Advertising on idle mobile phone screens
January 21, 2008 – 11:57 am
I was cleaning out my mailbox and stumbled upon an article I had filed to read later: “Mobile Posse Raises $10 Million Second Round For Idle Screen Ads“. The article was on MocoNews, a mobile content news site.
The company focuses on delivering ads and content to a user’s phone when it is idle, claiming this model achieves high user response and increased ARPU for carriers. The company recently announced a full rollout with Ohio-based operator Revol, and plans to use the latest funding to implement its service with more carriers. Revol has said it will offer a handset discount for users that opt in to the system.
From the press release:
After a trial involving 5,000 users, regional wireless carrier Revol has decided to go forward with a full launch of a mobile advertising service that the company said has achieved engagement rates of close to 50%.
The company will begin marketing the service, Revol Perks, to its customers tomorrow. The Revol Perks service makes use of idle-screen advertising, in which ads are served up on the phone’s idle screen when the device is not in use. However, ads aren’t the only content—weather information, sports scores or information on local events also are provided.
Customers can click on an ad when it appears, or can access them later from a list of recent offers. Revol said the ads don’t hinder the operations of the phone.
During the trial, customers were offered a one-time $10 discount on their wireless bills as an incentive to sign up. Now, however, Revol will offer $20 to $60 discounts on the cost of a phone as an incentive.
Revol’s Perk service can segment ads based on customers’ billing zip code, but not their current location. Jackson said Mobile Posse has the ability to do some location-based services—such as allowing users to search for nearby locations of a restaurant for which they received a coupon—but that such a service is not part of its deal with Revol.
Crossland said Mobile Posse’s platform only loads ads while the carrier’s CDMA2000 1x data network is idle, and that the service did not require the installation of any additional network resources.
There is basic information on the Revol program on their website. But, what was missing was any mention of the offer that was described in the press release: one time discounts to sign up for the program. Instead, the site pushed the features of free weather and other information, including CD/DVD releases and the ability to save.
Of course, battery life was the first thing to come to mind. If it sucks the life out of the device since there would be an app running all of the time, as well as any drain on frequent updates and more use of the display, then there would be a problem.
I couldn’t tell from the website:
1) whether or not the external screen, as in the case of flip phones like the Motorola Razor, would also display the ad.
2) if there would be notification when a new item was received. For instance, the screen lights up to display the new content. And if there was a notification, if the user could disable notification.
3) if there was a way to schedule updates (like once a day) vs. hourly or some other frequency driven by the carrier.
Anyone out there have Revol as their carrier?
Anyone use advertising sponsored content on their mobile? I use services such as TextMarks (sponsored SMS) and have been happy with the service. In that case, it is just a sponsor message at the end of the text messages sent out.
There are a few more details I’d like to find out before saying this is a bad idea. But, based on the sketchy information about the program on the website, I’m leaning towards bad idea.
Transparency is key: this is the content you are getting for free and this is how your personal information will be used to advertise specific products to you.
If they upgrade the service and include GPS tracking, as the press release states, the privacy flag will go up pretty quickly. This could get as bad a bluespamming if they aren’t careful.
Also, if they don’t manage the number of special offers per day or if the value to the subscriber goes down, the unsubscribe rate will escalate pretty quickly.
This gets back to the idea why mobile carriers put up such a fight for anyone to run any mobile marketing programs on their network: users won’t just unsubscribe from the related service, they will change mobile carriers all together.
Revol must be making a pretty penny off the program in order for them to preload the application on new devices and make it available as a free download for existing subscribers, as well as promote it from their homepage.
Technorati Tags: mobile, advertising, idle, screen, Mobile Posse, Revol, wireless, rewards
