New Interactive Mobile Advertising Service from America Movil and MyScreen

America Movil, a well known wireless service provider in Latin America, has joined hands with MyScreen, a Canada based mobile advertising company, to launch an interactive mobile advertising service across Latin American and the Caribbean.

This, as you can imagine, is an opt-in service which is available only to those who subscribe to the service voluntarily. Customers will be delivered interactive full screen ads at the end of every call. Banner ads will be served when customers are browsing the net on their mobile phone. The subscribers who opt in to the service will get special discounts, offers, and free services which are not available to regular subscribers of America Movil.

The ads delivered are highly targeted based on the preferences of each subscriber. The subscribers can get ads from different categories like health, entertainment, lifestyle, and sports. Subscribers can accumulate reward points for every ad they view on their mobile phone. They can redeem these reward points to get free services and other such offers from their operator.

America Movil and MyScreen conducted a trial this year to get an idea of the response from subscribers. Much to everyone’s surprise, the ads from MyScreen generated 20% CTR (click through rate), which is unprecedented to say the least. Just so you know, online ads, which have become ubiquitous these days, generate a CTR of 1%. In other words, the response to mobile ads, at least in this scenario, was 20 times higher than the response to online ads. This encouraged the parties involved tremendously to introduce the service to America Movil customers.

In my opinion, the timing of this alliance could not have been better. A recent report from Juniper Research says that mobile advertising in Latin America is still in its nascent stage and is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. In 2012, the amount spent on mobile advertising in the region is expected to be somewhere around $1.3 billion. Considering the fact that America Movil has millions of subscribers from the region, it makes sense for them to join hands with MyScreen to come up with such a service.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising, All things mobile phones.

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The Future of 3G and 4G Services - A Detailed Look

Wanna hear something really incredible? According to TeleGeography, by the year 2013, the addressable market for 3G and 4G mobile services will be, hold your breath, somewhere around 4.5 billion people. In other words, nearly one third of all mobile users in the world will have access to these high speed mobile networks. That is right folks. An unbelievably big number – 4.5 billion wireless subscribers.

It is expected that more than 95% of wireless subscribers in Western Europe will have access to 3G and 4G services in 2013, which is nothing short of amazing. Europe still continues to be the leader as far as mobile market is concerned. Nearly 90% of mobile users in the U.S. and Canada, more than 80% of users in Latin America and Eastern Europe, 70% of users in the Middle East and Africa, and 60% of users in the Asia Pacific region will have access to these next generation cellular services. While it could be said that this is a highly optimistic prediction, the possibility of such an occurrence definitely cannot be ruled out considering the rate at which mobile web and other mobile related services are growing.

I have often argued that India and China are the countries to look for when it comes to mobile services because of their huge population and rapidly developing economies. Now, looking at the numbers above, some of you might wonder why only 60% of users in Asia are expected to have access to 3G and 4G services. The reason is not hard to fathom. The population of China and India is so big that it is nearly impossible for mobile service providers to expand their networks to that extent in such a small period of time. So, even if only 60% of wireless users access 3G and 4G services, it is still a huge achievement.

The most important thing about this news is that it hints at the possibility of a global network of mobile phone users connected by the invisible web of 3G and 4G networks. This, in my opinion, could result in the explosive growth of mobile social networking. The ability to access social networking sites right from their mobile phone at the click of a button is something that every other mobile user, particularly teens and young adults, wants. While this news is certainly exciting, it is not that big of a surprise to me. After all, it is something that we all knew was going to happen sooner than later, isn’t it?

Categories: All things mobile phones, Mobile Social Networking, Mobile Web.

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