European operators take stakes in mobile ad specialist Amobee to guard against Google, Yahoo.
The FT reports that Vodafone and Telefonica have each taken an undisclosed minority stake in Amobee - which is already working with both to serve ads on their portals and within the content offered from them.The operators say they opted to take stakes in Amobee in order to better understand what is an often confusing mobile advertising landscape.
Russ Shaw, director of innovation at Telefónica, told the FT: "Is [mobile advertising] going to be as big as everyone says it will be? We're not entirely sure, but we felt it was important to be close to this."
Amobee says its services will help operators like Telefonica and Vodafone (which already uses Yahoo to sell on-portal ad-space) to fend off competition from the likes of Google and Yahoo.
Amobee chief exec Zohar Levkovitz said: "If the user experience on a Vodafone handset is going to be Google Android or Yahoo To Go, they're going to be just people with a connection to the net. We are helping operators take control of their own destiny."
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