Mobile ads center stage at MWC: Nokia’s plans highlight increased push into space

The opening day of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, was all about mobile advertising.
Nokia Corp. made the biggest splash with its Media Network, an alliance of more than 70 publishers and operators including Sprint Nextel Corp., Discovery, Hearst and Reuters. The company claims ads are already yielding average click-through rates of 10% “in certain channels” and the network has a potential reach of 100 million mobile consumers.
The effort leverages analytics technology from Enpocket, a Boston-based firm Nokia acquired for an undisclosed sum last year.
“Nokia is building upon an unrivaled understanding of the mobile consumer, our relationships with blue-chip publishers and top-tier operators, and a legacy of campaign optimization through analytics to create a high-performing solution for advertisers,” said Mike Baker, VP and head of Nokia Interactive.
Nokia also unveiled an upgraded version of its mobile mapping application and introduced Share on Ovi, a free personal media-sharing community. In other mobile advertising news:
. Five European carriers formed a working group to develop common measurement standards for wireless marketing campaigns. GSM Association members Vodafone Group plc, Telefonica O2 Europe, T-Mobile International and Orange aim to work with advertising industry associations to develop a range of metrics to “describe the mobile audience” and measure the effectiveness of wireless ads.
. Comverse launched its mobile advertising solution, which is designed to deliver ads through text, multimedia messaging, visual voicemail, ringback tones and on the wireless Internet. The offering includes an ad server, ad-targeting engine, data collectors and a campaign management component as well as comprehensive billing and reporting tools.
. Airwide Solutions touted a service billed as “the fastest way for operators to ad-enable networks.” The solution is already being used by Blyk, a free, ad-funded European mobile virtual network operator.
. Microsoft Corp. added several major European publishers to its mobile ad network including L’Equipe, Boursier.com and Autonews. And Orange Spain tapped Microsoft as its ad-serving partner for wireless display ads.
. Ad-funded mobile game publisher Greystripe reported a click-through rate of more than 4% during a two-month campaign for Yahoo Inc.’s oneSearch mobile Web portal. The results “were fantastic, with the CTR and lowest user acquisition cost for all Yahoo oneSearch mobile advertising campaigns,” according to Yahoo Marketing Manager Trent Gruenwald.
San Francisco-based startup Ad Infuse said it will team with international IT services provider Atos Origin to expand its offerings for mobile operators. The company plans to integrate its platform with Atos’ global reach and hosting capabilities to offer a fully managed solution.