Published:
01-Jul-08
Telefonica is developing a single mobile advertising structure for all its international operations. The operator inked an agreement with mobile ad specialist Amobee to provide advertisers and agencies a single point of contact for all of Telefonica's mobile properties. Amobee offers an ad server platform that allow for contextual and behavioural targeting on various types of advertising including WAP banners, games, video, music, SMS or MMS messaging, ringtones and content streaming. Amobee's solutions are installed inside the operator's technology infrastructure. First deployments will occur this year in the UK, Spain, Mexico and Columbia, with the remainder of Telefonica's properties launching in 2009. Telefonica and Vodafone each bought a 5% stake in Amobee in November 2007.
Our take...
Telefonica claims over 160 million mobile subscriptions worldwide. This critical mass can be particularly useful for big, international advertisers wanting to roll out an international campaign. However, operator collaboration at the territorial level is still required to provide a standardised set of tools for advertisers to reach a given market independently of the operator. Telefonica's broad commitment to Amobee's services also underlines the importance of controlling the information since, with Amobee, all the data remains in the hands of the operator. Finally, it will be interesting to see how Vodafone, an equally important shareholder at Amobee, will react to the deal. Should Vodafone ink a deal with Amobee as well, a major hurdle for cross-operator ad management might be overcome, leading to more credibility for mobile as an advertising channel.
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