Operators gear up for mobile advertising bonanza

Customer information is key, say analysts.

Customer information is the key to mobile operators gaining a significant share of burgeoning mobile advertising revenues, industry experts agued today.

Andrew Kloeden, a consultant at analyst firm Analysys, said: "Mobile operators have an opportunity to gain significant new revenues from mobile advertisers, which may be willing to pay a premium for access to a well-segmented audience."

He added that several potential new mobile advertising business models are emerging, including:

Mobile portal and content offerings from advertising-funded internet players such as Google and Yahoo which bypass the networks of the mobile operators
Advertising-funded mobile TV services offered by operators over 3G networks or specially built mobile TV networks
Advertising-funded downloads of games and other small packages of content

"Mobile operators have the potential to use customer information to gain revenues from mobile advertising beyond simple data carriage," said Kloeden.

"Provided that a business model which does not bypass the operators' networks emerges as dominant, mobile advertising may represent a source of significant average revenue per user gains from mobile data services."

Mobile operators must find ways to successfully exploit marketing, data-mining and content aggregation capabilities if they are to generate significant new revenues from mobile data services, he added.