Nokia dives into mobile ad waters: Targeted ad service launched in Europe, to hit U.S. this year

Nokia Corp. announced a new push into mobile advertising, moves that likely will put the mobile powerhouse into direct competition with the likes of Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. as well as a raft of mobile advertising startups.
Indeed, the news serves to further highlight the market’s growing interest in mobile advertising. Carriers and content vendors see ads as a way to promote mobile content and make money from such services-a model that closely follows the development of the wired Internet. Thus, ad-supported content could serve to greatly expand the mobile content market.
Nokia hopes to cash in on the move to mobile marketing. The company introduced its Nokia Ad Service and Nokia Advertising Connector products, which the company said would allow advertisers to deliver targeted advertising on mobile services and applications, and even select whether the ad will be presented as text, audio or video content.
Nokia Ad Service supports advertisers’ planning, deployment, optimization and reporting processes. Typical advertisements will include banner ads in browsing services, ads in applications and videos. Nokia Ad Service already launched in Europe and will expand globally by the second half of 2007, according to Nokia.
“As advertisers struggle to reach personalized targeting with traditional media such as print and TV, mobile advertising is becoming an increasingly attractive channel for brands,” said Tom Henriksson, director of the service.
Nokia Advertising Connector enables the delivery of targeted ads to mobile devices. Through the service, ads will be tied to specific multimedia-digital newspaper content, television, music or map directions-for optimized results. The platform provides access to third parties and allows their ad sales teams to sell content for the mobile medium. Nokia Advertising Connector will run several pilots in the coming months and is expected to be commercially available by the end of the year, according the handset manufacturer.
“With Nokia Advertising Connector we are partnering with newspaper publishers, other traditional media companies, aggregators, platform companies, operators and Internet companies to help them serve their current advertisers by offering easy access to a mobile audience,” said Nokia executive Matthew Snyder.