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View Full Version : Operators get together for tea and biscuits



3g-g
14th February 2008, 12:17 AM
Someone remind me again. Cartels, illegal aren't they? So, all the operators getting together to "sew up" mobile advertising there'd be no issue with that eh?



Showing their determination to hang on to revenues generated by mobile advertising, all five UK operators have joined forces to great industry standard metrics to monitor the mobile web.

Currently at the feasibility study level, the group is working closely with the GSMA (operators' association) and hopes to prove the concept before Q1 2009. The hope is that the whole scheme will then go international.

Given that the five include Europe's top networking groups: - including Vodafone, Telfonica, T-Mobile and FT-Orange, the project has a more than fair chance of succeeding.

The objective is agree a standard form for metrics, which, in a nutshell means that all five will be measuring the effectiveness of mobile advertising in the same way.

They call it a "common mobile media currency" but it's really hard data against which they can flog ads. And crucially the likes of a Google, Microsoft or Yahoo aren't in the loop.

According to Richard Saggers from Vodafone, the group is merely "responding to repeated demands from media planners around the world for more transparency of the mobile channel."

Paul Goode, from data gatherers, M:metrics, told the INQ that this move was unprecedented across any form of communication. It's the sort of information which advertisers would kill for in other forms of media.

The mobile internet is, of course, unique. The mobile operators control access entirely and if they all do get together they can really sew mobile advertising up against the entry of the big Web 2.0 players.

http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/02/13/operators-unite-mobile-ads

Hands0n
14th February 2008, 11:20 PM
I have said that, since day one, the GSMA is nothing more than a cover for the mobile network operators cosy cartel. That they do so with pan-European blessing is shameful. It surprises me, then, that the likes of Viviane Reding are getting away with beating the GSMA's members into submission.

Expect this setting of a "standard" to "respond to repeated demands from ...." to be repeated across all industries that the "media planners around the world" use in Europe.

I can see myself, in time to come, returning to the gramaphone, wireless radio and perhaps even a book or two.