Intelligent advertising on mobile

MONTE CARLO, MONACO: Day two of the Nokia Developer Summit is seeing some active dialogue between the mobile developer community and the Finnish handset manufacturer. With topics ranging from email messaging for the masses to mobile applications going the service way, the summit aims to empower developers to simplify the chain that leads from concept to reaching the target user base.

Monetizing applications through advertising is clearly the most discussed topic of the day at the summit. Tom Henriksson, head of Nokia Interactive, illustrated to developers, the power of advertising through mobile applications, with an Indian example.

In the first ever instance of embedding advertising into a mobile game that comes pre-installed on 200,000 handsets, Gillette chose to partner with Nokia with a Gillette Cricket Game for Indian users. Nokia claims that the underlying technology which powers ‘in-application’ advertising of this nature, is quite complex.

Understandably so, multiple platforms like Java, Android and Brew have to interact with frameworks like WAP, Widgets and videos, and at the content dissemination stage, with region- and country-specific protocols and operators.

This complexity is amplified with ‘intelligent advertising’ where the geo-location and interests of the user needs to be taken into consideration. In a real case scenario, Nokia has access to your phonebook, your calendar of appointments, and via your mobile social networking, it can get a fair idea of your interests and hobbies.

From an advertiser's point of view, this translates to knowing where you are, what kind of people you interact with, where you are likely to travel in the next few days, and even an idea of what your state of mind is, when you reach your next business destination – all powered by a combination of Nokia Maps, and the embedded social networking capabilities.

Developers can now create application that provides a service to users when he/she arrives at a new destination. This can be further narrowed down to specific interest areas of the user. In simpler words, advertising that serves a personalized need, not a massive blast of messages, that hopes to reach at least 10 per cent of the desired audience.

Another interesting application is illustrated in an initiative where Nokia has reached out to the rural agricultural population in India, by empowering them with information on weather, market prices of commodities and more. Developers can choose to embed advertising into this model and hope to reach out to large volumes of individuals with specific needs.

The bottom line is that Nokia has set a fairly detailed roadmap for developers to leverage out of their own applications by including an advertising component to it. Unlike traditional approaches, advertising for a mobile audience is more targeted, personal and the results are instantly measurable – all thanks to platform integration, information of the target user and number of handsets already in circulation.