In brief:

After months of researching my chapter contribution to an upcoming book on marketing to Digital Natives, it’s increasingly clear that mobile advertising companies – and their view of “consumers” needs — must evolve.

Mobile is a fiercely personal device and people – particularly empowered Digital Natives – want content and advertising on their terms. (I purposely mix content and advertising here because they are becoming one and the same thing.)

Another shift in the marketplace: our requirement to have a say in the content/advertising we are willing to receive. This came through loud and clear in the research/interviews I conducted for Mobile Advertising Research U.K. 2009 project, a research project endorsed by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and the Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) to expertly document the state of the mobile advertising industry in the U.K.

Among the findings (based on 1,000+ consumer online responses and 20+ interviews with operators, enablers, agencies, and brands): only 32 percent of the 1,000+ consumers surveyed had a positive attitude toward receiving advertising messages on their mobile phone. However, that number rose to 64 percent, provided people were properly “incentivized,” and 70 percent if they were incentivized and “in control” of their mobile advertising experience.

Connect the dots, as an increasing number of mobile advertising companies and ecosystem companies have begun to do, and it’s clear that the capability to provide permission-based mobile advertising (with an easy opt-in/opt-out option) could become table stakes.

MOBILE PIONEERS

Companies such as BuzzCity’s myGamma and gofresh’s itsmy.com, mobile social networks turned mobile social ad networks, need little convincing. They made the strategic decision in 2007-08 to allow their verified members to choose the channel of advertising they would accept. Of course, this wasn’t just out of respect for the individual member. Opt-in also allows advertisers to better target their key demographic (example: sports enthusiasts with sports ads) and ensure members who receive a marketing message actually listen.

In my own mobile advertising road test/white paper (PDF) on behalf road test on behalf of Bango, a provider of mobile analytics solutions and MSG supporter, showed that this was indeed a plus for my own campaigns. In fact, I gave BuzzCity the highest marks overall because its opt-in allowed me to deliver effective mobile advertising. (Happy coincidence — I have an interview with BuzzCity CEO KF Lai next week and gofresh’s Vince Staybl has also just reached out to me from his NY trip to offer me a pre-briefing on some significant news, so watch this space.)

JUMPTAP CONSUMER INTELLIGENCE

Jumptap, a provider of mobile advertising solutions that also operates a major mobile ad network, aims to tackle these shortcomings. The company announced this week that is will implement a new feature in mid-year (translated: by end-June) that “enables mobile consumers to manage their own profiles for a more personalized brand experience.”

The focus is on permission-based advertising and on putting the consumer (individual) at the center of their advertising experience. In a nutshell, the feature will enable visitors to participating websites in Jumptap’s ad network to chose the mobile advertising content that interest them – and the choice to opt-out of the process altogether. (Specifically, all publishers in the network will be able to participate. Participating publishers will need to include a link to Jumptap’s profile manager.)

What’s the user experience?

People can choose from a variety of some 29 advertising content categories, including automotive, careers, chat & email, entertainment, finance, fitness, food & drink and games, as the slide below illustrates.

What’s at work (and how) in the background? And how does Jumptap avoid potentially presenting the same people with the same ads?

JumpTap operates a premium mobile advertising network with a penetration of approx. 50 million unique visits a month in the U.S. alone.

Predictably, Jumptap’s IP, which includes patented technology, mobile search algorithms and proprietary know-how around targeting and relevancy (which I have analyzed in this post), plays a huge role in delivering people mobile advertising they will likely find relevant and useful. The company counts unique visitors based on “distinct IDs we get from carriers, cookies, request headers and device IDs.” This can vary across network. “In instances where we don’t have a unique ID, we estimate the number of unique visitors based on page views/unique user that we see elsewhere in the network.”

INTERVIEW WITH PARAN JOHAR

Armed with this background I caught up with Jumptap CMO to learn still more about the nuts & bolts of this ambitious solution and what is says about the company’s wider mobile advertising strategy.

Q: Jumptap is one of a growing group of companies sharply focused on putting the consumer at the center of the mobile advertising ecosystem? Why is this important and what do you offer people?

A: What we’re now seeing is a new wave of mobile advertising right, with the focus on customer intelligence and really putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem. Many companies got lost and focused on other constituents: operators, publishers and advertisers. They are all important people, but we are putting the customer at the forefront of the mobile advertising ecosystem, and the way we’re doing that is allowing them to manage their own profiles in a really simple format. This also drives the relevancy of ads.

The concept of is revolutionary but because everyone else has been trying to satisfy other constituents. By driving customer intelligence you’re going to see a higher engagement rate. If you see a higher engagement rate, you’re going to see advertisers who are getting better ROI. If they’re getting a better ROI, you’re going to be able to charge them more. If you can charge them more, by default, you get a better publishing yield so you’re really taking care of all these other constituents by focusing on your core audience, which is the customer, and driving the customer intelligence.

Q: Other companies have a similar approach. And just last week Alcatel-Lucent broke on the scene with a mobile advertising solution that is the subject of a larger report I am currently writing. In it I argue that permission-based advertising is a good fit with messaging because you build a conversation that – in turn – can improve the customer data. But your focus is display….

A: Yes, it’s only about display and it’s not about behavioural targeting. What this is about is empowering consumers to choose their category of interest. That’s one component of the data that will drive the delivery of relevant advertising. It goes into the user profile. And then there might be a component related to context, a component related to carrier data, a component related to publishers’ data – or a keyword from a search. All these are components and the ultimate goal is to drive consumer relevancy through this focus on consumer intelligence– and the better we can understand our mobile ad network, the better we can serve relevant ads to consumers.

Throughout this process three things are critical. One is full-transparency. Two is respecting their privacy and making sure all this data is completely anonymous. And third is preference. We’re allowing them to tell advertisers ‘these are my categories of preference.’

Q: What’s the roll out and what are plans beyond the iPhone?

A: That’s a great question. We’re rolling this out at the end of Q2, and you’re going to get a link to a Beta site where you can go in on your iPhone – or any device – and just scroll through and change categories of interest to suit you. It’s incredibly simple. The idea was to keep it as simple as possible.

Q: It it’s for all handsets from the get-go?

A: It is for all handsets and all advertisers. It’s on iPhone and on mobile Internet, so it’s going to be limited at first. But, as it rolls out, it’s going to obviously develop [momentum]. The goal is ultimately to drive more relevant advertising to everyone on all handsets.

Q: I mentioned that other companies have placed some form of permission-based advertising at the core of what they do. Take BuzzCity. BuzzCity even surveys its members and shares this anonymized information with advertisers to help them target their audience. From an initial look at Jumptap is different because it offers the data to third-party publishers. This would perhaps be the differentiating factor. At the other end of the spectrum there is Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism solution, [a solution that harnesses permission-based advertising – specifically, text messaging – to improve targeting.] So, there are other flavors out there…

A: No one else is doing this the way we are. It is absolutely one of our key differentiators. We also have 80 percent of the carrier business in the U.S. AT&T works with two sales partners, right? One is Jumptap and the other is Yahoo. Needless to say, we’re in good company.

We also have the broadest IP portfolio of any mobile ad network. And we have our pay-per-lick performance marketplace that allows users to bid at a keyword level, category, handset or carrier. We’re the only ones who have all of that.

You bring up the mobile social networks such as BuzzCity. I think it’s a little bit different within a social media construct. That is one component that can be added to the user profile, certainly. But remember we are not taking a siloed approach. It’s not just contextual, not just consumer category information, not just behavioural, not just carrier information. It is all of these components aggregated across multiple forms of data to drive relevancy. That’s our consumer intelligence.

Q: Another part of this might be that you are a neutral network. You belong to a group of ad networks – including the likes of Millennial Media and inMobi – that is not in the Google or Apple camp…

A: I think that’s a great way to break out the marketplace now and there are three groups, so to speak. There’s a lot coming from Apple that I agree with — and there’s a lot that I don’t. On the one hand, Steve Jobs came out publicly and said that mobile advertising sucks and that he has this goal of driving relevancy right to his network. That’s something we applaud. It’s very much in line with our strategy of customer intelligence, so that I think is dead-on.

The piece I don’t think is dead-on is his approach. He’s almost creating a walled garden for himself, almost an AOL of the mobile Internet. Advertisers really don’t care where their ad runs. They care about reaching their audience, not the device. iPhone happens to be the sexy thing right now, but Android will be the next sexy thing – and it [Android] is already is starting to catch a lot of that limelight.

Imagine you were a TV buyer and you had to buy a 30 second TV spot and you had to be cognisant of whether your audience is watching television on a Samsung, Sony or Pioneer TV set. And then you had to worry about whether they were watching it over cable, satellite or a dish network. And then you had to customize your creative accordingly. And so on. It doesn’t make for an efficient marketplace and that’s where I think Apple is missing the boat a little bit. They’re becoming a walled garden in advertising, which I think is not good for the mobile advertising ecosystem in the long term.

Q: Finally, where is the excitement?

A: We’re doing a lot in rich media. Our Unified Rich Media Platform [which I detail further down] delivers the industry’s broadest set of rich media units – for both mobile Web and in apps – all from one network. And our rich media platform is completely open. So, if you’re a rich media buyer for you plug right into our system. We work with iPhone, Android, Palm, and Blackberry. We’re an open system and we help advertisers reach their target audience.

***

MY TAKE: Permission-based advertising sits at the core of a variety of approaches and solutions I analyze in my upcoming report for GigaOM PRO, a project that has evolved from a SWOT analysis of mobile advertising solutions (including Alcatel-Lucent’s Optism and JumpTap’s solution powered by “consumer intelligence”) into a wider discussion of the business value of permission-based (opt-in).

We have ample evidence that permission-based messaging delivers positive results and response rates. A messaging approach also allows brands and other companies in the ecosystem to build on this personal profiling data (with the individual’s permission) by adding questions to refine the profile. This way, an individual who has signed up for car ads (a broad topic) might divulge that they are more into Audi than BMW and even say why they prefer one over the other. All voluntary information an advertiser would no doubt value.

Display is a different. It’s more one-way than two-way, and there is a danger of “spamming” people with repeat advertising because there aren’t enough ads in a category – or because the ad networks can’t identify unique users (and therefore gauge whether an individual user has seen the same ad already, or not). Jumptap claims to have addressed the latter with its IP, technology and techniques that allow the ad network to identify 50 million uniques per month in the U.S. alone.

This week’s announcement builds on that foundation. The focus is to increase the value and relevancy of mobile display ads. (Thus, Jumptap does not compete with companies that focus on mobile messaging and direct marketing.) To achieve this Jumptap inputs the advertising categories chosen by the individual into a much larger, more sophisticated equation that includes data from carriers, searches and some context. This covers the bases to provide people a better user experience (provided there is a good supply of ads in each category), and that should certainly lead to high advertiser ROI and publisher yields. Of course, the proof is in the numbers. We’ll have to wait a while for those. In the meantime, Jumptap’s move can be read as an important confirmation that all advertising – not just messaging – is correctly evolving to provide people more of a say in what they get.

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter with a branded thought leadership presence on this website; Jumptap has been an MSG supporter and sponsored a series of podcasts.

Just two weeks after release and my new white paper (Mobile Advertising For The Masses) counts 500+ downloads. (Again, I am honored that Bango (white paper sponsor) refers to me as a “mobile guru.”) I always endeavor to communicate complex ideas in a way that everyone will understand, and am told people enjoy my accessible and entertaining writing style. But the real reason behind the popularity of this hands-on analysis of campaigns across three mobile social networks (BuzzCity, itsmy.com, and Peperonity) is timing. Mobile social networks are on the rise (a recent Informa report counted 200+ of them) and open for business.

Where is the money?

I was fortunate to speak at Mobile Advertising & the Rise of Social Networking: What does it mean for Brands, Agencies and Service Providers?, a Knowledge & Networking Seminar organized by AIME (the Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment) last week in London. I enjoyed the opportunity to network with mobile professionals in a casual atmosphere and will most definitely participate in future AIME events. Andrew Darling, AIME Director of Communications, tells me upcoming events/topics include: WAP publishing, mobile payments, mobile coupons, and mobile widgets.

My session looked at the nuts and bolts of mobile advertising in social networks, and the real results, revenues,  and strategies first-mover companies such as pioneer mobile flirting service Flirtomatic and brave consumer brands (via full-service mobile marketing agency Inside Mobile), have to share.

As I am currently conducting my own mobile advertising research, I was particularly interested to learn from Eric Mugnier, Inside Mobile Product and Innovation Director, that the agency has also done its homework in the form of an in-depth survey of 80 key decision makers in the global mobile advertising value chain. The report won’t be released for a few weeks/months but Eric, who is also interested in my input and ideas, has promised MSG will have it first. (Thanks Eric!)

In his presentation, which included video interview excerpts from a selection of interviews, Eric outlined a few clear trends/requirements for effective mobile advertising in a social network. Mobile advertising must be targeted and relevant; the industry has no shortage of good ideas, but it must address issues around scale; and finally, brands and agencies have built the proper foundations, and  now the priority must be to create a toolkit approach that will allow more companies to execute on the lessons they have learned.

“Killer app”

Where are the brands?

Further along than I thought if we consider the example of a major sporting goods and sports apparel company, an Inside Mobile client gearing up to release an iPhone app that combines creativity, communication, and community to deliver a compelling advertising experience that users can make their own.

In a nutshell, the app allows people to customize their shoe and share it with their friends. In the next phase, people will be able to buy what they created with their phones, share what they created with the community (and this is where it gets really interesting), geotag their creation to add another dimension to the discussion (this is what I created and where), and have the ability to post their creation as part of their Facebook profile. (More next week when MSG has the exclusive on this innovative campaign.)

As Eric put it: Allowing people to customize, share, and – most importantly – make the end-result a part of their own digital persona paves the way for effective and enthusiastic viral marketing. He’s right!

It was refreshing to hear Eric describe the campaign elements in these terms. I read it as proof the advertising ecosystem has moved a giant step forward in understanding that: 1) The emergence of empowered individuals, the advance of so-called digital natives (individuals who have grown up with the Internet), and the abundance of applications designed to give consumers more of a say in how they create, access and enjoy content have transformed communication and, more specifically, the business of advertising; 2) Advertising has become content, and brands and agencies must find ways to turn their one-way pitch to “consumers” into invigorating and effective two-way conversations; and 3) Advertising in a social network is all about active participation in the community and developing ways to interact with members and enable them to interact with each other.

My take: The principles I have discussed and debated with Jonathan MacDonald, mobile advertising activist and close friend/colleague for almost a year now, are no longer just ideas; they are the building blocks of ideal business models. Well done (!) – I’m sure Jonathan’s many presentations, trips, and workshops play a role somewhere in this transformation.

Mobile metrics

Speaking of progress, Henry Stevens, Director of Media and Entertainment, GSMA, updated us on the Mobile Media Metrics (MMM) initiative to use independently aggregated and audited metrics from operator network data to develop a common methodology (what to measure) and common process (how to measure). Agreement on these key points would enable media owners to measure performance of their media properties across mobile networks, and help media planners better understand audience trends and behavior.

Where are we now?

As we know, all five U.K. mobile operators are on board. Now the GSMA is well on its way to a commercial launch in the U.K. (the feasibility study is complete) and working with operators in other European markets to duplicate this across other regions. A technical solution for the anonymization and aggregation of operator data (allowing a persistent and unique ID), as well as integration with other relevant databases and third-party demographics, top the agenda.

But the real news is how all this can be integrated into existing reporting tools. The GSMA is currently seeking the input of brands, agencies, and media owners to ensure the process meets the long-term objective of the organization to drive the growth of mobile as a multimedia platform.

Another presentation that underlined the pivotal importance of analytics in the scheme of things came from Nandi Gurprasad, VP of Alliances, Bango.

In a case study of Tapatap, a Bango customer that was recently acquired by women’s social network LimeLife, Nandi showed how the social gaming community used analytics to measure the success of its mobile Web ad campaigns and refine advertising pitches and presentations to target countries, networks and handsets which it determined (through analytics) yield the best conversion rates. Accurate tracking of response rates across different ad networks also allowed Tapatap to better plan campaigns and, more importantly, determine customer acquisition cost.

As Nandi put it: The example shows how and why companies should leverage tools that “give them an edge” – specifically, tools that provide real-time and reliable information on users – and which provide answers to the all-important questions: Who (are my customers)? What (did they look at)? Where (did they come from)?

Vendor spin aside, mobile social networks are here to stay and grow. They offer opportunity for advertisers and drive demand for analytics solutions. (As I point out in my white paper: When the end-game is all about getting a big(ger) picture view of what you achieved and where you missed the mark, then a more comprehensive analytics solution is a must. In practical terms, the two (offered by mobile social network ad networks and independent vendors) are complementary – not competitive.)

Flirtomatic’s phenomenal numbers

Saving the best for last, a real highpoint was the inside track on Flirtomatic, a combination mobile social network and mobile flirting service with the ability to monetize mobile users through conversation with content such as virtual flowers, chocolate, and kisses.

Matt Dicks, Flirtomatic Commercial Director, reported the community counts over 1 million U.K. users and outlined how Flirtomatic turns people with a passing interest in flirting to spending customers.

The trick is retail 101 all over again: Delight the customer.

In a nutshell, Flirtomatic “makes newcomers feel welcome when they come in.” Some 55 percent of daily new users go active and send a Flirtogram (signaling they want to flirt); some 20 percent of users go on to spend with Flirtomatic on items such as virtual gifts or features to enhance their own profiles. Flirtomatic chalks up revenues of $10 per month per spending customer.

At the other end of the spectrum, Flirtomatic counts “over 100 million WAP impressions per month.” Where does mobile advertising pay dividends?

A whopping 84 percent of page impressions are generated on-portal (where Flirtomatic essentially plasters operator portals with banner ads). Next are ad networks with 12 percent, followed by paid search with 3 percent (a category Matt said shows significant growth as more users go off portal and explore mobile search services to get where they want to go).

So, operators have the volume now, but will this continue? Matt expects operators will rule the roost for another 2-3 years. After all, operators are the gatekeeper and the billing agent. An envious position between the content company and the customer indeed!

Flirtomatic has also made the move from virtual gifting to the real thing (overcoming a logistics nightmare to let members give the objects of their affection chocolate and sexy underwear). The results: 500 gave chocolates and 300 gave underwear. More important than the numbers, the experiment proves members are willing to give and receive real gifts using their mobile phone.

Read between the lines, and this behavior bodes well for brands and advertisers.

As Matt pointed out: It’s a golden opportunity for brands to get involved. Think of the sponsorship and sampling opportunities. Encourage members to send flowers (and plug Interflora in the process, for example.) Cross-sell and up-sell chocolates (you just sent your loved one Cadbury Creme Eggs, have you thought of trying a milk chocolate bar?).

The possibilities are endless – and the conversions can peg the needle. Matt walked us through the example of an early experiment Flirtomatic conducted with a popular brand of cider. Members could “shout a pint” to their buddies using their mobile phones. The recipients got a voucher on their mobile phone for a free pint of cider and the location of the nearest pub that would redeem it. The results: 348,000 members sent a pint to their friends over a two week period; CTR peaked at an impressive 10 percent.

Should mobile advertising stop at delivering a message? Or should it seek to unite the virtual and physical worlds (a topic I also examine in detail in the Netsize Guide 2009 on offer in the MSG sidebar)? The jury is out on this one, but the discussion will continue at MSG.

What do YOU think?

BTW: Matt kindly invited me to visit Flirtomatic during my next trip to London, an offer I will gladly take him up on. I have long admired the company and Mark Curtis, Flirtomatic founder and author of this  well-known book on disruption culture, whose views I also hope to capture in a thought-provoking podcast. If there was ever a mobile social community success story worth telling, then Flirtomatic is it!

Disclaimer:  Bango is an MSG supporter.

I’ll follow up on those conversations next week. For now, all attention is focused on Mobile Advertising For The Masses, my new-release white paper timed to CTIA and an essential read for marketers who want to tap into mobile social networks (and the ad networks they provide) to drive positive results. This time I evaluate the analytics capabilities offered by three ad networks: BuzzCity (BuzzCity), itsmy.com (itsmy.biz), and Peperonity (AdMob). I also compare the depth and breadth of analysis they provide, and examine the need for an additional comprehensive mobile analytics package to connect the dots, fill in the gaps, and give me the big picture view of what my campaigns achieved and how I might use this insight to plan and target future campaigns.

It’s among my best work and worth the all-nighters during and since my stay in New York to put in the final finishing touches. I won’t go into the details here (for that you’ll have to download the free white paper), but I can say BuzzCity came out on top, allowing me to visibility into who my customers are (gender), where they are (location down to the U.S. state level), and handset make and model, for a start.

itsmy.com also allowed me to hone my campaign to target my key demographic, but outdated order and payment systems dampened my enthusiasm. Peperonity also had a few highpoints, but hasn’t quite reached its full potential.

I look forward to catch-calls and briefings with senior executives at both networks. My mobile advertising experiments cued me into some interesting features and functionality in the pipeline and I am anxious to learn more, insights into their ad networks, which  I’ll be sure to share on MSG.

BTW: I’m also pleased that I have been invited by Andrew Darling to speak on mobile advertising, social media and my key findings during Mobile Advertising & the Rise of Social Networking: What does it mean for Brands, Agencies and Service Providers?, a Knowledge & Networking Seminar organized by AIME, (The Association for Interactive Media and Entertainment) that will take place in London on April 2. (More details on the program and venue here.)

All attendees will receive copies of my two best practice white papers – “Mobile Advertising for Newbies” and “Mobile Advertising for the Masses.”

Speakers include:

• Nandi Gurprasad, VP of Alliances, Bango
• Matt Dicks, Commercial Director, Flirtomatic
• Dusan Hamlin, Joint Managing Director, Inside Mobile
• Mark Brill, Chairman Mobile Council, DMA
• Henry Stevens, Director of Media and Entertainment, GSMA

Key themes to be explored:

• Is advertising content?
• Brands in social media advertising – listen first, then join in the conversation.
• If social networks have become the new ‘water coolers’, incubating new micro audiences with differentiated tastes, what makes advertising too intrusive in this new environment?
• What’s the ‘next big thing’ in mobile advertising – mobile for the masses?
• Is it just about advertising messages? What kinds of mobile services suit mobile advertising?
• Measuring success and understanding how important targeting is. Which types of campaigns work?
• Are social networking services the ultimate channel for the ‘long tail’?
• What is ’social currency’ and how do you convert it into revenue?

As I illustrate in my white paper, mobile social networks have the inside track on their growing membership. Opt-in procedures, often requiring users to register and fill out detailed questionnaires, put mobile social networking companies in the enviable position of being able to not only collect valuable customer data, but also provide advertisers a breakdown of customer segments by gender, location, make and model of handset – and much more. It’s valuable information brands can harness to fine-tune and plan future campaigns.

But, as I show in my final analysis, you can do one better if you also employ a more comprehensive analytics solution to measure success, failure, and how well your campaign really achieved your business objectives.

A comprehensive analytics solution represents a perfect complement to the solutions provided by mobile social ad networks, giving advertisers a more holistic view of their customers and allowing them to answer the critical questions every advertiser and publisher needs to know: Who are my customers? What did they look at? Where did they come from? What were the results? Did community members convert to the campaign goals?

My take: To maximize results on a social networking site, it’s critical that advertisers follow these three principals.

• Make the most out of mobile analytics offered by both the ad network and an independent vendor such as Bango to match your marketing message/campaign with the community. Social networking sites generally require members to register, which raises the bar in terms of interest, motivation, and qualification. This puts your message in an environment where members are predisposed to relevant messages. In a best case scenario, people should view your marketing as an extension of their mobile experience, rather than spam.

• Consider virtual gifting and other schemes to provide something of value to users and their community. After all, the goal here is to encourage user interaction, cultivate a two-way conversation, and boost brand awareness. This is not an environment for marketing pitches and product-pushers. Success stories include Flirtomatic, a pioneer mobile flirting service with the ability to monetize mobile users through conversation with added fun and great content such as virtual flowers, chocolate, and kisses. The company recently extended its reach to enable members to give the objects of their affection real gifts including chocolate and sexy underwear.

• Participate actively in the community, and interact with members to build relationships and enable them to deepen their relationships with each other by providing tools that will let them do what they are there to do: Keep in touch with friends, connect with people who share their interests, and share content and feelings with the community. More importantly, keep in mind you don’t need whiz-bang technology to engage with members in a meaningful exchange about your brand. Text ads and banner display ads are a great way to start. Besides, they are going to be around with us for a while yet to come. The innovation is not in advertising formats, but how we use them.

In a market where two-way conversation is the end-goal, and where traffic on mobile social networking is on the rise, brands that lend their voice to the conversation wil most likely deliver their advertising message loud and clear.

Disclaimer: Bango is an MSG supporter.

Today marks the debut of these new segments on the MSG video jukebox (located in the right-hand sidebar). This week’s focus, and feature video in the player, is my interview with Shane Lennon, Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development at GyPSii, a must-watch company leading in the race to deliver connected and cool experiences combining information, entertainment, social networks,  and location/navigation. In our interview we connect the dots in the recent string of announcements and discuss the significance for brands and advertisers.

By way of background, I have followed the company – which is a business unit of GeoCentric, a company that provides a geo-integration platform for mobile phones, personal navigation devices, web browsers, and Internet-connected devices, including PCs and set-top boxes – since it broke on the scene last year. Unlike many companies that focus on social networking or enable location-relevant mobile marketing, GyPSii stands out as a company that connects people to people, places, and stuff across all platforms, devices and networks.

Indeed, it’s the raft of announcements over the last weeks — including a partnership to embed GyPSii’s app on a range of LG mobile phones; the tie-up with Nokia and RIM (blackberry) to make the app available on a wide variety of their devices; and a wise decision launch an open API (allowing partners to call the shots on how they integrate GyPSii into their mobile strategy and devices) – that speaks volumes about the company’s new and stronger focus. My take: GyPSii has both the ideas and the impetus to impact our mobile lifestyles.

In addition to the interview and my analysis (below), I also encourage you to read more about GyPSii in my regular column for the bnetTV newsletter, which counts some 10,000 readers. For all my coverage and columns in one place, check out this page on the bnetTV site dedicated to MSG news and views. Thanks again to bnetTV’s Michelle and Tony Sklar for promoting MSG to their growing audience of  industry executives and professionals, and to Nicole Scott for bringing it all together in some great brainstorming sessions!

An excerpt from my weekly column:

Web 2.0 was all about the tools and technologies allowing users to freely create, share, and connect around content with members of a larger mobile community; Web 3.0 places location at the core of this exchange, empowering users to make their experiences personal, relevant, and much more compelling.

The jury is out on whether location – on its own – is a service consumers will pay for. But there is no question that location brings value to a variety of everyday mobile experiences, ranging from social networking to mobile search/shopping services,  to more relevant and engaging mobile marketing campaigns. Indeed, the race is on to offer connected and cool experiences combining information, entertainment, social networks and location/navigation. And companies that deliver products and services that connect people to places and networks, from work to play to home,  across all platforms, devices and networks, will likely lead the pack.

GyPSii stands out as a company that covers all the bases with a suite of applications that seamlessly combine location, social networking, search, and Web 2.0 technologies. I caught up with Shane Lennon, GyPSii Senior Vice President, Marketing & Product Development, during Mobile World Congress to connect the dots in the recent string of announcements and discuss the significance for brands and advertisers. We covered all the key questions, and then some. A special highlight: An explanation of GyPSii’s Open Experience API (called OEx).

Unlike other mobile social networking platforms such as Facebook, which offer a subset of desktop functionality, GyPSii has effectively given its partners the last word in how GyPSii is integrated into their devices and apps – and how much of the functionality they want in the first place. Put another way, GyPSii allows its partners to do more than location-enable/community-enable their apps and devices; it gives them control of the UI and with it the user experience they deliver to their customer base. Partners can integrate anything from a single app (create a piece of geo-tagged content) to a feature (find a friend) to full-blown social network.

By way of background, features/services include: User-Gen Content (create and share geo-tagged content); Friends (create and manage relationships with GyPSii members); Explore (find places, people and stuff nearby); Communication (keep in touch using messages, email and more); Profile (tell the community who you are and what you’re doing/feeling); and Advertising (integrating GyPSii’s location-based and contextually-tuned advertising service). To round out the offer, partners leverage GyPSii’s infrastructure to get streamline delivery of services to their customers.

As Shane put it: “We decided to have a next-generation approach to [mobile phone] client development….As we looked beyond smartphones it became clear to us that taking our user interface and jamming down into a Java enabled platform or WAP-like [platform] wasn’t going to work.” The way for this to succeed is to take a more embedded client approach, which is why GyPSii’s strategy is focused on embedding GyPSii on as many devices as possible, where the actual user experience (via the UI) is owned by the customer/partner company. (GyPSii’s platform is device and network agnostic, and works across iPhone, Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, and Web-based operating systems.)

A big part of GyPSii plans going forward is focused on mobile advertising. And with good reason since the disconnect between mobile advertising efforts and results is a growing cause for concern. Predictably, the lack of real mobile marketing success stories reduces the enthusiasm of major brands to invest in mobile advertising in the first place. And around we go. But it’s more than a catch-22 for advertisers and carriers. It’s a vicious cycle that threatens the health of the global mobile business ecosystem if we consider that the vast majority of content companies, app store developers, and mobile carriers have already bet the farm on the uptake of mobile services increasingly subsidized by mobile advertising.

Against this backdrop, GyPSii has purposely made Advertising a central focus of its OEx API, beefing up the offer with a location-specific targeting capability and the ability to deliver an integrated advertising experience/message across devices and platforms – even  gaming consoles in the future. (Makes good sense given the perfect fit between games, location, and community…)

We wrapped up the interview with an interesting look at the future of content types and what might evolve from experiences that bring together information, entertainment, social networks, location/navigation, advertising, and search on all devices everywhere. It’s early days, but GyPSii is beginning to break down the content and comments it sees into its smallest components, allowing it to recognize the associations and relationships between the content and the context. “When someone looks for something or wants it [relevant information] in a mini-feed, we want to make sure it is relevant and [fits] in the context of their world.”

The right content to the right person at the right time and in-tune with their lifestyle/life stage? It’s a challenge. However, GyPSii has the capabilities (information, entertainment, social networks, location/navigation, advertising, and search) and mindset (open APIs and a sharp focus on the user experience) that may get us there.

MSG is also proud to partner with bnetTV to conduct studio interviews with an exciting line-up of companies including AdMob, BuddyMob, BuzzCity,Gigafone, Gracenote, GyPSii, JumpTap, MCN, Mob4Hire, Movius, and VISTO. The finished segments will showcase on MSG (in the customized video player in the right-hand corner), so please check back regularly. You can also look for event coverage – as well as my regular columns – on this special Events page bnetTV created exclusively for MSG.

Which brings me to this week’s column and focus on Motricity, a provider of mobile data solutions and services, ranging from mobile portals and storefronts, to messaging aggregation, to a slew of mobile operators and content providers, including AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile, Alltel, TracFone Wireless, PlayPhone, CNN, FOX News, A&E, and Condé Nast. The company had a banner year in 2008. It achieved over $100 million in revenue, exceeded acquisition integration targets, expanded customer relationships, and delivered over 11.5 billion pageviews across all deployments of its mCore Platform. (Over the past year, Motricity reports mobile Internet access has grown 45 percent, a sure sign that mobile data services are gaining serious traction.)

But the real news is mobile marketing, a sector Ryan Wuerch, Motricity Chairman and CEO, tells me is poised for impressive growth.

During a recent interview with bnetTV, Ryan identified three key drivers behind this trend: The advance of the mobile Web, the arrival of handsets such as the Apple iPhone that deliver a satisfactory end-user experience, and the increasing recognition among mobile operators, agencies, brands, and content companies that advertising is content, and should therefore be customized (translated: targeted) to individual consumers based on factors such as profile, preference, and permission.

Put simply, plain-vanilla mobile content tailored to mass-market tastes doesn’t cut it. It’s about delivering personalized, compelling experiences to consumers in order to increase data usage, ARPU, and brand recognition. As Ryan put it: “Content providers and brands are looking to leverage the data, intelligence and connectivity of the carriers in order to offer a personalized, relevant solution to consumers.”

Another shift transforming the mobile marketplace: The emergence of the open mobile Web and truly open models that blur the boundaries between on-portal and off-portal (on-deck and off-deck). In Ryan’s view, its “one multi-channel content marketplace” with the mobile phone – a device with features and functionality including a personal navigation system, a barcode scanner, a camera, a radio, a walkie-talkie, a TV, an electronic programming guide, a remote control, a digital music player, a photo album, and an archive – at its center. Operators and brands are more closely aligned in their strategies to encourage mobile advertising and Motricity is more sharply focused on “being in the center of the mobile ecosystem for the movement of content and data” between all the parties involved.

My take: There can be only one business model. OPEN. Ryan believes players up and down the value chain will ultimately embrace the open strategy. Why? Because inclusive is better than exclusive, particularly when the end-game is about forging partnerships that will grow the pie for everyone.

Ironically, this is also the message of my own white paper, sponsored by Motricity and slated for release in the next weeks. Aptly titled ‘There Can Be Only One,’ the white paper demonstrates the business benefits of a comprehensive, all-inclusive federated mobile search strategy that meets user demand for choice by combining results from storefronts, the Internet and the mobile Web. I argue that such a strategy creates a new and robust ecosystem and firmly places mobile operators at its center. More may be better, but open is always best.

Look for the white paper available for free download via MSearchGroove.

Disclaimer: Motricity is an MSG supporter.

BuzzCity’s keen focus on serving the “unwired” in developing countries – people whose only access to the Internet is their mobile phone – made business sense from the start, allowing it to chalk up 3+ million users across 80 countries (as of December 2008). But it’s the company’s clever approach to mobile advertising that makes it the one to watch. Expect a raft of announcements kicking off at Mobile World Congress (MWC), allowing app and content providers to get more reach (and thus more revenues). This is all I can say under NDA, but think ’social graph meets viral-marketing’ and you’re definitely on the right track.

As KF puts it: “It’s about critical mass, and we have reached a critical mass in myGamma today that has become attractive to developers who want to tap into our community and soon beyond [these] members to friends of friends of myGamma [members].”

To this end, upcoming announcements will emphasize “improvements to our ad network and ad serving system so that it delivers value to advertisers and publishers.”

For now, let’s just say announcements pave the way for application developers to better distribute and monetize their content via the myGamma community and wider network of off-portal publisher sites and destinations BuzzCity has built through partnerships and as a result of the $10 million investment it received last summer from South African media group Naspers.

By way of background, the investment boosts BuzzCity’s profile, powers its expansion plans, and cements Naspers’ position as a formidable force in the evolving media landscape. The key here is convergence, and there’s clear evidence of a business model that could potentially blow other mobile social networks out of the water.

Naspers is a multinational media company headquartered in South Africa, with principal operations in electronic media (including pay-tv, Internet and instant-messaging subscriber platforms, and the provision of related technologies) and print media (including the publishing, distribution and printing of magazines, newspapers, and books). Naspers’ investments include: ACL Wireless Limited, a major provider of mobile value-added services based in India that offers community applications such as chat, IM and social networking, as well as mobile services; Tencent, a provider of Internet and mobile value-added services in China with the largest IM community in China – QQ; Sanook!, the leading Thai language portal in Thailand; and Mail.ru, ranked as the number one email service for Russian speaking users with some 30 million unique monthly visitors, and over two billion monthly page views (according to the website).  And the list goes on…

The goal is to expand the BuzzCity mobile ad network. But there are no plans to manage mobile advertising campaigns. For that, KF would rather team up with companies such as Top Space, the media arm of Sanook!, and be the mobile part of the pitch the company makes to clients. As he puts it: “The idea is to complement the existing offer these companies [in the portfolio] have and extend that reach into mobile.” BuzzCity is also not interested in content creation. “At this stage we have decided that we will not take a stake or invest in a company that develops original content. We want to work with these [content development] companies, allowing them distribution and marketing through our community and [Naspers] portfolio companies.”

Excerpts from the Q&A:

Q: Who are your competitors? We know it’s AdMob when it comes to ad networks – but who are the players that compete against BuzzCity at the big-picture level?

A: Looking at the competitors, I can say we will be the first one in the space to create a real ecosystem. We have community and a complete monetization path, and there’s more to come. [In comparison] the App Store doesn’t have the community, and it doesn’t run ad networks.  App Store is a pure transaction mechanism.  It leverages on the number of people that use iPhones to provide a transaction-based monetization path. So a comparison with Apple is possible, but not accurate. We’re closer to Facebook. It offers a developer platform, allowing developers to build the applications on Facebook and popularize them by offering them to [Facebook] members, but the monetization path is not so clear. Likewise, the ad network isn’t in place to help publishers and merchants monetize the traffic. We have all that, and all the developers have to do is figure out how to make their applications popular. Once they are popular, the way is clear to make money out of them. Then the question becomes: Do I continue to offer it for free, so that I can charge for advertising? Or do I charge for my application? Both options are supported by BuzzCity.

Q: You already have developers offering apps and content to the community? What are the hot items?

A: The most popular applications are ones that allow users to have some fun and express themselves. For example, there is a Tarot card [app] that tells your future and lets you share Tarot cards with your friends. Another popular application is called Hug Me. It’s just a simple hug, and users can give each other virtual hugs and show each other they care. Virtual gifting is very big, and we expect to see quite a number of virtual gifting applications moving forward.

(BTW: This response dovetails well with Tim Green’s observations over at Mobile Entertainment. He points out that virtual gifting is part of a successful monetization scheme for BuzzCity. What’s more, he wouldn’t be surprised “if, a few years from now, Facebook decides the best way to get a presence in mobile in certain geographies is to advertise on BuzzCity’s network.”)

Q: Let’s talk about the release of the BuzzCity Mobile Advertising Index, a report that tracks the growth of off-portal mobile Internet use in more than 200 countries around the world. For Q4 2008 the index shows almost 50 percent growth in paid banner advertisements in the U.S. Specifically, 382 million mobile banner ads were served in the U.S. in the last three months of 2008, a 47 percent increase over the previous quarter, and a 209 percent increase for the year. In a press statement, you said this is an indicator of the resilience of mobile advertising in the face of the current economic downturn, as well as the exponential growth in mobile Internet use among U.S. consumers. Can you elaborate? And what are you seeing now?

A: In the fourth quarter of 2008, just over 7.5 billion advertiser banners were delivered across the network, representing quarterly growth of 40 percent, a slight increase from the previous quarter’s growth of 38 percent. According to our data, we actually only service about one-third of the advertiser demand.  In other words, there is another two-thirds of advertiser dollar [budget] on the table every day that we’re not spending. We have advertiser dollars waiting to be earned, if developers are able to develop compelling applications that users find interesting. We have a board meeting this morning, and I can say I have very happy shareholders today.

Q: Is it the focus on the Long Tail that allows you to profit in a recession?

A: Yes. When we put our Long Tail mobile ad network together, aggregating around 2,000 smaller sites, it was about capturing value offered by the smaller sites – sites that otherwise would not be able to attract advertising on their own. It was also about allowing advertisers to reach a diverse audience. After all, if you want 1,000 people to respond to your offer, you’re more likely to succeed if you try to attract 1,000 people from 1,000 different sites rather than 1,000 visitors to a single site.

In fact, the financial crisis has so far has turned out to be a net positive for us.  We expected two things to happen. We expected venture-funded companies that were buying traffic to drive the downloads would likely reduce their spending because they were worried they might not be able to raise the next round of funding because of financial crisis. This did happen, but the financial crisis hit the U.S. and U.S. companies harder than the rest. Elsewhere, companies that were spending on ad networks to buy traffic have not reduced their spending. In addition, we expected mobile value-added service providers to cut back advertising spending, which also happened. But these [VAS] players appear to have moved larger portions of their advertising budget into mobile Internet, which benefits us. We’re also seeing a rise in spending coming from more traditional businesses, such as financial services. They have increased overall mobile Internet and advertising spending because it’s more controllable and measurable [than other media buys].

For example, in India, advertisers are reducing their overall budgets by up to 50 percent. In fact, [publications like] Hindustan and Times of India are reporting 75 percent reductions in the ad revenue. But, in reality, a shift is taking place and advertisers are moving money from online to the mobile Internet.  So, BuzzCity profits from the financial crisis. You have seen that from quarter to quarter we grew about 40 percent, and from November to December we actually grew 40 percent as well, month to month. In January, we see that the trend has continued and we are quite hopeful that in this quarter [1Q2009] we will report either a similar growth rate or an even bigger one.

Q: Speaking of India, you recently launched a feature that enables brands in India to target ad campaigns to four regions around four major cities: Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and Kolkata. How is demand for that?

A: It’s getting very good response from advertisers. But most advertisers are looking for reach and don’t only want to target individual regions. Overall, India has been growing quite well over the last months, with a number of more traditional companies taking their campaigns to mobile.

Q: Can you provide examples?

A:  A lot of activity from banks. In the last months we’ve seen Sri Lankan Airlines advertising to Indian customers. We have also seen campaigns from Toyota, Dell, Renault – and other big brands using mobile to reach Indian consumers. In fact, activity has increased so much over the last six months that we increased our team there from two to five [people]. We are also planning to roll this feature [being able to target regions] out to two more countries over the next six months. We are deciding the countries and I’ll let you know closer to the date.

Q: You recently announced a deal with MCN in Thailand, where you use its MobileSearch.net platform to power content discovery and mobile search for your myGamma community there. I’ve seen other mobile communities embrace search as well, I’m thinking here of the deal between itsmy.com and Taptu. How are members using mobile search?

A: From my initial observations, it doesn’t seem that users like to search as much as they like to discover new things. We’re talking with MCN about how they could use the social graph to make mobile search much more of an activity involving user recommendations. Of course, we will leave the mobile search technology to providers and not develop our own search service. There are a couple of other initiatives that we are pursuing right now but we’re not ready to announce details. I can also say that we are looking at launching keyword search functions in our ad network, letting advertisers target the advertising based on the user query.

***

NOTE: I’ll also have more about the nuts and bolts of BuzzCity’s ad network in my upcoming mobile advertising white paper, set to be released in time for MWC. As I wrote earlier, BuzzCity understands advertiser requirements for spending control and improved targeting. More importantly, it walks the talk, providing advertisers a balanced mix of mobile analytics and post-campaign demographic data (based on a representative audience sample). In fact, click analytics from BuzzCity (I ran banner ad campaigns across three mobile social networks, including BuzzCity) showed my audience was predominantly male, with over one-third of my clicks in the U.S. coming from the state of Mississippi.

My take: It’s potentially valuable feedback for advertisers wanting to target campaigns to variables such as gender and location, and a clear competitive advantage for BuzzCity over other ad networks.

Disclaimer: The MSG series of mobile advertising white papers is sponsored by Bango.

I caught up with Steve Ives, Taptu CEO, in an exclusive interview where he revealed the recent deal with itsmy.com is just the start. Look for three more deals with mobile social networks before February. Also expect Taptu to sharpen its focus on mobile search monetization, particularly in the U.S. where Steve tells me most of his traffic is. (And there’s an even better reason to concentrate on mobile search sponsored links; sources tell me CPMs around key word search terms are in the $3-$10 range.)

Listen to the podcast here. [20:22]

I should add it’s longer than others in the series, but that is because we deep-dive into a variety of key topics, including mobile search trends, Taptu’s ambitions to deliver mobile search verticals (and allow users to personalize them), the impact of the iPhone, the emergence (and pivotal importance) of a new segment Steve calls “unwired socials” (accounting for over half of Taptu’s users today), and a few details of a strategy Steve would rather keep under wraps to develop a “user interface for discovery” inspired by touch devices.

But for me, the real news is the keen focus on mobile social networks. In November Taptu quietly and cleverly sealed a deal with itsmy.com, an ad-funded mobile-only social network with two million users, to provide core search functionality (allowing them to search for mobile content such as videos, entertainment, music, and images from within the community as well as directly from their personal homepage). The deal also lets itsmy.com monetize those searches through mobile search sponsored links. (By way of background, Taptu replaces Google, and I’ll go into the reasons in my podcast with Vince Staybl, Gofresh CEO, which is coming up in this series. As Vince put it: Google failed to “get” mobile – a serious shortcoming that convinced him to switch to Taptu.) Gofresh isn’t the first mobile social network to ally with Taptu for search and advertising. Moblr quietly replaced Yahoo with Taptu in February 2008 to do much the same thing. (More evidence of a trend: The decision by BuzzCity to partner with MCN for mobile search for its mobile-only social network myGamma in Thailand.)

Another deal from Taptu you may have missed in the holiday hectic: A partnership with ZooVision, a U.S.-based free streaming mobile video portal, to provide mobile search and no doubt increase its entertainment-related inventory. (By way of background, Taptu replaced Google – yet again.)

Other highlights from the podcast:

FUNDING: In December, Taptu secured GBP6.45m in series B funding from its existing investors (3i and Sofinnova) and appointed Andreas Bernstrom to the position of Chief Operating Officer (COO). The money will allow Taptu to focus on monetization. As Steve put it: “We’ve only just started putting ads on our site. So, for 09, the big focus is optimizing the monetization, so for every thousand searches that get made on our site, we optimize the revenue.” (The business model is a rev share.)

AD NETWORKS: Taptu works with Yahoo, Google and AdMob. “We’re focusing on search ads and search ad platforms, so we’ve been working with Yahoo in the U.K. for a couple of months now just to explore what happens when we put those search ads up on our site….For us, a big priority next year is the U.S., because actually the majority of our audience is in the U.S., and looking at how we best monetize that. But it is going to be search ads, in other words ads that are tied into search keywords, because we found from our ad experiments that they have the best revenue per thousand.” (I asked around in the industry and the word is keywords can fetch $3-$10 CPMs.)

RELEVANCY & ENAGEMENT: The industry needs to work on both. Online we have annoying display ads, and users are anything but engaged. Mobile could go the same way – so wake up! “In the mobile world, users can develop banner blindness very quickly. They’re not terribly engaging, and we’re training users to ignore them because most ads are not very relevant to the needs of the user. So we’ve got to increase relevancy on the one hand, and we’ve got to make them more engaging and kind of entertaining on the other hand.”

SEGMENTATION: Most of the audience is Unwired Socials whose first screen in is the PC, but this is changing. Make way for the Pioneer Youth, propelled into a strong second position by the iPhone and other touch screen devices delivering a rich mobile Web experience. (Keeping in mind they still don’t do a great job transcoding sites with flash, for example.)

SEARCH BEHAVIOR: Unwired Socials search for entertainment and some adult; Pioneer Youth gravitates to career and lifestyle. Sensing an opportunity in other verticals such as mobile job search in emerging markets, Taptu is determined to evolve “from a sort of beachhead in entertainment search, which is where we started, to add more and more sources to become a universal search engine.”

FEDERATED SEARCH: Figures prominently in Taptu’s roadmap. “Our strategy is to extend that to allow for hundreds or even thousands of sources and to allow users to create their own vertical channels with Taptu. It’s going to take a while to translate that vision into reality, but it’s the way forward which offers the best scope for improving the relevancy of results because you can have custom scoring systems for each channel which are optimized to that channel.” As Steve sees it, it’s all about “allowing the user and having a discovery into user interface which allows the user to explore these different channels easily and look for related results.”

UI IMPROVEMENTS: Look for them! Steve preferred not to disclose details, but he’s bullish on touch screen devices. As he puts it: “Touch devices give you the opportunity for a much more interesting user interface for discovery than normal phones, so you’ll see some innovation from us in that area.”

2009 TRENDS: A slowdown in the market and fewer people replacing their handsets. The bright spot: The continued enthusiasm for the iPhone and the N97. Another interesting development to watch for: Local search on mobile will develop into a different market – with different dynamics. “The user interface for local search is going to be in a mapping application; it’s not going to be the search engine search box. So, local search will gravitate – it will almost fork into being somewhat of a different market, accessed from a different point on the handset user interface.”

On a personal note, I’m pleased to report Charles Knight, at MSG partner site AltSearchEngines, is back in full-force and looking forward to a fantastic 2009 with more staff, more content and more traffic. And it’s a similar success story at MSG. He is cross-posting this podcast and all MSG mobile search coverage. I’m excited about the cross-pollination because many super-cool online search engines are gearing up to go mobile – giving both our sites loads to track and analyze. Another trait that brings us closer together: Our determination to offer Alts (alternative search engines) a platform. To this end, we are planning yet another event, much like our search engine dinner in Berlin last fall. This time it’s MARCH 30 in San Francisco (timed to the SF Expo) – so please mark that date.

Disclaimer: MSG collaborated with Taptu on a white paper in 2008; MCN has been an MSG supporter.

But the real news is the traction MCN has built up outside Japan, where the company has quietly launched mobile search and “search merchandizing” with eight major off-portal sites and picked up another 50+ content providers for its allwords offer.

By way of background, MCN’s approach to what it calls “search merchandizing” combines MCN’s federated search (delivered via MobileSearch.net, MCN’s white-label search platform) and vertical paid search (delivered through allwords, MCN’s own PPC mobile content promotion program). The aim is to make it easy for users to find content from any source by providing a vertical paid search program that effectively connects users directly with the content item.

Avea is MCN’s first official search+allwords launch outside Japan, soon to be followed by a string of deals that will peg the needle. In fact, MCN CEO Marc Bookman, whom I interviewed during CTIA Wireless, has since revealed to me that the company has several Tier-1 operator deals under its belt (signed but not yet announced), including an impressive win in Europe.

Fortunately, the Avea announcement dovetails well with my meet-up with Marc at Mobile Content in London next week. He and Stephen Burke, MCN SVP Marketing, have agreed to walk me through the company’s recent deals and their future roadmap.

Connect the dots, as I have, and 2008 was the year MCN tripled (!) the number of distribution partnerships outside Japan, adding operators and service providers including Tele2 in Sweden, Smart Communications in the Philippines and BuzzCity, a global mobile social network that implemented MCN in Thailand. I look forward to getting the inside track on this and more during our meeting Wednesday and will circle back with what the company is prepared to reveal on-the-record.

Today’s announcement from MCN comes in just as MSG is launching its video jukebox feature together with bnetTV, the leading destination for news, analysis and buzz around must-attend trade shows and events including Mobile Internet World, Mobile Marketing Forum, Mobile World Congress and CTIA.

It was at CTIA that I joined the team to conduct interviews and produce a string of videos focusing on mobile search, mobile advertising, content adaptation and mobile social networking. The team is professional (and great fun to work with!), and I am 100-percent on board to conduct interviews at MWC and all other events we attend together. Special thanks to Michelle Sklar, Tony Sklar, Nicole Scott for arranging the streaming video jukebox and to Curtis Schmigelsky for designing the widget.

I invite you to listen into the MCN video and explore the other interviews in the jukebox. During CTIA I connected with 25+ companies including Infogin, JumpTap, Millennial Media, Snaptell, Seeqpod, Nuance, Spinvox, BuzzCity, The Hyperfactory, DeviceAnywhere, Bytemobile, Motricity, Medio Systems, Novarra, Movial, SinglePoint, and JYGY. (Not in any special order.) Explore and enjoy!

Disclaimer: JumpTap and MCN are MSG supporters.

However, I was also caught a little off guard since I expected the embargo to be lifted tomorrow. I’ll be back in a bit with the full-length post and a few surprises. (Thanks again Claudia Bate at Skywrite Communications for arranging the pre-briefing and following up with valuable background material.)