SLA Mobile, Volubill Make Mobile Ad Push

Mobile operators and their platform partners will likely only get one shot at introducing the world to mobile advertising. If they get it right, the sky is the limit. If they get it wrong, the entire industry will have to re-think its business models for the future.

Companies such as SLA Mobile and Volubill believe the market could accelerate with a few successful deployments. The companies have deployed their joint solution with an Indonesian operator 25 million subscribers strong and they suspect it will make for a good referendum on the business model that helps the operator bring advanced services to an emerging market.

“It’s a fantastic opportunity for operators in all markets because they can either use the advertising to fund or reduce the [price] consumers pay, as in the Eastern markets, or make more money from the advertising as they do in Western markets,” said Philip Stanfield, commercial director at SLA Mobile.

SLA Mobile has developed an interactive, interstitial advertising campaign manager for mobile and 3G data card users. It integrates with wireless operators’ networks and subscriber infrastructures to track users’ browsing behaviors and coordinates targeted advertising deliveries between Web page loads. It follows that up with reporting on specific campaign penetration.

For its efforts and its success so far, SLA Mobile became the first Northern Ireland company to be named to Deloitte’s Fast 50 and the U.K.’s top 10 fastest growing technology companies.

For the Indonesian operator deployment, SLA Mobile is working with policy and charging provider, Volubill, another U.K.-based company. Volubill’s mission in life is to help operators charge accurately for all data services and allow charging based on value. It also provides them the ability to know, control and police what users are doing on mobile networks through real-time monitoring, control and charging software.

It is this knowledge it delivers to SLA Mobile to make decisions about what ads to deliver to which users.

“We are enablers of advertising solutions as much as anything, so we monitor subscriber usage and identify location data and the user. And it’s not just an IP address we identify, but a name, a personality and a profile,” said Dave Fielding, product manager for Volubill.

Volubill can build a surfing profile based on the categorization of URLs that mobile data users visit. “We can tell what kinds of things they are interested in, but we also provide operators with the ability to specify their own categories [on interest],” Fielding said.

To read the full, in-depth article at our sister publication, Billing & OSS World, click here or on the source link below.

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