Mobile Advertising in Russia

Dear guests, in this post I'd like to bring Mobile Ads in Russia to light.

Mobile Advertising is not an extremly new idea in telecom world. Significant experience is summarized. There are success stories and big failures. One of the most dedicated to this theme resources is Telco 2.0 initiative with big amount of related articles in their blog. From economic point of view it is very attractive to monetize MNOs Subscriber base which is often very big. 50 mlns Subscribers is more than many TV channels have. This service represents new stream of revenue from media agencies, new market free of competitors now but very attentively looked for.

Foreign experience
Mobile Advertising is a special VAS for insertion of advertisement into channels owned by MNO: SMS/MMS/GPRS,EDGE,3G and so on. The most common ways of advertising are:

• SMS/MMS broadcasted messages with advertisements inside.
• SMS/MMS ad injection in P2P messages.
• WAP/WEB banners insertion - ad injection during Internet surfing.

Response ratio is significantly higher in telecom rather than in standard web advertisements mainly due to very effective targeting not only based on Subscriber profile but on his behaviour too.

The most common parameters of targeting are:

• Demographic
• Behaviour
• Context
• Geographic

List of mobile ad deployments.

• Blyk UK, Orange UK based MVNO with ad sponsored services. 2007. Push SMS, Push MMS, SMS Intercept. Airwide (First Hope). 6 incoming messages per day give 43 minutes of calling and 217 SMS per month.
• Airtel India, Mobile Ad. 2007. Airtel Live!, Push-SMS. Openwave.
• Virgin Mobile USA. Mobile ad campaign SugarMama. 2006. Push SMS, WEB banners.
• China Mobile, Mobile Ad. 2008. WAP banners, Ad insertion into RingBackTone, Weather Forecast ad insertion, Missed Call ad insertion, MMS magazine.
• Wind Greece, Mobile Ad. 2007. Idle screen advertising. Velti.
• Vodafone Italy, Spain, Greece, Czech Republic. Mobile Ad. 2008 Vodafone Live! Banners, P2P SMS Intercept, idle-screen. Amobee.
• TIM Italy, Mobile Ad. 2007. P2P SMS, P2P MMS Intercept, WAP-banners. Mobixell.

Mobile Advertising still represent small amount of income. Operators are trying to find the most effective ways of interaction with Subscribers. Gartner supposes 1% of income of MNOs are related to Mobile Advertising and in 2012 this share should grow up to 2%-7%.

The current moment is very good for mobile advertising because all media agencies and advertisers are looking for new ways of advertising. Mobile advertising is very effective and very cheap same time. World experience tells that it is very significant to give relevant bonuses to Subscribers and perform opt in before feeding them with advertising.

Russian situation
In Russia almost all MNOs are thinking of Mobile Advertising. Megafon has many ad sites and launched several campaigns already. They perform this project on HQ level. Not sure whether it will lead to centralized carrier grade platform deployment but they are evaluating such possibilities. Some projections from Megafon Commercial Director Larisa Tkachuk could be found here.

Beeline is going to start a tender for this project for carrier grade ad platform. They already have good experience in Mobile Advertising (USSD tails in balance reports and several more). I think they will launch something in the end of this year, not sooner. Main problem is absence of even small amount of money in Vimpelcom. But Mobile Advertising is one of projects which could be simply started on revenue sharing basis (at least in the beginning).

MTS launched several ad campaigns too and preparing requirements to production platform. I heard that they are going to start this project in several months. At the moment they have MMS magazine and several more projects. You may find more detailed information here. It is a good time to offer a trial to them, I think.

So, mainstream of Mobile Advertising in Russia is SMS/MMS broadcasts and intercepts, WAP/WEB banners insertion in third party portals. At the end of last year MNOs performed attempt to align forces in this area but nothing serious appeared. Currently problem is not in deploying new system but in discovering huge potential of advertisements - this is extremly new channels and advertisers afraid of investing in a new channel while MNOs afraid of loosing loyalty of its Subscribers. The story just begins. Have a good time watching it and may be participating ;-)

Thanks,
Denis.