The Operator’s Role: The Key to Success
Mobile Advertising: The Operator's Key Role in an Emerging Value-Chain: The new emerging advertising ecosystem is drawing many players to the field. However, the operator can capture a key position in the mobile advertising value chain by leveraging assets that cannot be replicated by any other player:
Subscriber Knowledge: The mobile operator, extracting information from the network, knows exactly who the end user is, her location, behavior and browsing patterns (behavioral targeting), and more. This puts the operator in a unique position to profile its subscribers and use this valuable information for better targeting, both for the advertiser (better returns) and for the end user (meaningful, relevant ads vs. spam).
Subscriber Relationship: The operator has a customer care and billing relationship with the end user. This enables the operator to bundle services to tighten advertising monetization and offer easy self-care management of advertising services such as opt-in/opt-out.
Multiple Channels: Full control over the various mobile communication channels enables the operator to offer:
- A unique, broad and rich inventory for advertisers (P2P SMS, A2P SMS, interstitial ads, banners and more)
- The best user experience possible including opt-in and opt-out alternatives to respect privacy
- The ability to recommend the best channel to reach an individual user
- The ability to reach all users through various channels: from voice advertising on voice calls to multimedia advertising on IPTV
Value to Subscribers: The operator can offer subscribers incentives for agreeing to receive advertising, increasing attractiveness of the medium and user responsiveness. With the right profiling, the end user receives meaningful ads (i.e., not spam) in a controlled environment (e.g., up to four ads a day).