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Martin Creaner
President & Chief Operations Officer
TM Forum

Martin Creaner has been working in the Telecommunications Industry for almost 25 years and is currently President of the Telemanagement Forum (TMForum). The TM Forum is the industry body for the the global Telecommunications industry. It has 750 member companies in over 185 countries, including all the major carriers and all the leading equipment and software Vendors.

Prior to joining the TM Forum Martin held a number of executive positions with Motorola and British Telecom.

Martin is widely published and is featured and quoted regularly in business and trade journals. Martin is also the author of the leading telecoms business book “NGOSS Distilled”.


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Now is the time for Mobile Advertising

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There can be little doubt that mobile advertising is one of the fastest growing markets in the mobile ecosystem. Google is going strongly after this market with its acquisition of Admob, and they are obviously the market leader in internet search-based advertising – so this is a natural progression for them. Other players are also making significant investment such as Apple, Microsoft and, more recently,Opera.

But don’t expect the big internet players to have such a dominant position in the mobile advertising world. The mobile Ad world is likely to split into multiple niche advertising products, such as embedded advertising in existing value added services such as games and apps, simple text based advertising delivered in innovative ways and direct push advertising to opt-in customers.   

And operators are holding lots of the cards here!  It’s actually rare that operators find themselves in the driving seat these days – most industry discussions seem to surround how operators are being by-passed by over-the-top services.  But in this case the power really sits with the mobile operator as they are in possession of the customer data,and have the lowest cost delivery mechanisms.

So how will they take advantageof this strong position? Partnering is the way forward in my opinion.  Success in this field will depend on getting the right blend of advertising expertise,technology innovation and data mining & analytics. I don’t know any operator who has that capability in house, but a righteous blend of an operator, an ad agency and a savvy platform vendor sounds appropriate. Google, Apple etc are obvious candidates for being part of that mix, but there will be a nagging fear among operators about getting into bed with such ravenously successful companies.

I’d love to hear other peoples opinions on how this will pan out!  Also read the recent Forum quick insight research report on this Mobile Ads as Apps.

Read More:


Posted 03-05-2010 10:33 AM by Martin Creaner

Comments

Stephen Fleece wrote re: Now is the time for Mobile Advertising
on 03-05-2010 10:27 AM

Traditional CSPs in established markets will need to up their game to sustainably succeed in being relevant and adding real value in mobile ads.  I expect successful mobile ad operators will play more aggressively with regulatory constraints and risks, and transform their marketing culture and analytics capabilities up to world class levels of innovation and consumer-focused creativity.  That's new territory for communication service providers.

Google commands a significant share of advertising power in the new world order, and they are not about to give it up.  Their acquisition of AdMob is significant.  Another recent example... www.mobile-ent.biz/.../Google-wins-patent-for-location-based-advertising.  I make no mistake in expecting  Android is device platform for Google's mobile advertising moves among other things.  Ads pay the Google shareholders.  I ask CSPs, what pays your shareholders?

Where broadband, local advertising, and established brands like Google and Apple are limited in emerging markets, I think text-based ads over messaging-based value-added services will thrive for some time to come.  CSP success is ripe here for some timeframe in the right markets.

Josh Goldfein wrote re: Now is the time for Mobile Advertising
on 03-06-2010 9:50 AM

Apple recently made the rules much stricter for using location information in apps.

"If your app uses [location] information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on user's location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store."

This is a direct shot ad AdMob and any other location based ad service on iPhone. Apple's acquisition of Quattro surely played a huge part in this decision. They'd like to drive developers to use their ad platform and only theirs.

In my experience Google AdWords targeted to mobile devices is wildly more successful at delivering ROI than any other large mobile ad platform. AdMob was a 50% loss; Google AdWords has been a 3:1 ROI.

Of course Martin is absolutely right, it's the niche markets around the edges that are going to explode. Next gen phones allow for marketing agencies to develop localized user bases around a product (app) or specialized social network. That network is fertile group for selling push advertising for local clients, and local clients are very interested.

Martin Creaner's Blog wrote Where will the money come from?
on 03-15-2010 6:36 AM

Where will the next tranche of telecoms revenue come from. The conventional wisdom is that we will continue

Martin Creaner's Blog wrote Mobile Advertising Slipping Out of the Hands of the Telcos
on 04-09-2010 5:07 AM

This latestannouncement from Apple is scary stuff for Telcos. Apple haveannounced the launch of iAd which

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