DialPlus wins the 2008 Smaato Mobile Advertising Award

Mobile advertising solutions provider Smaato announced the winner of the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award for this year a couple of days back. The award went to DialPlus, a San Diego based mobile advertising firm, for its mobile application which fetches data relevant to the phone calls you make.

The application from DialPlus works this way – when you make a call, it will fetch whatever data available related to the phone call and show it to you. The information could be anything – restaurant menus, directions, and even profiles from social networking sites. The application won the appreciation of almost all the jury members.

The mobile publishers and developers who participated were allowed to upload a video sales pitch to a website and provide more information through a PDF file. The jury, on seeing the sales pitch and the PDF file, judged the quality and ease of use of various applications and made the final decision.

There were more than a hundred entrants and Smaato was very happy about the fact that its award has garnered so much attention. Also, it indicates an important fact – the healthy competition among mobile advertising companies and the rising number of innovative mobile applications. Both of which are very good for the mobile ecosystem.

Lisa LeVasseur, the CEO of DialPlus, was very happy about her company winning the award and stated that DialPlus has made huge progress in a very short period of time. As the winner of the Smaato Mobile Advertising Award, DialPlus will be able to participate at the 2009 Mobile World Congress free of cost and will get to meet four first class venture capitalists from Europe and the U.S. as well.

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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Mobile Advertising Startups Attract VCs Despite Rough Economy

We already saw how bad economy has managed to make a lot of companies interested in mobile advertising. It does not stop there. It keeps getting better and better. According to the latest reports, a lot of VCs (venture capitalists) are interested to invest in mobile advertising start ups as they show a lot of promise despite the rough economy.

Two examples come to my mind right now.

1. Blyk, one of the most popular companies in the market right now, recently managed to raise more than $50 million in private investments in its third round of funding. Considering the growth it has had so far, I would have to say that the investors have made the right choice.

2. AdMob, yet another famous U.S. based company, managed to raise around $16 million a few months back. Again, considering the numbers we have seen so far, this does not sound surprising at all.

If you notice carefully, you can see that there has been a paradigm shift in the advertising industry lately. The money spent on traditional advertising methods like TV ads, radio ads, and print ads has come down significantly. At the same time, mobile advertising is slowly becoming a lot more affordable than it used to be in the past. And thanks to the state our economy is in right now, businesses cannot afford to spend money on ads that don’t deliver results.

The biggest advantage with mobile phone advertising is that it delivers terrific results. The average CTR (click through rate) of a mobile advertising campaign is in the range of 1.5% to 2%. In some cases, it has been unbelievably high thanks to specific, targeted advertising campaigns. For example, the average response rate of Blyk’s mobile ad campaigns is a whopping 29%. So, even if you spend a little more money than what you usually spend, you are bound to get very good results. This is what makes mobile advertising so good.

Research firm eMarketer says that mobile advertising market will grow significantly in the next few years. It says that the proliferation of high end phones has made things easier for mobile advertisers as these smartphones open a lot of possibilities for ads.

In summary – I just have to say what I always say. Mobile advertising is here to stay. Don’t you guys think so too?

Categories: Cell Phone Advertising.

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