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.

Since teaming up with Rudy De Waele, blogger at mTrends and  dotopen founder, to develop mobile search case studies in preparation for a workshop on Mobile Search Future Prospects organized by JRC IPTS (Institute for Prospective Technological Studies of the European Commission), and seeing the positive response to our work to date, I’m convinced mobile search is back again at the top of the industry agenda. And with good reason: Search is the de facto interface to all things digital in the online space, and there is every indication that it will be the same in mobile.

From mobile advertising, where our queries trigger the delivery of related advertising (in the best case scenario, we’re not there yet), to social media, where the content we appreciate and discuss across destinations ranging from MySpace to Twitter allows us to restore balance in an otherwise purely algorithmic approach that tends to promote search engine optimized websites over what we find genuinely relevant and useful, mobile search is where the action is.

But as Rudy and I have both pointed out in our recent presentations, mobile search is not about the usual suspects (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft). Rudy spoke at Next09, and you can find his slides  further on in this post; I spoke at the European Mobile Media Conference, and my deck can likewise be found after the jump.

Indeed, context and personalization change all the rules (!)

A highlight of our recent presentations: A comprehensive overview of the market and (thanks to Rudy) a SWOT analysis of the players that stand out in their category such as Google (universal search with a poor mobile offer and an even weaker grasp of social search), and Twitter (a case of mobile search + social media = real-time results that really reflect what we discuss/share).

In my own mobile search research – an on-going project that began back in 2004/2005 when I wrote the first report on mobile search and content discovery, a 220+ page report published by Informa Telecoms & Media – I have recently identified some 60+ companies and 10+ categories of mobile search I would like to share with you (below) for your feedback.

INTERACE

• Text: ChaCha, 4INFO,MINFO, textperts (acquired by 118118), Answers.com, AnyQuestionAnswered, Ask, AskMeNow
• Voice: Google, Yahoo, Vlingo, Microsoft, ChaCha (Watch this space for an expert assessment of the voice-enabled services offered by Google, Vlingo, and ChaCha. ( I am proud to have had the opportunity to collaborate with Peggy Albright, MSG Associate and founder of Albright Communications, and even prouder of the results.)
• Visual: IQ Engines, Kooaba, Mobile Acuity, Searchme, SnapNow, SnapTell, Tin Eye Mobile, Nokia
• Navigational: Boopsie, kannuu, Nuance (through Tegic acquisition)

ACTIONABLE

• Universal: Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, AOL (based on Google), Medio Systems, JumpTap (although a much stronger focus on mobile advertising)
• Federated: MCN, Motricity (managed mobile search platform providers)
• Operator-centric search: Amdocs, Qualcomm, IBM and this company coming out of stealth mode
• Alternative search: Defined as every service except for Google, and includes a long tail of 1500+ search engines (tracked by AltSearchEngines) with ambitions to go mobile – some sooner than later
• Vertical/content-specific search: abphone, vtap, Truveo
• Local search: Hundreds of players that offer local search via SMS services, on their own WAP sites, and/or as part of a nearby shopping scheme. (Fortunately, the local mobile search landscape is the topic of an upcoming column on MSG from Martin Wilson, founder of Indigo 102, an independent consultancy with a focus on mobile local search and services, so watch this space!)

SOCIAL

• abphone, ChaCha, Hiogi, Taptu
• Twitter in a class by itself!

It’s work in progress, but it’s all the more exciting if we remember that – in mobile search – the players that matter and the business models that deliver are wide open to discussion.

Indeed, the central role of mobile search in a wide variety of mobile services around sharing, advertising, location, and context-aware activities turns up the pressure on an even broader range of businesses (operators, brands, agencies, enablers – everyone!) to understand what mobile search delivers (and doesn’t) and the companies/models that do it best.

To help mobile professionals and practitioners navigate this tough terrain, Rudy and I have joined together on a project to produce the definitive mobile search market overview, a work that will draw from primary research, case studies, and exclusive forecasts to document this exciting space and present our recommendations for strategies to harness growth opportunities on the horizon.

I still have the opportunity to take your views and perspectives into account, and I would welcome your input. The project, widely distributed via our sites and via our network of sites, supporters, and influencers, will also offer a commercial opportunity to companies interested in conveying their value proposition to a growing community of senior executives and decision-makers in the mobile space.

If you are a mobile search company with an interest in being considered for an interview, please contact me directly or send an email to my assistant Andrea Henninge (andrea@msearchgroove.com).

I encourage you to add the site to your list of must-read destinations. Why? Many of the business models and businesses driving revenues in the Internet are coming soon to mobile. (Search engines and collaborative software companies lead the pack of companies moving out of stealth mode to make some serious waves.) Amidst this change I know of no better source than EContent to stay that extra-important step ahead of the game.

(I will therefore give EContent a top-notch spot in the new-look Knowledge Sharing Zone I wrote about in this earlier post. The goal is to create a comprehensive list of valuable resources and destinations. If you would like your site or blog to be considered, please email it to me (peggy@msearchgroove.com).

As part of the recent Buying and Selling eContent conference, Michelle invited experts and contributors who judged the EContent 100, to give their views on the companies and trends that matter. Michelle reports that the series of video interviews  got good reviews, and the content in them was “extremely well received.”

In Search of Excellence in Content Commerce, Creation, Delivery and CMS

with Tony Byrne, Ron Miller, and Martin White

Cutting Edge Success Stories in Collaboration, Social Media, and Mobile Content

featuring David Meerman Scott, Steve Smith, and Peggy Anne Salz

The Best In Content Collections, DRM, and Search

with Theresa Regli, Steve Sieck, and Paula Hane

Tune in and enjoy!

By way of background, I was chosen to judge the categories Mobile Content, Search Engine & Technologies, Collaboration and Social Media.

My participation in the judging team (of 14 judges) allowed me to introduce my peers to mobile industry innovators high on my radar and emphasize the role of mobile-only search and personalization companies in the scheme of things. As a result, this year saw four new (mobile) additions to the EContent100: ChangingWorlds, CrispWireless JumpTap, MCN and SurfKitchen. They join other movers and shakers that made the list including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Twitter.

If you want to be considered for inclusion in the next EContent 100, contact me directly. I’m always open to new companies and great ideas!

In the meantime, I’ll be back on Thursday with a wrap-up of mobile content issues, challenges and trends from the European Mobile Media Conference.

On the heels of JumpTap’s announcement of tapMatch, its pay-per-click (PPC) performance mobile ad marketplace, I can finally post this exclusive Q&A with Paran Johar, JumpTap CMO. During the pre-briefing, we went through the nuts and bolts of the offer (unlike Google, which offers keyword bidding  and MCN – a provider of mobile search management, search merchandising, and PPC content promotion solutions offering category bidding- Jumptap offers both), and took a closer look at how the search technology potentially maximizes performance by delivering contextually relevant advertising.

By way of background, tapMatch builds audience profiles from multiple sources including search queries, context, and click thru history to match the most relevant ad messages to each mobile consumer. Advertisers can target their marketing message according to keywords, categories, location, demographics, mobile carrier, publisher, and mobile handsets including Blackberry and iPhone. Ads run across a comprehensive set of categories including automotive, careers, finance, fitness, and health, enhanced by keyword search parameters. They are priced and served by auction, and advertisers only pay when consumers click on their messages.

JumpTap tells me it can decipher the keywords from mobile Web pages and use that information to create categories of users. For instance, in this chocolate example above, if the user has gone to a site about mobile phones and then another site comparing different mobile technologies, the system knows that a search for “chocolate” has a higher probability of meaning the mobile phone “chocolate” instead of something you eat. JumpTap can then place the correct advertiser ads in front of the user that relate to chocolate phones and not candy.

Q&A EXCERPT:

Q: Let’s start with the landscape. When I read the draft press release I thought it competes with Google at one level and MCN at another. What is the differentiation?

A: Well, that’s really the point. It’s not just a pay-per-click marketplace. It is a pay-per-click marketplace that allows advertisers to bid all the way to the keyword level. Smart advertisers understand that keyword level buying is the best way to target users. So this allows you to target context, and [target] carrier handset, all the way to the keyword level.

Q: How does your technology do it?

A: Our technology crawls the page, extracts the relevant keywords, builds a taxonomy based on those keywords, and then builds a preference set to develop an audience profile to serve a relevant ad.

Q: How does this fit in with the other products and announcements I’ve tracked on MSG? I’m thinking here of your white label search, your premium ad network – the works.

A: You mention the premium mobile ad network. Now this has been an evolution to our business model. We started with tapSearch, which is our white label search product. We evolved into the premium mobile ad network, which still exists and is really toward let’s say the upper funnel of mobile advertising to drive brand awareness, consideration, purchase intent. We’ve got our platform, tapLink, to extract data from carriers. This [tapMatch] is the last piece of the puzzle, utilizing our search technology to develop audience profiles in a pay-per-click marketplace. It [tapLink] addresses the ROI sensitive advertiser. So, if the premium mobile ad network is really focused on the upper funnel, tapMatch is really on the lower funnel -  driving ROI, whether that is click-through, click-to-action, click-to-SMS, or click-to-call.

Q: What about publishers?

It provides publishers with access to multiple resources for their inventory monetization. First, they can allocate a percentage of that [inventory] toward brand advertising – actually as much as possible to get those high effective CPMs. Second, they can take any remnant inventory and run it through tapMatch with full transparency and full control to make sure that they’re not running let’s say, punch the monkey ads. The advertiser also could control on the other side, what types of publishers they run on.

Q: Relevancy is a big part of your messaging here. Is this because you sense a change in what advertisers require? It used to be about showing an ad and now it’s about making sure the ad matches context somewhere along the way.

A: Yes. Our goal is not to run billions and billions of impressions. Our goal is to make an impression – with both the consumer and the advertiser – with relevancy. The mobile phone is a very personal channel. We think the appetite for a user to accept what I call ’spam advertising’ has really diminished, and that’s why we really focus on driving relevancy from all sources.

Q: What is the fit with iPhone?

A: Well certainly iPhone apps are part of both networks. An iPhone application developer is really like a publisher with much more dynamic abilities for creative insertion in terms of integration into maps, integration into address books, whatever. So absolutely, a publisher has the opportunity to participate in either or both [ad networks]. And they can allocate their inventory based on their choice.

Q: Of course there are a lot of ad networks out there. How are you going to continue to differentiate?

A: If you can name me another ad network with 17 carrier relationships and search as part of its technology, then we have competition. The only one I know that’s even close is obviously Google. Google and Yahoo we compete with. But the AdMobs and the Quattros of the world are in another space. If you just look at the ad network component of our business, then, yes, we compete, but they don’t have that white label search technology and they don’t have any of the carrier information either.

Q: That may be – but the space is crowding fast…

A: We organized a mobile advertising conference in Florida a couple of weeks ago on a Saturday night through Sunday. And we had almost 200 brands and agencies show up. I organized that and I reached out to our friends at AdMob and our friends at Quattro, and they participated as part of this mobile advertising conference. They are ad networks, and there is differentiation. We all know Quattro – they take a different approach which is ‘I’ll build your WAP site in exchange for the ad revenue’. AdMob takes the long-tail approach.

Ours is completely different. We have those carrier relationships. We’ve got the white label mobile search technology that builds relevancy, we’ve got the premium mobile ad network for the top funnel, and then we’ve got tapMatch, a performance marketplace that builds relevancy; that takes it all the way to the keyword level, utilizing hyper-targeting.

You can’t just go out and get 17 carrier relationships. You can’t just go out and build a white label search engine and utilize that technology for hyper-targeting. That kind of stuff takes years and years of development.

Q: What about the mobile analytics? What can I track and target?

A: It’s fully self-service. The app has tracking mechanisms so you can set up click-to-SMS, click-to-call, click through, and track all of that at the individual campaign level.

Q: And the difference with AdSense here?

A: Certainly AdSense is similar. However, they don’t do carrier targeting or handset targeting or context. So it takes AdSense specifically made for mobile to the next level.

Q: You have 17 carrier relationships. These include:  AT&T, Alltel, Boost, Virgin, US Cellular, Orange Spain, TeliaSonera Group (in seven countries), 3 Sweden and Bell Mobility. It’s a good mix, but I miss more operators in Europe and Asia.

A: We’re looking at the rest of Europe, and we’re obviously looking at parts of Asia. But we’re doing so very carefully. Given the economic times, excessive capital expenditure right now does not make sense. We have to look at those opportunistically to make sure it’s the right time. And you’re going to hear a big announcement for us in Spain in the coming weeks.

Q: Let’s talk about some hard numbers. In your press release you state: “Reaching qualified mobile audiences with highly targeted, relevant ads elicits strong consumer engagement, increased click thru rates and higher conversions according to early testers of the tool.” What is the range of CPCs you see?

A: It really depends on the category and the keyword. The more granular you get in terms of your keywords, the more expensive the bid price. And it’s dynamic and all in real-time. What are the keywords on Google or Yahoo? It depends on the keyword and it depends on the category, and it depends on the day and time. It could range from $0.10 to $0.25 in some cases to several dollars.

Q: Not a ball-park figure?

A: Peggy, it just depends on the keyword and the time of day. It’s almost like saying how much does a TV spot cost. It depends if you’re in prime-time; daytime; late news. And it’s similar here.

Q: Many will read today’s announcement as  throwing down the gauntlet, challenging Google and Yahoo. Is that how you see it?

A: Yes, definitely it’s a David verses Goliath story and we don’t mind being David. The fact that people reference Google and Yahoo in an on-going basis with JumpTap is a good thing for us.

Q: So let’s wrap up with some nuts and bolts. When are you live and in which countries?

A: We can give you a demo log-in – it goes live on the 15^th. It’s only the U.S. right now.

My take: Competition is heating up, but JumpTap’s connection with mobile operators (and access to valuable customer data that Google and Yahoo will never see) is the source of competitive advantage. JumpTap’s marketplace (category and keyword) and spread of networks (Premium Ad Network and now tapMatch) position it to offer a powerful combination of premium and performance advertising, going a long way toward ensuring the best ads will appear on a site. The technology is in place, now JumpTap has to focus on execution and slow but steady expansion of its operator footprint.

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.

These are just some of the key questions that came up during interviews with ad network executives at Mobile World Congress (MWC), and in a string of recent phone briefings. It’s also a line of questioning I hope to pursue at ThinkMobile, and Meet the Mobile Ad Networks, a panel led by Steve Smith with guest speakers Steven Rosenblatt, VP of Advertising Sales, Quattro Wireless; Eric Eller, Senior Vice President, Client Solutions, Millennial Media;  Patricia Clark, Regional VP of Sales, 4INFO; Paran Johar, CMO, JumpTap; Brian Murphy, Eastern Regional Sales Director, AdMob; and Robert Walczak, CEO & Founder, Ringleader Digital. It’s going to be a great session, and I’ll be back with my observations after the event.

BTW: Steve is a must-read columnist at MediaPost. Yesterday’s post, which recounts an experiment (a random click through mobile ads) and the user experience (disappointing and even frustrating), should be mandatory reading at ad agencies and networks everywhere. A key takeaway: “The system still is clogged with some crap even at branded media sites. Of course there are still dancing mortgage celebrants on CNN’s homepage, so we can’t fault mobile too much. But clicking on a mobile ad is an iffy thing. Mobile users don’t know yet what to expect, so if the publishing brand can ensure quality advertisers with quality end-user experiences, it elevates both the ads and the content.”

Steve’s column and my own observations lead me back to the key questions: How do the dedicated mobile ad networks fit in the game, and how will they differentiate? I caught up with Zaw Thet, CEO of 4INFO, the 800-pound gorilla of mobile messaging, and the company that Nielsen identified as the largest SMS content provider in North America for 4Q2008, to get the inside track on AdHaven (a new product 4INFO launched just prior to MWC that represents a rebranding of its entire suite of ad serving products) and where it fits into the roadmap.

By way of background, 4INFO’s strategy is about opening up its ad-serving technology to mobile operators and publishers to monetize their content with SMS text ads. The first step is AdHaven, a server that effectively provides publishers access to services including campaign management, ad sales and operations, and billing. Publishers can either sell their own ad inventory or go through 4INFO’s text ad network, which includes hundreds of premium publishers such as USA Today, Discovery Channel, MTV, E! Television Network, Evite, NBC, Maxim, ImpreMedia.

(I asked Zaw if 4INFO is on course for a head-on collision with JumpTap, which also sharpened its focus on premium content and launched a Premium Ad Network. His response: 4INFO has just launched with CBS and AOL, so there is some overlap in the strategy to focus on premium content. But there is no competition. “JumpTap is going after pure mobile Web traffic; we’re going after the traffic that is being created from SMS. It’s a fine distinction, but an important one.”)

The focus is on SMS (publishers can also choose from mobile ad formats such as click-to-call, click-to-video and click-to-the Web for text campaigns) but Zaw tells me “we’ll see AdHaven start to introduce other capabilities in the near future, where we’re [4INFO] not only serving ads in SMS, but we’re also helping publishers drive [traffic] from SMS content to WAP content, and then serve ads in those WAP content links as well.” To date the first commercial deployment of AdHaven is with VeriSign’s Messaging and Mobile Media division, a provider of SMS connectivity to more than 3 billion wireless subscribers, and its customers which include many leading corporate brands. Participating publishers can either sell their own ad inventory or participate in the 4INFO SMS Advertising Network.

My take: If we recall that 4INFO struck a trial mobile content and advertising deal with Yahoo last year, then it’s clear 4INFO is undergoing an exciting transformation that will ensure the company can compete with the major ad networks – if it decides to. But for the moment at least, the focus at 4INFO is on premium content and ways to deliver a consistent ad message across SMS and WAP content.

An excerpt from the Q&A:

Q: Let’s start with a high-level view of AdHaven and how it fits in.

A: The way that we really think about it [AdHaven] is it’s kind of like a Double-Click for SMS. But it does more than just SMS and I’ll get to that in a second. Previously, our ad-serving [offer] was only available if you were a publisher that used 4INFO connectivity. By that I mean,  in addition to your ad-serving solution, we were also your publishing platform that connected you to the carriers. Now, no matter where you are or the country you’re in, you can use AdHaven [for international reach] because 4INFO doesn’t currently support other carriers outside of the U.S. So that’s the big thing.

Q: What is the connection with VeriSign? They acquired a messaging company called m-Qube and I can imagine that they need a platform for their customers. Is there overlap or even competition?

A: For all of their [VeriSign] customers that don’t use the 4INFO platform and are using their [VeriSign's] aggregation tools, now all of those customers will have access to our ad-serving capabilities as well. We’re not in competition with the aggregators, so we’ll provide messaging when people want it, but we don’t ever see us getting into the aggregation business. VeriSign’s customers have certain sorts of enterprise requirements that, as part of the free public service from 4INFO, they may or may not receive. And so there’s always different levels of [service] that customers are looking to have. We have our own 4INFO traffic, but that’s a consumer-facing application. it’s not something that’s competitive to VeriSign’s enterprise messaging offering.

We don’t do interactive TV and voting and polling for large things like American Idol, because we’re just not set up to handle that as whereas VeriSign is. So now it means that those customers that have high bandwidth click-through requirements, with hundreds of millions of votes coming in, can now use these same sets of tools.

Q: So now you can go out to a company like SinglePoint, for example?

A: Yes, a company like that would be a customer for us.

Q: What else can you offer now that you have taken the wraps of AdHaven? Is it just about SMS?

A: You’ll see AdHaven start to actually introduce other capabilities in the near future where we’re not only serving ads in SMS, but  also helping publishers drive from SMS content to WAP content and then serve ads in those WAP content links as well.

Q: That’s where the ad networks are. Are you competing with them?

A: We’re not trying to be competitive with AdMob or Quattro or any of those guys. What we’re focusing on is being able to create more WAP traffic from our in-mobile web traffic, from our SMS traffic using AdHaven, and then being able to deliver a consistent advertising message in the SMS content and then the WAP content as well.

Q: I know from our past conversations that you understand the importance of targeting and relevancy. What are you doing about it?

A: Yes, we’re doing a lot in that direction. We’re a little bit careful of exactly what we disclose about our targeting algorithms; just given the competitive nature of the business. But I can say that if you look at where we’ve come from – from a standard ad-server that does campaign reporting – we can say we are ready to really start looking at behavioral type targeting. It has come a long way in the course of the last 6 months, and so have we.

Q: So it sounds imminent. Are you going to let me in on it?

A: Absolutely! When I’m ready to tell, you’ll be the first person I call.

Q: I’ll take you up on that one. While we’re on the topic of targeting and relevancy, I’m seeing less of an emphasis on mobile search, the capability that we thought was a pre-requisite for all this. The scenario was: You get the clues from the queries and deliver relevant ads. Now JumpTap is first and foremost an ad network, and other search companies have likewise changed their focus – and you didn’t mention it once in our interview…

A: The market is growing up. If we look at it from a JumpTap perspective; we see a carrier-centered model, one that I didn’t necessarily believe in. I definitely believe in the people in that company [JumpTap] and their focus on the advertising business. We [at 4INFO] are still big believers in the viability of search for consumers via free and open SMS and WAP and other methods, but we also understand that this is a point where mobile advertising is going to be a core piece of whatever comes out of search. We definitely still have our search business. We definitely still have our consumer-facing business. But, at the same time, you’ve got to make money, and we’re focused on making sure that we’re not only the leaders in search, but also the leaders in mobile media and technology; which I think search is a subset of.

Q: So it’s also ensuring growth through a more open approach?

A: Yes. Consumers are still absolutely able to use 4INFO for all the different services that you’ve seen before. Now the only difference is we don’t just do advertising of our own services. We provide advertising services for a huge number of different publishers; whether they are search or content or other types of alerts.

Q: Speaking of publishers, I see a strong focus on premium content publishers. Can you update me on how this is progressing?

A: We have a self-service platform for small publishers. and that’s our opened-up 4INFO.net.

For us though, we’re more interested in the short tail of premium publishers, high-quality content, and that’s what we focused our network on – not the more self-service, less interesting publishers. We just launched AOL and CBS on our network, and you don’t get much more premium than AOL or CBS.

Q: Of course, other companies are focused on premium content and publishers. I’m thinking here of JumpTap and its new Premium Ad Network…

A: There’s going to be competition for premium content. I’m [we're] not competitive with JumpTap. We are not looking to just take all of their run-of-the-mill mobile Web traffic. What we want to do is when a customer gets an SMS message and then clicks on a piece of content in that message to go to the mobile Web or video, then we’re creating that inventory – we’re creating new WAP inventory or mobile Web inventory and then we’re delivering a consistent advertising experience from the SMS message to the WAP message.

What you don’t want to have happen is:  Honda buys the SMS message and then sees Toyota on the WAP site where they’re directly trying to target that user. So it’s not competitive to what JumpTap is doing. They’re going after pure mobile Web traffic. We’re going after the traffic that’s being created; that we’re creating from SMS. It’s a fine distinction, but it’s an important one.

Q: What are some of the numbers? Nielsen named you the number one in SMS messaging, and your press release says: “The 4INFO advertising network of over 16 million users is ad-supported, with 4INFO customizing targeted, interactive SMS, WAP, and mobile video campaigns on behalf of its advertising partners and publishers. 4INFO delivers over eighty million real-time, user-requested answers and alerts via text message per month.” What can you add?

A: This year we’ll send over 2 billion SMS messages. We also will create from that SMS traffic, a little over 2 billion WAP impressions and video and mobile web impressions. So from there, we’ve grown into a pretty big network.

Q: A while back the discussion was that all this messaging is effectively costing more than it is bringing in…

A: No, not at all. We have fixed rate costs for all of our messaging services. Obviously, there’s no ad-serving. We don’t license any technology… all of this is built in-house. So no, the reality is if you understand our business, you understand it’s a business with huge operating leverage and stability to be a 60-70 percent gross margin-type company.

Q: What about the advertising experience. I have spoken with Taptu, a mobile search company that is thinking about the Touch Web and the new forms of advertising it enables. So it’s not just going to be text going forward. Again, the iPhone changes everything – including advertising. Does this present a challenge?

A: No, our belief in mobile advertising is that it’s delivering the best consumer experience possible. So if you’re on an iPhone or on a smartphone and you can get rich media video, then we’ll absolutely deliver that to you. And I talked a little about how AdHaven is going to be not just including SMS advertising, but also helping publishers drive WAP content from mobile Web content or iPhone content from that SMS content, and then serving ads there as well. So we see the better that phones get; the more interactive they get; the richer media they get, the easier it will be for us to then deliver sites in motion for our advertisers. So we’re all for smartphones and, as we continue to adapt with the markets, you’ll see us do more with rich media in the U.S. and less internationally where it’s less prevalent.

Q: What is the competitive landscape out there shaping up like? I know of a lot of other companies that insert ads into text, for example.

A: I think there’s going to be some companies coming out there and hey, let them come. The more in the market, the better the experience we’re all going to have. We think of ourselves as the 800-pound gorilla in the SMS space, and we think we’ll be the 800-pound gorilla in the mobile advertising space and that’s where we’re headed. But the more people that are educated in the market that are in the market, the better. There’s not just room for one person.

Q: What are the drivers? In Europe we see that companies like Blyk don’t just offer ads for free minutes, they have harnessed SMS to start brand conversations…

A: Europe has primarily a premium model and I think there’s now a place; now that the advertising market has matured to the point where the large U.S. advertisers and agencies that have global reach understand how to use mobile advertising better. We’ve got over 200 brands that ran on the platform in 2008.I think you’ll start to see more of that in Europe, which is why we’re releasing AdHaven for international so that there can be a mix of that premium and free model; a mix of that giving away free mobile marketing content for a subsidy model. And we’ll bring all of our large agency partners and brand partners in the U.S. over to some of the existing European and Asian operations.

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.

To be clear: I am not blaming any one ad network. Realistically, it’s early days and we have to crawl, walk, run. However, companies with far less passion for the industry than I will no doubt soon lose patience with trial-and-error ad targeting.

(On a personal note, using referral data from a recent banner ad campaign offering a Body Mass Index calculator for free download I discovered the ad was showing up on a range of irrelevant sites focused on topics ranging from MP3s to “chat with hot girls.” My own intellectual curiosity is boundless and I believe serendipity is a must-have element in our lives (an observation proven by the fact that visitors to the hot chat site did indeed click on my BMI offer). However, are you willing to bet your ad budget on the off chance that someone interested in hot chat will click through to check if they are overweight? Fat chance (no pun intended).

No wonder targeting is the new mobile business mantra. From here on expect a new emphasis on quality and not quantity in mobile advertising. JumpTap, a mobile search and advertising company, has another one to add: Exclusivity. In the pre-holiday hectic, JumpTap took the wraps off what it calls a Premium Ad Network. In comparison to “typical ad networks,” JumpTap tells us that media buys across the JumpTap Premium Ad Network of premium mobile channels (including ten different audience segmented packages including entertainment, finance, news, reference, sports, lifestyle, social networking, travel, and games) elicits “higher engagement and a higher return on investment.” The logic at play here: Branded content sites have a greater impact on key metrics such as increased CTRs, brand awareness and purchase intent than generic mobile ad networks. Translated: Big brands draw big interest.

By way of background, JumpTap has third-party exclusives with content publishers including NBC.com, BravoTV.com, SCIFI.com, astrology.com, E! Online, Currency, Citizen Sports (Sportacular),LimeLife, ScoreMobile iPhone Edition, SportsTap, Showtimes, and Sudoku (Free). Other more recent additions to the JumpTap Premium Mobile Ad Network also include: media companies MSNBC, NBA, AOL, Ask.com, Fox News & Business, and Kargo (includes MotorTrend, Tiger Beat, Shape, US Magazine); mobile content companies Hands-On Mobile, MocoSpace, and Verve Wireless; and iPhone web and client applications including AroundMe, BlackBook, Loopt, Mobile News Network Powered by AP, Shazam, and SnapMyLife.

At the other end of the spectrum, JumpTap launched ADtap for Publishers, a solution that provides mobile publishers, media companies and iPhone application developers a means to monetize their traffic and streamline sales to brands and agencies (companies in the JumpTap Premium Mobile Ad Network). JumpTap also now provides the full outsourcing of mobile advertising operations for early-stage publishers to monetize their impressions. Partner programs allow publishers access to reciprocal remnant advertising across other member sites as a means to increase visibility and drive traffic. Finally, ADtap can integrate and manage multiple third-party ad networks for high-volume publishers seeking to backfill remnant inventory.

To round out the offer JumpTap has formally rebranded its mobile advertising engine (targeting technology JumpTap discussed with MSG here) as tapLink, a platform that builds targeting intelligence from multiple sources including search queries, browsing history, demographic and location data. Read between the lines and JumpTap has put together a capabilities mix to deliver targeted ads and drive higher yields. Relevant ads tied to content that rocks – makes sense…

But what does this shift tell us about JumpTap? Is it a mobile search company or an ad network? Is JumpTap going strong in Europe? These are some of the questions I explored in a briefing with Paran Johar, JumpTap CMO. (Thanks again to Julie Ginches at JumpTap who has a perfect track record in arranging briefings for me with JumpTap execs.)

Q: Let’s start with Denmark, where you are exclusively handling the mobile advertising inventory for 3 there. How does this impact your footprint there?

A: As you know, we’re working with 3 and we’re working with TeliaSonera. I think this is a real testament to what’s happening in the mobile operator environment. More operators are recognising that – as they reinvent themselves – they need to become more media- centric and they need to partner with companies that can empower them to make that transformation . Someone whose interests are clearly aligned with theirs and can help them develop their own mobile ad revenue streams.

Q: You’re in charge of inventory. But where does mobile search fit in here? At conferences people ask me: Is JumpTap still a search provider – so I’ll put the question to you…

A: We’ve evolved. Our core business is mobile advertising, both premium and performance. The key differentiators are our premium mobile ad network and performance marketplace both of which continue to grow globally and remember the mobile ad network could include on- or off-deck, meaning it could be publisher inventory or it could be carrier inventory .  Second is our unique targeting abilities – this is where our search heritage comes into play as keyword search and query data helps fuel more effective and targeted advertising but it goes beyond that –  by tapping numerous other information feeds. And then there’s the full array of Publisher, Advertiser and Operator solutions and services that make it easy for partners to monetize their assets.

Q: So, clearly intertwined?

A: Yes. So, with 3 Denmark, we are representing their mobile ad display inventory.  In the case of TeliaSonera, we do white label search and we monetize display advertising for them.

Q: So you both a search company and an advertising company? You’ve not left one for the other?

A: We’re trying to bring it full circle here, everyone knows about our white label search heritageWe’ve launched the Premium Mobile Ad Network, and obviously the monetization and targeting platform, tapLink, which is really the engine that helps monetise publisher’s inventory to a higher level and possesses the targeting intelligence to delivers the relevant ads. So, if you think about it, the publisher gets a higher effective CPM because now they have a much more targeted audience. The advertiser gets targeted audiences, so their dollars are being wasted less. And the user gets a better experience because they’re not being spammed with ads irrelevant to their interests.

Q: Who are your competitors now that you are evolving into an ad network?

A: We compete with Google and Yahoo. And both sit at that intersection. They both have search and advertising. Google has it with the acquisition of Double Click and certainly Yahoo has a display product. Many of our operators, many of our partners, started with search but it has evolved into a dual relationship [search and advertising]. There are the pure play generic ad networks out there but their targeting capabilities are so rudimentary, we don’t think they’ll be around for the long run.

Q: Is your value-ad the white label neutrality you bring to the table or the exclusives with content companies. Do you get more mileage out of search or advertising?

A: First, an observation about the marketplace, because it’s also evolving. It really is the most aggressive we’ve seen and we’re seeing more that operators want a white label search solution provider who can actually take their carrier data, monetize it and provide a branded experience for their customer base.  Operators can concede that business completely [to branded search providers], but they still need a platform like tapLink which sits at a totally different layer in the stack, to utilize and protect the data necessary to deliver targeted ads.  That same evolution holds for the ad display network business as well.

Back to your other question. Our business is mobile advertising.  I think what this says is that more operators are beginning to understand that they need help to reinvent themselves as a media-centric organisations, and they recognize that a carrier-friendly solution like JumpTap is critical in that reinvention.  They know and trust us from the earlier white label search partnerships and we’ve also proven our advertising solutions with some of the largest and most recognized carriers in the industry.

Q: How are you helping operators get reach?

In Denmark we’re allowing them to participate in our premium mobile ad network as opposed to some of the ad networks that just really focus on mass reach and billions and billions of impressions.  Our approach is premium content plus targeting builds relevancy which leads to user engagement.  It is really getting premium content providers. Whether that’s an operator, a publisher or an application developer, those are all forms of content. If you add that content to relevant targeting, users will engage more.  We’re the only ones out there right now really focusing on getting the content, adding on the targeting premise to build a relevancy so the consumer doesn’t get a generic ad. They get what is relevant.

Q: Are you saying you won’t show an ad if you don’t have the right ad to match a query?

A: We may choose not to show one, or we may show one the publisher chooses to show. Different publishers and operators are going to have different rules. If we don’t have a relevant ad, there might be times they [publishers] may show a house ad.

Q: Can you share some stats? Your recent press release states: “Of 2.3 billion total available monthly impressions, the JumpTap Premium Mobile Ad Network attracts more than 26 million unique users with over 450 million premium page views per month. The iPhone, which has experienced rapid growth across JumpTap’s ad network, offers over 260 million monthly premium impressions.”

A: I think the key here is really bringing together consumer interest to provide a high level of engagement in a premium content network.  We did do a study some time ago in Scandinavia which showed the increase in brand metrics of our network. In general, our click rates are above industry average. Certainly, I don’t know what our competitor click-through rates are, but we’re seeing [CTR] rates ranging from 2 – 15 percent, which is certainly high within the overall mobile advertising eco system.

Q: Why are you focused on exclusive deals with content companies in the pipeline?

A: The volume that we’re doing on the Premium Ad Network is 300 million premium page views per month. I think exclusive is very important because, if you’re a media buyer and you have four of five different ad networks selling your inventory, that just commoditizes it. Why? Because if I know that five ad networks are selling it, I’ll just call each and every one of them until I get the best price. So, we focus on exclusive relationships. In the platform I talked about [tapLink] it’s about taking input from multiple sources –  it could be search word query data, it could be browsing history, demographic information or location data –  whatever is passed to us from an operator or another publisher, to build relevancy.

NOTE: After the briefing Paran told me more exclusive deals are in the pipeline. He promised to let me in on the news early, so please check back.

Disclaimer: Maria Sanchez is an employee of Bango, an MSG supporter; JumpTap has sponsored an MSG podcast series.

I am proud that EContent named me to its panel of 14 judges to evaluate the 100+ candidates across the categories: classification & taxonomy; collaboration; content commerce; content creation, production, & digital publishing; content delivery; content management; content security; fee-based info services; intranets & portals; mobile content; search engines & technologies; and social media. (We spent one month in our judging wiki, reviewing previous list members and considering a slew of worthy new contenders. In addition to casting votes, we were involved in lively discussion and debate – a process that was daunting at times, but always incredibly rewarding.)

More importantly, my participation in the judging team allowed me to introduce my peers to mobile industry innovators high on my radar and emphasize the role of mobile-only search and personalization companies in the scheme of things.

Content may not be convergent yet, but the all-pervasive nature of digital content reinforces how important it is for organizations of all kinds to maximize this essential resource and, as my dear friend and mentor Tomi Ahonen would say, Think mobile.

Congratulations are in order for the four new (mobile) additions to the EContent100: ChangingWorlds, CrispWireless JumpTap, MCN and SurfKitchen. They join other movers and shakers that made the list including Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Nokia and Twitter. As today’s press releases show, SurfKitchen was recognized for its innovation and influence in mobile content and service delivery; MCN was commended for its position as a leader in federated mobile search and search merchandising; and JumpTap was honored for its advances in mobile search and advertising. (Click here for the full EContent list.)

A special thanks to Julie Ginches at JumpTap for not only issuing a press release, but also recognizing my involvement in the judging team. I would also like to extend my personal thanks to the dozens of mobile content and search companies that reached out to me directly and encourage you to keep the conversation going. I will be a member of the judging team for years to come – and will work with EContent in every way I can to ensure that those companies hard at work to make digital content work are recognized for their accomplishments.

On a personal note: I invite you to peruse my EContent columns (aptly titled Agile Minds) here. EContent has also promoted me to the position of contributing editor, so please reach out to me directly with your pitches. I am always open to good ideas! As I have said many times, my mission, and the purpose of MSG, is to identify and amplify voices the industry should hear.

Disclaimer: JumpTap has sponsored an MSG podcast series; MCN is an MSG supporter

Regular readers may recall that my mobile advertising white paper (Mobile advertising for newbies) documented how I (together with my esteemed colleague Maria Sanchez) set up the campaigns using Mobislim, a small-scale mobile site created by Bango. The white paper also examined the depth and breadth of mobile analytics solutions offered by AdMob and Bango. Today’s post will take that all a step further, providing an analysis of the performance of the three ad networks I chose at random. (BTW: You can read the raw data on Maria’s new-look Mobislim blog.)

I had assumed that made-for-mobile ad networks, with mobile at the core of their competitive DNA, would naturally deliver superior results – or at least shine when compared with Google. (After all, Google, an Internet company, has had a tough time recently delivering mobile sites in their mobile search results and displaying mobile advertisements the way publishers/brands meant them to be. For more background, I recommend you read this MSG post which documents Google’s poor search experience and results.)

But the numbers delivered by AdMob and Bango tell another story. One, Google limited my campaign to the U.S. and U.K. as I had specifically requested. Two: Google delivered mobile traffic from mobile users (as opposed to traffic from users on their PCs) to my site.

In my view, Google “gets” mobile advertising. (Ironically, this view is mirrored in an informal survey of 79 customers conducted by Bango. In it, 86.7 percent of respondents named Google as their number one choice in mobile ad networks. Yahoo came in second with 26.7 percent, and Adultmoda/Admoda came in third with 21.7 percent. Multiple answers were allowed.)

Geography:

AdMob shows me I have 21 visits from Google – all from the U.S. (Hmm. I wonder: Are users in the U.K. surfing less than they do in the U.S., or is the U.K. a white spot in Google’s ad network footprint?). Granted, Google’s 21 visits may seem low when compared to 323 from Decktrade and 127 from Mo’Jiva, but don’t be blinded by the numbers. A closer look shows that 70 visits (or 22 percent of my total traffic) coming through Decktrade came from countries I did not target (and also did not budget for).

Bango – which reports Google gave me 18 page views from 17 unique visitors, with 83 percent coming from the U.S. and 11 percent from the U.K. – shows Decktrade delivered me 270 page views from 184 unique visitors and six countries, including India, Indonesia, and Nigeria. Again, that is four more countries than I (literally) bargained for.

But it’s not just Decktrade that delivers a high proportion of traffic from countries I did not specifically target. AbMob stats tell me 127 visitors came to my ad via Mo’Jiva. But my top three countries were India (82), the U.S. (19), and Nigeria (10). Put simply, only 15 percent of the traffic generated was actually relevant to my campaign. Bango reports Mo’Jiva delivered 81 page views from 72 unique visitors across 4 countries, including India, and Iraq.

As I wrote in my white paper, it’s great that users around the world are surfing the mobile Internet on their phones. But mobile advertising is a business, and clicks coming in from countries I did not target in my campaign are quite frankly a waste of my budget.

My take: Mobile ad networks must do more to ensure proper geographic targeting, and limit the number of users elsewhere who just happen upon my ad. Do more to control this – or risk losing advertisers (like me) to ad networks (like Google) that can. While Google did not deliver a huge number of page visits, it was nonetheless able to deliver traffic from countries where my ad message would be both relevant and effective.

Finally, a word about the split between mobile and PC users.

To be clear: Mobile advertisers want to reach mobile users.

They have creatives that match the medium, and campaigns that have been fine-tuned to target users on their phone. Put simply, mobile is the medium, the message – and it should be the audience.

So why do PC users account for a significant share of traffic coming from Decktrade and Mo’Jiva ad networks? How do I know this? AdMob and Bango mobile analytics identify iPhones, and also provide visibility into devices accessing my site via a Wi-Fi connection that appear as PC users. I can say with confidence that PC/laptop users are indeed accessing my mobile ad campaign.

According to AdMob and Bango, Google traffic comes from a mix of smartphones and devices from manufacturers including Blackberry, Samsung, and Motorola.

Not so for Mo’Jiva. AdMob reports the number two device accessing my site via Mo’Jiva is a Microsoft PC (using IE). Bango tells me 31 percent of traffic from Mo’Jiva came from users on their PC. Likewise, PC users make up much of the traffic coming in via Decktrade from countries I didn’t target in the first place.

My take: This is serious. It’s early days and we accept that all ad networks have bugs to work out. But I have to wonder how many mobile advertisers want, appreciate or would be willing to pay for traffic from PC users. Put simply: Mobile ad networks must take steps to ensure the lion’s share of visitors they deliver to mobile sites are indeed mobile users.

UPDATE: Maria and I are gearing up to do another series of campaigns (this time starting with AdMob and Admoda), which we will document on our blogs, so I encourage you to check out both sites. JumpTap has reached out to solve a glitch in the sign up process that prevented us from running a campaign using its ad network. Wish I could say the same for Yahoo and Medio Systems. Both have yet to answer our emails. In the meantime, the overwhelming positive response to my first white paper has inspired me to write a “Vol. 2″ explaining in simple terms how to set up and run campaigns on mobile social ad networks. It is slated for release during Mobile World Congress (MWC), so watch this space! And finally, I repeat my open invitation to other mobile analytics companies (thinking here of  Mobilytics, for example) to contact me directly for a briefing.

Disclaimer: AdMob, Bango and JumpTap are MSG supporters.

The valuable primer walks us through the opportunities and challenges for mobile operators, marketers and portals/publishers. The document takes a balanced view, reminding mobile operators that they are “ideally positioned to provide their customers with search tools” and outlining the options they can chose from to offer mobile search services. However, I miss a discussion of the pivotal importance of brand (for mobile operators) and reasons why mobile operators should employ all mobile search tools/services at their disposal – as long as they brand the most valuable piece of real estate: The mobile search results page. (I believe this control is a critical component of an effective mobile search strategy, a topic I address in my analysis of what’s really at stake in the Verizon-Google deal in another post later today.)

The section of the white paper on mobile search business cases is particularly valuable. A case study from JumpTap, for example, tells us how intelligent search increased ROI for Sega Mobile. In the first month of the campaign (no details on where/when etc…), Sega reported a 9 percent CTR, and 7 percent of these clicks resulted in a sale. The bottom line: Sega tallied up its sales and divided that by the total amount spent on buying keywords to calculate a 320 percent ROI. After re-running the campaign with new keywords, Sega saw a 530 percent ROI in the second month and 11 percent of clicks resulted in a sale. Not so much stellar figures – but a confirmation that success in mobile  should be measured in quality and quantity.

The case study from Medio Systems stresses the importance of keyword advertising, and illustrates how the right choices can generate high-quality leads and high conversion.

By way of background, 4INFO, a mobile search and advertising company that operates a mobile alert service delivering up-to-date information on sports, news, movies, etc… purchased advertising on Medio’s MobileNow search network targeting keywords and keyword categories. The outcome: “Initial results were extremely good; a 29 percent CTR and a 5 percent conversion rate. Simple but direct creatives such as NBA Score Alerts and NHL Live Updates compelled 29 percent of users to click on the ad, with 5 percent of these converting to subscribers.” 4INFO continues to advertise with Medio MobileNow.

My take: A helpful document for beginners – but not a roadmap. A bit thin on methodology. Nonetheless, it is a welcome primer and precisely what we need to get everyone on the same page and move this industry forward. You can download the white paper here.

Disclaimer: JumpTap is an MSG supporter.

Peggy Albright and I are road testing mobile search with the help of our sponsors and conducting briefings with mobile search companies and mobile operators – all in preparation for our upcoming quarterly series of reports, which document the end-user experience and provide insight into the key performance metrics.

In the course of our conference calls with leading search executives including Lee Ott, Director, Product Management, Mobile at Yahoo and Chris Spanos, General Manager, AOL Search Verticals, we were briefed on many topics and imminent product announcements that we cannot reveal here at this time. However, we were also treated to a few insightful stats and scoops that we now have permission to share.

With the funding announcement yesterday the timing is perfect to kick of this series of posts with some excerpts from our briefing with Adam Soroca, JumpTap Chief Product Officer.

CHANGES IN CONSUMER BEHAVIOR (January 2007 to May 2008):

· General increase in the use of mobile search:

o JumpTap divulged that one average carrier customer they have, which they declined to name, has seen a 370 percent increase in the number of unique search terms that are typed in by users on that carrier’s search box. As Adam put it: “That tells us that users are finding what they’re looking for. They’re trusting the search engine more and they’re broadening their usage of the search box.”

· Growth in number of searches per user:

o In January 2007, this operator’s customers were conducting an average of 7.3 searches per user per month. As of May 2008, “they’re doing about 11.”

· Performance:

o The percentage of times the system has an answer to the user’s query has grown from 77.4 percent in Jan. 2007 to 91.8 percent in May 2008. JumpTap attributes the improvement to a couple of things. One is that during this time period JumpTap doubled the number of unique domains that it covers in its mobile search index. Helping carriers better merchandise their content is another reason.

· General trends:

o JumpTap notices a shift away from entertainment-centric searches, such as ring tones and downloads. It reports more navigational searches: Users looking for websites (such as specific social networking sites) and utilities (such as email) on their devices.

o Local search-Interestingly, JumpTap does not see an increase in the use of search for local services. “We’re not seeing it yet in terms of a real growth in the number of searches users are doing through the main search box.” However, Adam did say when the system gives the user a prompt with a link to a local search form, the use of local search will increase by about 20 percent.

EXPANSION OF CONTENT SOURCES:

At present, and for the next few months, JumpTap is expanding the amount and types of content it covers to bring its ability to deliver a search result closer to 100 percent of the time.

At the time of our interview, Adam reported JumpTap will first focus on North American operators and achieve its objectives by bolstering the content covered for mobile search.

Specifically, it will add to its off-deck search results by enhancing its mobile search index of pure mobile sites, and blend that content with what it calls “targeted transcoded results” of high quality brands that don’t yet have a mobile presence, as well as a full Web search catalog, “which should bring the coverage rates right up to about 100 percent.”

As Adam put it: “It’s hard to imagine that, other than misspellings and really far-reaching queries, we wouldn’t have an answer between the mobile search index, the targeted transcoded drawl, and the full Web search index.”

ADVERTISING:

Over the last 6-12 months, JumpTap has worked to improve the sponsored-link marketplace across all of its properties, making sure that these links are mobile-centric and work reliably (avoiding failed links to inaccessible Web advertisements, for example).

Since mid-2007, when sponsored-link coverage rates were about 10-15 percent, JumpTap has seen the coverage rate (across all of its properties) increase to 40-45 percent. Adam attributes the improvement to the meaningful volume of sponsored links and competition among advertisers bidding on search terms. “There’s a significant amount of coverage in the sponsored links and the percentage of times we return at least one sponsored link.”

Since 3Q08, Adam noted he has seen a 40 percent increase in the average CPC. “That’s a validation that the advertisers are finding highly qualified traffic and they’re raising their bid prices to compete for that traffic.”

Please check back regularly for excerpts from our other briefings in the coming weeks as the series continues.

Disclaimer: JumpTap is an MSG supporter.

At a different level, the investment is a confirmation of the increasing importance of mobile search in the scheme of things (interface to all things digital on mobile) and the central role of white-label providers in the competitive landscape. As Paran pointed out in this post, and again during our discussion: One of JumpTap’s key differentiators is its close relationship with carriers. “Whether it is demographic or location, whatever data sets they [carriers] want to pass to us enriches our targeting capabilities.”

Moving forward, Paran tells me JumpTap is putting more emphasis on the “flip-side” of this value proposition, allowing publishers and developers to monetize their inventory to a higher CPM. Expect more reach out, more education and more efforts to get the publishers in front of JumpTap’s advertisers. Smart move if we consider the interest of minority shareholder and major advertising/marketing company WPP. Leveraging JumpTap’s advertisers is a natural next step and the recent Pinch deal (covered here) is just the start.

How is this going to come together to help publishers monetize their inventory to a higher level? Dan walked me through an example of contextual targeting on ESPN. A sports content channel, so sports-related advertising is a perfect fit, right? Wrong.

“We’ve based our solution on search technology. We don’t rely only on the tags on the publisher side. When we place an ad on ESPN, we know it’s ESPN, but we also know it’s in the NHL section. We know this is the Bruin’s page, and we know which specific player the users [viewing the content] is interested in. We know if he’s interested in the scores or in last season’s stories. Now, how we do it? We can do this because our search technology includes crawlers and spiders, and we actually read the page that this individual is looking at and distill keywords out of that, as opposed to other ad networks that just rely on the fact that this is a sports site.”

Below are some excerpts of my conversation with Dan and Paran. You might also want to check out this post at MoCoNews, where Tricia Duryee reports on her catch-up call with Paran.

INVENTORY: JumpTap’s mobile ad network is focused on premium content. By not swamping the networks with general inventory, JumpTap aims to maintain quality and high CPMs. “Our strategic direction is to focus on premium providers of content, and to target users against that content to build relevancy….The second component of what we do is to address the Long Tail, and we will be developing a series of tools to work with the smaller publishers so they can take advantage of our targeting abilities.”

TARGETING: Dan tells me the funding announcement will allow JumpTap to “continue to innovate and build more sophisticated targeting than [what] we do today and what we do today is way ahead of the rest of the market.” At the same time, JumpTap will aim to introduce “not only the sophisticated targeting, but actually offer a more simplistic targeting because that’s what the market is ready for.” JumpTap will therefore seek a balance between precision and reach. “You need to tone down your ability to target for the sake of scale. Otherwise, you’re doing a great job of slicing your traffic and end up with a group of ten people.”

MOBILE OPERATOR OPTIONS: In Dan’s view, operators can choose one of three paths. They can cut a deal with a branded search provider (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft). “It doesn’t mean they [carriers] will necessarily end up a dumb pipe, but it does mean they need to become much more proactive on other fronts to create the shareholder value upside they need [in the long term].” Put another way, giving in to Google & Co. is a short-term strategy with short-term rewards. “Carriers are realizing that, no matter how big the check can be, it’s [a deal with a branded search provider] actually a Trojan horse.” (A great time to listen in to the sponsored podcast featured in the box on the right-hand side of the site. Vendor spin aside (it is sponsored), it does a great job of outlining JumpTap’s Trojan horse argument and what is likely at stake if operators choose that option.)

The second path is somewhere in the middle, where operators use branded search but “use JumpTap as a buffer in between” to manage, develop and leverage their customer data, rather than share it with Google, Yahoo, Microsoft. The third path, one less followed, is about operators “re-inventing [their] business to become much more of a media company, utilizing us not only to manage their customer data and the targeting parameters, but [implementing] our white-label search technology, made for mobile, to monetize it.”

VERIZON-GOOGLE: No word on the likely impact or outcome. (JumpTap’s operator customer Alltel has been acquired by Verizon, and there’s a question mark over JumpTap’s role if Verizon ties up with Google for mobile search.) Dan and Paran honed in on the role of customer data in the deal (negotiations over how much information Google can retain about Verizon’s customers and their searches appear to be a thorny issue in the Verizon-Google talks), using it as a springboard to discuss analytics. As Paran observed: “Operators are beginning to understand that their customer data is one of their most precious commodities.” Indeed, carriers are just starting to level their data to enrich the search experience. “And when that happens on a wide scale, you’re going to see the game change drastically.”

My take: A funding deal that underlines the pivotal role of white-label (an attractive option for search and search monetization through advertising). More importantly, it confirms JumpTap’s ambitions to lead the pack by leveraging its search technology and advertisers to monetize inventory at a higher level. Mobile search may not be broken after all; it has simply stalled while operators get their head around their options and how best to leverage the real power of the customer data they wield. JumpTap provides a valuable blueprint to follow.

(The next post, co-written with Peggy Albright, will share some insights from a series of briefings with JumpTap on key mobile search trends .)

Disclaimer: JumpTap is an MSG supporter.