Unease at Nokia's ad ventures

News

Stuart O'Brien Mar 8 2007, 11:00am

Mobile advertising specialists have voiced their concern at Nokia's launch of potentially competing products.

The Finnish handset giant unveiled its Ad Service and Advertising Connector platforms earlier this week, marking its latest move into the service sector.

Privately the announcement took many specialist ad providers off-guard, but San Francisco-based Amobee Media Systems is the first to voice its concerns publicly.

In a statement issued this morning, Amobee's chief sales and marketing officer Patrick Parodi - who is also global chair at the Mobile Entertainment Forum - questioned whether operators and brands would be willing to accept Nokia as an ad-serving platform provider.

"Operators are starting to play an essential role in being able to serve impressions to all customers and all handsets with the benefit of information such as the users’ location," said Parodi.

"Ultimately it is the age old question about who owns the customer and the inventory. Mobile advertising inventory will exist on both the handset (through the injection of ads within the device) and within the network (WAP gateway, SMSC, and Video and Music server advertising insertions) and both will need to be addressed."

Advertising is fast becoming one of the most competitive sectors within the mobile content industry, with specialists like Amobee, Enpocket, Screentonic and Admob all jostling for position with the Yahoo's of the world.