An Interview with George Yazbek, Strategic Marketing Director

Recent articles on mobile advertising has shown the excitement about what the marketers and advertising agencies will do with this new-found tool are numerous. But behind the potential campaigns are players like Jinny Software. Not only do they enable network operators to deliver compelling personalised messaging and media services to subscribers, but the company’s Filtering Engine is right at the heart of the mobile advertising boom, enabling sponsored content by attaching advertisements to SMS, MMS, WAP and media traffic to create high value targeted adverts for advertising sponsors. This interview with George Yazbek, Strategic Marketing Director, takes a look at the technology behind mobile messaging advertising.

The Technology Behind Mobile Messaging Advertising

George Yazbek, Strategic Director, Jinny Software takes a look at some of the technological aspects of enabling mobile messaging advertising to take place in the context of the sponsored advertisement model. “Mobile Messaging Advertising is well on its way to being an established tool in the marketing and advertising department portfolio. Indeed, many campaigns have been very successful so far with industry leaders predicting 2007 as the year in which mobile marketing and advertising services will really take off.” Yazbek stresses that, “There are a variety of business models for mobile advertising, some of which shift the driving force to the subscriber and through implementation could create a mutually beneficial relationship between the advertiser, the operator and the subscriber.”

But what’s the incentive for the various parties? Yazbek makes the point, “Mobile operators need new revenue streams to cover the commoditisation of voice and ever-decreasing revenues. Advertisers are always on the look-out for new channels to carry their targeted message to subscribers, effectively. Although subscribers have services available to them they do not necessarily use them because the cost may be prohibitive or there may be no other incentive for uptake.”

But he makes the point even stronger that the mobile phone, as a personal device, is always on and nearly always available. Hence, leveraging the mobile channel for targeted advertising will bring a lot of value to advertisers, particularly as mobile phone penetration is over 100% in many developed countries and well over 50% in many emerging markets. “For advertisers, the mobile phone is becoming ‘the’ personal communication channel and its users are responsive. Advertisers are using this channel in the hope of connecting with the consumer in a way that media of other kinds, TV or radio for example, could never offer. And it is essential that messaging specialists like Jinny provide the enabling technology to make this happen.”

Sponored Message Advertising

Taking the case of sponsored message advertising, Yazbek explains that instead of having subscribers pay a per-usage, or a bundle fee for using a service, sponsors/advertisers cover part or all of the subscriber costs. “From the operator’s perspective,” he explains, “this has the potential of greatly increasing usage and breaking the barriers to adoption of some services. For example, one of the reasons behind the slow MMS take-up has been the high cost to the subscriber compared to SMS. However, if this cost for the subscriber were to be covered in all or in part by a sponsor or sponsors, which would simultaneously support their advertising campaign, then there would be an obvious path to uptake and the clearing of barriers to MMS usage".

“This model would put the subscriber in the driving seat, reducing subscriber costs of sending SMS and MMS messages and the cost of WAP downloads. The sponsored message advertising model puts the subscriber in a position to opt in to sponsored advertising campaigns and allows advertisers to append targeted adverts to messages based on ‘key words’ within the message text, time or message origin location.” Yazbek - and Jinny as a whole - clearly understand the philosophy and the needs behind this powerful new marketing phenomenon, and it is this which has enabled them to deliver the technology to support and stay at least one step ahead of the evolving trend.

“Implementing an advert in SMS,” Yazbek begins, “is not straightforward. The simplest way is to embed an advert in the message text and provide a short code to dial, in case the subscriber is interested. A Flash SMS initiating a USSD session to the mobile handset ensures that there is interaction with the user. A WAP Push message can allow the user to click through to the advertiser’s web site.” He explains further that graphical adverts can be sent by converting an original SMS message to an MMS and embedding the advert within it. Having the advertising engine embed the advertisement within the MMS as an extra slide – a typical function of Jinny’s Filtering Engine - is one way of handling MMS advertising. Web advertising, on the other hand, is done by redirecting the browser to the adverts for a certain period, and then returning to the original page. A filtering engine at network level would determine which messages to target. Such an engine would scan messages and append adverts if certain keywords appear.

Critical Success Factors of Sponsored Messaging

On the philosophy behind the process, George Yazbek points out that there are two important factors critical to the success of the sponsored-message, advertising model. “Firstly, the message sender should be able to decide whether the message is sponsored or not. This opt-in model will ensure that serious messages are not hampered from going directly to the intended recipient. Secondly, the advertisement should offer benefits to the subscriber. If opting in to the advertising campaign allows the subscriber to send certain messages for free, or for a reduction in the normal or standard fee, then there would be strong incentive to use the service.”

The matter of knowing the customer is stressed as essential by Yazbek. “Understanding the consumer profile is a key element of advertising. Once you determine who your target consumers are, then you can go about pitching your product to them through whatever channels suit your purpose. Mobile operators hold masses of data about their subscribers, understanding detailed profiles, certainly of their postpaid subscriber segments. They possess a lot of profiling information from CDRs/usage data about the message sender and often the recipient too, especially if he or she is also a subscriber with the same operator’s network. The operator will typically know the subscribers’ messaging usage, age group, address and the average bill, at the very least.”

For the prepaid customer, on the other hand, the effective anonymity of the user has meant targeted marketing campaigns for the operator or advertiser/marketer have simply not been possible. However, as Yazbek explains, “effective business intelligence techniques now allow operators to tap into the wealth of information on their prepaid users that certainly do enable effective segmentation and detailed profiling, in turn providing the data any advertising or marketing team would need to prosecute a targeted campaign directed at prepaid users. And it is likely to be a sponsor-paid-for mobile advertising model, which will be the most appropriate fit wherever a large prepaid subscriber base exists.”