New mobile technology said to offer advertising potential

Part of the Huge Group, this majority shareholding in Eyeballs Mobile Advertising is said to mean the group will also benefit from any international expansion moves.

Duncan Palmer, group marketing manager for Huge Group, says Huge Media was formed to take this technology to market in South Africa. “The company will become a ‘media owner' - it will build and own the access to a mobile phone subscriber base, to which it will be able to serve advertising.”

Technological first

The technology has been developed in South Africa over several years. It is reputed to be in many respects a world first and enjoys patent protection both in South Africa and internationally. Currently the technology solution runs on Symbian-based smartphones, across all networks, with BlackBerry compatibility next in the development queue and due for release in early 2010.

This will be the first commercial implementation of the technology worldwide, after a beta trial that was run in South Africa last year.

This technology utilises the ‘interaction-initiation' time on users' mobile phones to display customised advertising, content and information to the user.

Justin Lavers, sales and marketing manager for Huge Media, comments, “Cellphones are South Africa's primary and ubiquitous form of communication, with a pervasiveness not seen in any other medium. It makes perfect sense that this will soon be the most valuable real estate in the media world, as well as possibly the most fickle - it takes a lot for a user to invite a supplier onto his or her personal mobile space. This technology achieves this with a level of elegance diametrically opposed to existing market offerings and we have already seen an unusually high level of product loyalty in the beta trials.”

He says the technology has unique user appeal and acceptability. “Unlike current methods of mobile advertising, which generally invades your personal space and time even if opted-in, this technology is completely non-intrusive and does not require the user to change mobile phone behaviour. In fact, international research has shown that users are positively disposed during genuine phone communication time. Further, it is measurable right down to the confirmed view status of each advertisement, making our reporting completely accurate and transparent.”

Local advertising support

On the subject of local media support, Lavers says, “We have had widespread and positive response from the advertising industry as a whole. The market is ready for a game-changing development, and this promises to be it. Advertisers are really keen to give this new technology a try.”

“In addition we believe this advertising proposition will be extremely well received, at the aggressive cpm (cost-per-thousand) rates at which we will be able to deliver, which will compete very favourably with existing, far less sophisticated or transparent digital media offerings. It will be a case of newer-better-cheaper.”

He concludes, “The potential in the mobile advertising arena is immense and hardly tapped. The market has been waiting for an advance such as this, which will allow proper exploitation of the tremendous opportunities in this space.”