers with well-classified advertisements that can be
found easily AvantGo's wireless categorized channels. Moreover, an
AvantGo's wireless category ad enables advertisers to target consumers who
registered in a particular geographical location.
3.
Business Models In Wireless Advertising
A business model is a blueprint for a business that highlights the business strategy about
how to make revenue by specifying markets, products, customers, and where it is
positioned in the value chain. In this section, we summarized five different business
models for wireless advertising. Table 2 shows the comparisons.
•
Voice-subsidized
This business model has an objective to provide competitive offerings and has no
intention to generate additional revenue. It allows wireless service providers to
support wireless Internet services (WSP??) and content using subscriber fees and
WSP resources only. This business model does not require any wireless ad
technology.
7
•
Safe income & no upside revenue model
The objective of this business model is to subsidize acquisition of premier content to
elevate quality of wireless Internet offering. As for voice-subsidized business models,
this business model does not require any wireless ad technology. This business model
derives revenue not only from the subscriber fees, but also from the content
providers’ placement fees. These placement fees are charged to content providers
desiring “top deck” placement or general distribution via the WSP’s network. It also
refrains from taking a share of any revenue generated by the content providers as a
result of their ad distribution over the WSP network.
•
Diversified revenue
The objective of this business model is to subsidize quality content and subscriber
fees to increase content quality and create a compelling offering that draws and
retains subscribers. This model has two ways to generate the revenue. The first is
from placement fees. The other is by receiving a share of advertising revenues and Mcommerce fees, which are realized by the content and service providers directly using
the WSP’s distribution channel in addition to subsidize subscriptions or the cost of
acquiring content fees. This business model has the added benefit of increasing
profitability, with minimal effort by the WSP as media sales. Another advantage of
this model is that it can subsidize either the cost of acquiring content or the discount
consumer services fees. The drawback of this model is that it requires WSP to have
its own wireless ad server or a sanctioned ad server for use by publishers. This server
has to be able to accurately track the ads served to the WSP subscribers based on
subscriber profiles or WSP restrictions.
•
Media-dependent, outsource media sales revenue
The objective of this business model is to subsidize quality content and subscriber
fees to grow and retain the subscriber base, while generating significant revenue. This
model generates revenue wholly from a share of all advertising and M-commerce
revenue generated over the WSP distribution channel. Hence, it requires a greater
commitment to wireless advertising from WSPs. Media sales for a publisher’s content
is an outsource task, and is largely the responsibility of the publisher. In this scenario,
WSPs must not only be able to track the ads served over their network to ensure
8
proper revenue sharing, but also may opt to control the number and frequency of ads
served to their wireless consumers based on subscriber profiles or WSP restrictions.
•
Media-dependent, in-house media sales revenue
The objective of this model is to expand the carrier’s business function to include
media sales, controlling and drawing revenue from the wireless Internet property.
This model is similar to the media-dependent, outsource media sales model. The only
difference is that it requires a WSP to create in-house media sales team devoted to
media sales, processing and services of wireless ads. The business model is fully
dependent on wireless advertising and m-commerce fees for wireless content
acquisition and subscriber access. It also requires a complete technology solution to
support wireless advertising in advertisement creation, management, services, such as
deliver, and measurement.
Business Model
Subscriber
M-Commerce
Content
Advertising
Fees
Fees
Placement Fees
Revenue
Partner Technology Requirement
Majority
None
None
None
None
Majority
None
Majority
None
None
Voice-subsidized
Wireless Internet
Safe income,
No-upside revenue
Diversified revenue
Share of
Share of
Share of
•
WSP
•
Sanctioned
Share of
•
Media-dependent
Outsource media
None
Share of
None
Share of
Sales revenue
Media-dependent
In-house media
None
Majority
None
Majority
publisher
Ad
Serving
Solution
Outsource Media sales
•
Measurement Capability
•
WSP- sanctioned publisher
•
Ad Serving Solution
•
Outsource Media sales
•
- Measurement Capability
-
Carrier Ad Serving Solution
-
Extensive In-house Media Sales
-
Campaign Management Interface
Sales revenue
Table 2. Business Models for Wireless Advertising
9
4.
Existing Approaches and Techniques
Wireless advertising needs wireless networks, mobile technology and infrastructure,
systematic marketing and advertising solutions. Here, we discuss the existing approaches
and technologies supporting wireless advertising.
4.1. Wireless Data Access
Delivering wireless advertisements needs wireless data access methods, environments,
and platforms.
Data Accessibility - There are two different data access methods push and pull. They
are different because they use different approaches to delivery data to the end users.
Push data refers to a data access approach in which wireless data are delivered a user's
mobile device without the user requests. In push data approach, the wireless data is
sent to mobile devices as a short burst of text. These short text messages, sometimes
called alerts, are frequently generated and delivered based on a user's profile or current
location. Pull data refers to a data access approach in which wireless data are delivered
to users upon their requests. A typical example of pull data is that a user accesses the
wireless Internet, and receives wireless ads when the user browses a specific page with
ads. Figure 5 (a) and 5(b) shows the available technology for data accessibility. Table 3
displays the visual and audio data access technologies in both pull and push
approaches.
Data Environment - Wireless advertising currently supports visual and audio data
access. Visual data access is frequently used and most popular, it includes text and
sometime graphic images. Audio data access is the conversion of a text message to an
audio format. Ideally, wireless advertising could be supported with both visual and
audio data in the near future.
Data Platform - Mobile phones and PDAs are the most commonly used mobile
devices. They have some drawbacks compared to the traditional PCs, such as smaller
user interface and screen size, less memory, limited graphic formats and power, and
slower data transfer rates. These limitations increase the difficulty of wireless
marketing and advertising in placing advertisements on a wireless platform. Unlike
10
online advertising, wireless advertising uses mobile devices as a new advertising
platform to deliver, display, and track wireless ads whenever they are displayed
anywhere anytime.
Source: http://www.avesair.com/flash/solutions/mobile_marketing/push.html
Source: http://www.avesair.com/flash/solutions/mobile_marketing/pull.html
Figure 5(a): Push Technique Overview
Figure 5(b): Pull Technique Overview
Audio Access
Visual Access
Push
N/A
WAP Alerts
Pull
VXML
WAP
SMS
Syncing
I-Mode
Table 3: Data Access Overview
4.2. Enabling Wireless Technologies
Standard and cost-effective wireless technology is the key to the success of wireless
advertising. Today, three major wireless technologies are being used worldwide. In
Japan, I-mode, based on C-HTML, is the most popular wireless technology. In Europe,
SMS is the popular protocol in the wireless community. In America, up to this time,
WAP is the popular choice and standard for wireless vendors and service businesses.
These technologies focused on special groups of users, and require particular mobile
devices and wireless environments.
11
•
WAP - Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) is an open, global specification that
empowers mobile users with wireless devices to easily access and interact with
information and services instantly. WAP technology utilizes the WAP gateway and
WML/HDML language to translate a mobile web request into a traditional
HTML/HTTP request that the web server understands and vice versa. WAP plays as a
bridge between wireless network and Internet. It can be used as an information
channel between wireless devices and the Internet.
•
SMS - Short Messaging Service (SMS) is a digital cellular network feature. It allows
users to send short text and numeric messages to and from digital cell phones using
cell phones and e-mail addresses based on public SMS messaging gateways over the
Internet. SMS is silent and discreet. This is become important when a silent
environment is required. Today, SMS applications include stock quotes, sports scores,
and news that can be delivered to mobile phones at regularly scheduled intervals.
Currently, there are approximately 16 billion SMS messages sent globally each
month. The majority of that traffic occurred in Western Europe and Asia. In North
America, most major cellular phone providers offer either one-way or two-way SMS
services to their subscribers. With one-way service, a user can receive messages;
while with two-way service, the user can receive and send messages with a cellular
phone.
•
I-mode - I-mode provides a predominant wireless Internet service that offers wireless
web access and e-mail services through mobile phones. It was first introduced in
Japan by NTT DoCoMo and was patented. As of November 2000, I-mode had an
estimate of 10 million users roughly represent 60% of world’s wireless Internet
users10. It uses C-HTML-based language and protocol to link wireless devices to
Internet. In Japan, I-mode users are not charged for the user connection time to a web
site or service, but they are charged according to the transmitted data volume. This is
different from typical western web services.
Besides the described technology, there are other technologies that are useful for wireless
advertising. The first is synching technology, which is a simple and popular method that
allows PDA users to store or cache the content on their PDA devices. Synching
12
technology does not require any wireless service because it only uses a computer system
and its Internet access to updated the stored information during synchronization time.
With this technology, wireless advertising service providers can offer downloadable
wireless ads, such as discount promotions, and coupons using a PDA device. Vindigo
currently allows its users to obtain up to date information on movies, dining and places to
visit for most major cities within the United State.
The other technology is Web clipping, which allows users to access the updated contents
dynamically through applications stored on mobile devices as well as wireless modems.
Web clipping supports PDA users to access the information content from web sites in a
tailored format on a palm platform. The displayed content on a PDA is a replica of the
content from a regular web site with fewer graphics. Unlike a regular web page, a tailored
page fits well in the limited PDA screen size.
5.
Issues and Challenges in Wireless Advertising
Since wireless advertising is still in its early stage, there is a wide range of issues and
challenges that need to be look upon before it is widely accepted and used. We categorize
these issues into two groups: technical and business issues. In this section, we discuss the
identified issues and challenges in wireless advertising.
5.1. Business Issues
There are many business issues relating to wireless advertising. Understanding these
issues helps business people in setting up successful wireless advertising businesses and
services. In addition, acknowledging these issues at the forefront becomes critical in
business planning and solution delivery. Learning the business problems, pioneers in this
industry may be able to keep a good position in the wireless advertising market. Here we
summarize some of basic business issues below.
•
Cost – Wireless customers, advertisers, and wireless marketing vendors, and
advertising service agencies are faced with the cost issue. For customers, the current
cost of wireless devices and wireless Internet subscription are considered high. IDC
analyst Kevin Burden said that current wireless access for handholds is “too
13
expensive for what you are getting back”. For advertising agents, the issue of cost is
apparent in the high financial requirements of industrial research and technology
placement.
•
Push vs. pull – As we known, wireless advertisements are delivered the mobile users
using the Push or Pull approaches. For example, if a consumer’s profile shows that he
(or she) enjoys watching movies, then current movie theater advertisements could be
pushed to the consumer’s mobile device. But, the push ad delivery could be intrusive
to this customer, and causes an unfavorable effect on the buying habits of the
consumer. If however, the consumer pulls the information of all the movie theater
within certain radius from where he (or she) is. Hence, the pull ads are less intrusive
to the customer than the push ads, but it does carry a higher functional cost, and
requires more complicated systematic solutions because it is simple to broadcast
wireless ads without tracking their receptions.
•
High business risk - Wireless marketing is still at the beginning of its growth cycle.
With a new market comes high uncertainty, which means high business risk and low
advertising revenue. This financial issue will create low investment research and
development that will make pioneer of this market to make the required progress to
success. Without research, company will be faced by a though choice between which
marketing model should be taken.
•
Ad reception - Another business challenge of wireless advertising is determining
whether or not a pushed ad was ever received. Questions that arise include, whether
the mobile devices are on and connected? And whether the pushed ad is delivered to
the customer side? On the upside, pushed wireless ads may be less expensive than
delivered pulled ads. Unlike traditional TV and radio ads that have become socially
accepted forms of intrusion, wireless ads delivered to personal mobile devices is still
thought as a form of intrusion.Privacy - When discussing consumer profiling, the
issue of privacy must be addressed. A law must be made to govern to what ad
agencies are allowed to request and share. The data, presented by The Yankee group9
during the WAA meeting, indicated that more than 50% of consumers have privacy
concerns over carrier’s use of their personal profile and location information.
Additionally, wireless communication is still a very non-secure form of
14
communications.Ad pitch - There are several methods that advertising agencies will
attempt to sell to consumers. One is ad pitch based on wants and needs; this method
has been there for ages. It has been there in paper coupon, and wired online
advertising. In wireless advertising, we can also do ad pitch based on consumer
location. For example, delivery and display a list of all French restaurants within a
certain range from the current location of a consumer.
5.2.
Technical Issues and Challenges
Except business issues, the pioneers in wireless advertising encountered a number of
technical problems. Here, they are summarized below.
•
Smaller Screen Size - Given the constraint of the size of mobile devices, the user
interface of wireless devices is quite limited, and it cannot display information-rich
content in a useful way. Wireless advertising companies must figure out how to create
effective advertisements in small screen size. Another problem is the inconsistent
screen sizes among different types of mobile devices. For example, the screen size of
mobile phone is much smaller than the size of PDA screens. Advertising agents are
confronted with this dilemma when they generate and deliver wireless ads. This
problem cannot be solved easily until some standards are enforced on mobile device
manufactures, and defined in the wireless advertising community.
•
Inconsistent Formatting - When deciding upon the presentation formats of wireless
advertisements, vendors must consider what kinds of formats are easily accepted on
the receiving end. For example, special fonts, colors, picture formats might not be
displayable on some wireless devices.
•
Slow Download Speeds - As what faced by the wired Internet several years ago,
wireless Internet is facing the slow download speed due to the limitation of current
wireless backbone. This issue not only affects the users' acceptance of wireless ads,
but also reduces advertising performance because users might cancel, delete, or
ignore a wireless access page due to it’s slow download of wireless ads. Several
technologies, such as 2.5G and 3G, are trying to address this issue, but unfortunately
until today these technologies are not available yet. Some analysts believe that they
will become available as early as 2003.
15
•
Broad Spectrum of Technologies - Powerful players, such as Microsoft, Nokia, and
Phone.com are lining up to push wireless technologies and solutions in different
directions. As a result, wireless advertising agents are confronted with the dilemma
on deciding upon what technology to use. The industry is just now trying to develop
the means for pushing ads to mobile devices, and to create organizations to regulate
and standardize the industry.
•
Standardization - Without standardization the industry will become too convoluted
and cutthroat to sustain itself. For time being, wireless advertising is lack of welldefined standards and regulations of advertising format, content, payment, and
transmission protocol. Without well-defined standards and regulations, it is very
difficult for major players, such as wireless advertising businesses, service providers,
and solutions vendors, to be successful.
6.
Major Players in Wireless Advertising
As shown in Table 5, there are a number of businesses and vendors focusing on the
wireless advertising market. In this section, we introduce several important major players
in wireless advertising. They are Vindigo, Skygo, Avantgo and Avesair.
Vendor
Avantgo
Vindigo
Business Type
Wireless Advertising Portal
Wireless Advertising Portal
URL
http://www.avantgo.com
http://www.vindigo.com
I3Mobile
Wireless Advertising Portal
http://www.i3mobile.com
Infiniq
SkyGo
Wireless Advertising Portal
Marketing Solution Provider
http://www.infiniq.com
http://www.skygo.com
Avesair
Marketing Solution Provider
http://www.avesair.com
Advertising.com
Marketing Solution Provider
Doubleclick
Marketing Solution Provider
http://www.advertising.co
m
http://www.doubleclick.co
m/us
Profilium
Marketing Solution Provider
http://www.profilium.com
Description
Among the largest mobile advertising portals.
Enables companies to deliver compelling,
comprehensive location-based information and
services to consumers, corporate customers, and
employees.
Pronto integrates the power of leading-edge
voice recognition technology and the concierge
service of a fine hotel, and turns any mobile
phone into a mobile personal assistant.
Do mobile surveys using handheld devices.
SkyGo provides everything for marketers;
advertising agencies and wireless carriers need
to make marketing effective on mobile devices.
Avesair is the premier provider of carrier-class
mobile application software enabling mobile
operators and wireless networks to deliver a
full- range of decision-based services to
subscribers.
On-line
promotions
including
wireless
advertising
DoubleClick is in the business of making your
marketing work better by providing a broad
range of technology, media, direct marketing,
email, and research solutions.
Develop wireless infrastructure solutions for a
range of location-based services that enhance
the mobile lifestyle and generate substantial new
non-telecom revenues for wireless carriers.
16
Windwire Inc.
Marketing Solution Provider
http://www.windwire.com
GlobalDining
Interactive Mobile Provider
Sonata.com
Interactive Mobile Provider
http://wap.globaldining.co
m
http://www.sonata.com
Upoc
Mobile Market Service
http://www.upoc.com
Wireless Opinion
Wireless Market Research
http://www.wirelessopinio
n.com
Mobile Advertiser Services bringing agencies
and advertisers together
Offers location-specific mobile restaurant
directory and reservation network.
Provides interactive mobile solutions that
connect corporations and customer to the
relevant data, content and advertising over voice
or any web enabled device.
A free service that enables you to exchange text
and voice messages with your friends and
receive up-to-the-minute info -- all on your
mobile phone or text pager.
Allows opinion research by wireless and
handheld devices.
Table 5. A List of Major Players in Wireless Marketing and Advertising
Vindigo
According to http://www.vindigo.com, Vindigo is focused on creating the industry's
leading technology platform for delivering location-based information and services widely considered to be the 'killer apps' of the mobile sector. Vindigo uses the Diversified
Revenue Model. Its objective is to subsidize quality contents and subscriber fees to
increase content quality and create a compelling offering that draws and retains
subscribers. Vindigo is the only mobile content and marketing platform available today
that has a track record of successful deploying robust location-based services with a
working advertising model for handheld devices. According to the global consultancy
Ovum, location based services will deliver $19.5 billion of revenue by 2006. Vindigo is
at the forefront of this industry. Vindigo's applications for Palm OS® and Pocket PC®
computers and for BREW® and WAP phones now have over half a million registered
users. Optimized for both wireless and mobile (i.e. portable but not 'connected') handheld
devices, Vindigo can help you to find out where to go and what to do in 20 major cities.
Vindigo’s technology has been carefully designed to offer sophisticated functionality
along with an intuitive and pleasing user-interface. Vindigo proprietary client application
allows users to easily identify their locations within seconds. This method has the added
benefit of allowing users to search information based on where they will be - in addition
to their current location - and it avoids the most serious privacy concerns because users
give the location information. Since many users want to access their favorite features and
services even when they're not connected, current wireless devices are increasingly
equipped with caching and built-in memory. The Vindigo client software for PDAs, for
example, contains a complete mapping database, navigation algorithms, and an intelligent
17
ad server. Future successful mobile applications need to offer useful functionality offline,
understand how users have interacted with the application offline, and reconcile this
information immediately once users regain their connectivity. Vindigo's next-generation
client-server architecture has the attempt to meet this challenge by functioning well in
both real-time wireless and intermittently synchronized environments.
SkyGo
According to http://www.skygo.com, SkyGo is the wireless marketing pioneer, enabling
carriers, publishers and advertisers to enhance consumer relationships and generate new
revenue through wireless marketing and m-commerce. Skygo uses the Media-Dependent,
outsourced media sales, revenue model. Its objective is to subsidize content and
subscriber fees to grow and retains the subscriber base, while generating significant
revenue. SkyGo was founded to cultivate rewarding relationships between marketers and
mobile consumers via the wireless Internet. To shape the future of wireless marketing,
SkyGo provides technology, media and consulting to help companies effectively
communicate with mobile consumers. Today, SkyGo offers the technology platform and
services to deliver targeted marketing to mobile devices. This opens a new revenue
channel for advertisers to deliver the subsidized mobile content and services to
consumers in an interactive manner.
SkyGo makes marketing more effective on mobile devices by providing a broad range of
technology solutions and services. The SkyGo Mobile Advertising Platform™(SkyGo
MAP™) is a family of mobile marketing tools to help marketers and wireless carriers
cultivate rewarding relationships with mobile consumers while deepening brand
awareness, generating response and fostering customer loyalty. The SkyGo Mobile
Advertising Platform™ provides defines useful standards for wireless marketing.
AvantGo
AvantGo, Inc. (http://www.avantgo.com) was founded in 1996 to address the growing
need of companies of all sizes to mobilize their workforce. AvantGo’s business model
complies with the Media-dependent, in-house media sales revenue model. Its objective is
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to expand the carrier's business function to include media sales, controlling and drawing
revenue from the wireless Internet property. Its solutions is developed based on its
Dynamic Mobility Model™ designed to provide individuals with the most compelling
mobile user experience. This model supports the transitions between on-line and off-line
use sync, surf and push regardless of the challenges presented by multiple device
operating systems, wireless services and data access modes, while leveraging existing
open standards. The objective of AvantGo’s solutions is to automate business processes
and improve the exchange of information between companies and their employees and
customers, resulting in improved business efficiencies and more effective customer
interactions.
AvantGo end-to-end mobile solutions enable mobile device users to operate with web
content on their mobile devices in an interactive manner while in an off-line mode.
AvantGo’s solution includes a new mobile software platform for creating and deploying
enterprise applications, supporting customer relationship management (CRM), supply
chain management (SCM), and personal information management (PIM) using mobile
accesses. The core technology of AvantGo has patented for the technology used in
synchronizing information between a handheld device and a central computer. The
technology has a unique ability to support both the wireless and off-line synchronization
of content and applications to mobile devices, including those based on the Pocket PC,
Palm OS and RIM BlackBerry Wireless Handheld operating systems.
Similar to Vindigo, AvantGo is also a portal that provides up-to-date information upon hot
syncing with its website on the Palm PDA (Personal Digital Assistant). The difference between
Vindigo and AvantGo is simply a matter of scale. While AvantGo concentrates on generalities,
Vindigo focuses on specifics. AvantGo is best for newspaper/magazine sources such as CNN,
while Vindigo is a guidebook for specific places such as Frontline. Avantgo is great for
commutes on public transportation or waiting for someone to finish shopping. Vindigo is great
for doing something after the shopping trip.
Avesair
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Avesair, Inc. (http://www.avesair.com), is one of leading provides for mobile marketing
and commerce. Its products enable operators, marketers and content providers to deliver
and magnetize a range of targeting and decision-based services based on subscriber
preferences and contextual targeting. The business model of Avesair complies with the
Media-dependent, in-house media sales revenue model. In the past years, Avesair has
developed relationships with many of the industry's leading companies, including Nokia,
12snap, Enpocket, Profilium, and SignalSoft. Recently, Avesair acquired WindWire, one
of the industry's foremost suppliers of wireless media services, enhancing the company's
ability to service both North American and international customers. This adds the
WindWire's customers into its customer list, including AT&T Wireless, Go2Systems,
Mercedes-Benz, Volvo and Boston.com. In addition, Avesair holds a global board
member seat on the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA).
Avesair MATCH (Messaging And Targeting for Carriers and Handsets) is the premier
mobile marketing and commerce platform that enables mobile operators and distribution
channels to deliver and magnetize a full range of targeting and decision-based services.
MATCH brings together operators and marketers, and enables them to leverage the
unique aspects and network resources of the mobile market to effectively target and
deliver personalized customer programs. MATCH's platform is built around a core
decision engine that enables mobile operators and distribution channels to target,
schedule, deliver, track and report on highly targeted messages and promotions of any
media type to mobile devices. According to Avesair’s posting information, the platform
has an open, scalable, and modular architecture integrating directly with the operator's
infrastructure. It obtains demographic and geographic data from subscriber databases,
such as declared and observed interests, and mined information from billing, such as call
history, and location. MATCH utilizes this data to target and deliver relevant messages
provided by a marketer, independently, or in content provided by a publisher.
7. Survey of Wireless Advertising
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According to the market research, the largest user groups of wireless devices are business
people, young adults and teenagers. To find out the user interest and acceptance of
wireless advertising, we conduct a survey on wireless advertising on the campus of San
Jose State University. A formal survey sheet is handout to students to collect their
responses to our pre-defined questions regarding to wireless advertising.
60
(G e n d e r)
43
50
( P r o fe s s i o n )
54
40
40
27
30
20
14
10
10
12
1
ke
tin
g
M
ar
er
in
g
En
gi
ne
t
Fe
m
al
St
ud
en
e
al
e
M
31
-4
0
<=
21
-3
0
0
20
No. of participants
P a r t ic ip a n t P r o f ile s
(A g e G ro u p )
Figure 6. The Distribution of The Participants
We have handout 70 survey sheets, and collected 67 validated survey results. Figure 6
shows the profile and distribution of the participants. Of the 67 participants, only 11 do
not own any wireless device. Most of the participants own a cell phone. Others have
either a Palm or PocketPC.
A d v e r tis in g
M o d e
3 2 %
P u ll A d ve rt is in g
P u s h
A d ve rt is in g
6 8 %
Figure 7. The User Preference of Advertising Mode for Delivery
Figure 7 displays the mobile user’s preference on two different wireless advertising
delivery mechanisms. More than 68% of participants indicate that they are in favor of
Pull Advertising than Push Advertising. This suggests most mobile users may like to
retrieve mobile ads using the Pull Advertising mechanism instead of receiving mobile ads
through the Push Advertising mechanism.
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P r e f e r r e d A d v e r t is e m e n t
S a le s
1 5 %
2 5 %
a n d P ro m o t io n
W ire le s s
1 3 %
C o u p o n s
P r o d u c t In fo
D in in g lo c a t io n
O th e r
2 0 %
2 7 %
Figure 8. The User Preference of Different Types of Advertisements
Figure 8 shows mobile users’ preference on different types of wireless advertisements.
27% of participants love to receive wireless coupons, 25% choose sales and promotion,
and 20% like to see product information. As far as the presentation of mobile ads, 85% of
participants like colored mobile advertisements, 84% of them want to see the ads
presented in both text and graphic formats.
A d v e r t is in g P a y e r
A d v e r tis in g D e liv e r y M e t h o d
10%
24%
51%
39%
4%
72%
S u s c rip tio n
R e g is tra tio n
O th e r
Figure 9. Advertising Delivery Methods
A d v e r t is e r
P u b lis h e r
V endor
Figure 10. User’s View on Ad Payment
51% of participants prefer to receive wireless advertising through subscription
mechanism, and 39% choose to receive ads through registration. 72% participants like to
see free advertisements paid by advertisers. 24% of them believe wireless service
providers should pay their shares on wireless advertising. Only 4 percent of them think
wireless advertising publishers must cover the cost of advertising.
Based on the other collected survey data, we found that that 51% of participants would
like to purchase products through wireless advertisements, and 57% of them prefer to
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receive location-based wireless advertisements, and 43% like to see mobile-based
advertisements.
8. Conclusion
It will be several years before wireless advertising is refined, standardized, and wholly
accepted by both the advertisers and consumers. During this time challenges that are yet
unseen will present themselves to the pioneers of this new media communication form.
As discussed on the technical issue one of the biggest limitations in wireless advertising
is slow data transfer rates. The 3G technology currently is viewed as the best candidate to
overcome this problem. Once this transfer rates is overcome several creative technology
such as wireless streaming, Enhanced message service (EMS), and multi media message
service (MMS) can be deployed to create a more attractive advertisement. The
improvement of the transfer rates combine with the platform improvement such as better
pixel on mobile devices and standardization of protocols, software, and formats, along
with regulated ethical considerations for consumer privacy will determine the success of
wireless advertising in the future.
For wireless advertising to be successfully accepted by business and consumers, the
Wireless Industry needs to resolve its many technical and business issues that are
plaguing the industry. There are two most important technical issues that the wireless
industry needs to resolve now. The first is to establish well-defined and acceptable
standards for wireless advertising. This includes the presentation style, screen size,
communication protocol, payment, privacy rules, delivery techniques, and performance
measurement. The other issue is the wireless backbone as well as advertising &
marketing systems. A standardized wireless protocol like WAP will make it easier and
cheaper for business to establish a wireless presence. A bigger standardize backbone will
improve customer satisfaction and improve the advertising content that is sent to a
customer like video streaming. Customer wouldn’t need to wait when downloading their
email and web content because of bulky advertising being sent over a small backbone.
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The major business issues that the wireless Industry needs to resolve is how to deliver
wireless advertising to the customer. Business experiences with Internet advertising
cannot be transferred to wireless advertising because of mobile device technology
limitations and people’s personal relationship to their device.
The Industry must
determine how to give customers the choice of being able to receive or not receive
advertisements, the control to easily bypass advertising contents, the ability to customize
or filter the type of advertising that they receive, and the feeling that the advertising is
beneficial to them. If the wireless industry can work to resolve these issues, wireless
advertising can become a very successful source of revenue for the industry.
9. References
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[22] Skygo, Inc. (September 2001) Ideas & Strategies for Implementing Mobile
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