Vodafone launches division to drive mobile advertising Sonja Koremans
Six months after launching live TV channels, Vodafone has set up a new division to push mobile phones as a marketing platform to the advertising industry.
The news comes days after the launch of rival Telstra’s BigPond TV service and highlights the growing shift of content to handsets and the advertising opportunities that the world’s most intimate and traceable medium presents.
Vodafone’s mobile television marketing division will be run by the company’s former general manager of new business David Green.
He said mobile advertising was a “very high profile venture” for the group.
“We have appointed a senior management team to drive the unit and their strategy is to clearly enable a new industry,” Green said.
The company was working with suppliers such as the mobile advertising sales company Media Me and advertising technology partner Big Mobile, he said.
Vodafone would work with more companies over the next few months and move beyond banners with micro sites to other forms of advertising such as sponsored content and voice services and is about to sign the first sponsor to its free music television service, Street TV.
Green said Vodafone began testing the advertiser-based model in May on the interactive program backed by Coke, LG, Thrifty and Universal Pictures.
“Street TV demonstrates how mobile advertising on Vodafone allows brands to directly and accurately target, ultra sociable and highly mobile individuals who are increasingly less likely to respond to traditional one-size fits all media strategies,” Green said.
“Whereas these TV properties alone are compelling viewing, the characteristics and format of mobile allows mobile TV a greater opportunity for the advertiser.”
He declined to comment on who the program’s first sponsor would be.
The show is advertiser funded and is free to the viewer.
