Pings & Packets - August 17, 2001

by Derek Kerton



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Nokia Chooses an Advertising Platform 
WAA Adopts Standards for Wireless Advertising 
Coke and DoCoMo "Trick-out" Vending Machines 
Cool Phone Gadget for Handspring Users 
Odds and Ends 

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Nokia Chooses an Advertising Platform
Nokia has selected a partner advertising solution to add to it's own wireless platform. The Finnish firm has agreed to integrate North Carolina-based Avesair's software into its mPlatform advertising solution for carriers. The software, called "MATCH" handles ad hosting, serving, targeting, scheduling, and delivery to multiple wireless target devices, and Nokia will offer the software as an additional feature of it's wireless content platform. The carriers will see advertising on the wireless networks as a new source of revenue. Avesair claims that the MATCH software will also be sensitive to customer's privacy concerns. 

This all is a good technological step, and advances the Nokia platform one square on the big game board in the sky, but I'd like to take a big aside: 

I predict problems stemming from the fact that the carriers haven't yet realized that they can't sell ads on content that they don't own. Many content companies have policies against outside agents selling ads on their content, partly because of unwanted associations between the content and the advertiser, and partly because they want that revenue, too. 

What's more, carriers have been extremely reluctant to pay for the content, choosing instead to extract it for free from the creators. The zero revenue has not ingratiated the carriers with the content firms. Any content firm with a business model of giving away its content for free, and not retaining ad revenue rights had better take a time tunnel back to 99 if they're looking for market cap. 

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WAA Adopts Standards for Wireless Advertising
In July, the Wireless Advertising Association, a group populated by advertising leaders, infrastructure makers, terminal manufacturers, telcos and platform firms in between agreed on a set of specs which would ease the rollout of wireless advertising campaigns. 

A WAA press release said: "The standards being accepted today create a common set of formats and sizes so that ad creative executions and inventory will be interchangeable. Just as in print, television, and the Internet, an ad agency will write copy or create a graphic in the standardized formats that device manufactures will build hardware to accept. That creative can then run over any ad network, or with any publisher, since they will have designed their content to leave "holes" for ads in those formats." 

These standards do indeed advance the execution of implementable wireless advertising, but do not address the issue of whether or how much of said advertising is appropriate in a medium where users pay for the data. But that is not the issue of the standards, and overall I think this is a positive step. 


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Coke and DoCoMo "Trick-out" Vending Machines
I thought it sounded like a neat idea when I first heard you could pay for soda from a vending machine using a cellular phone. Now DoCoMo, Coca-Cola, and tech firm Itochu are equipping the standard Coca-Cola vending machine with a printer, sensor, and speaker and then connecting it to DoCoMo's i-mode system, thus offering Cmode - an information terminal service. 

Only after completing yet another registration, Cmode users standing in front of the vending machine will be able to collect loyalty points, buy maps, coupons, ring tones, and phone screen savers. Great, take a mobile product, and make it only work in front of a vending machine. The machines will also let you deposit cash into your Cmode account for future use. 

This all sounds only slightly silly, until you add (yet another) new registration and account into the mix. The power of i-Mode is the way it allows users to be billed by DoCoMo for content and services. This is done conveniently on the (existing) monthly service bill. Why, in the name of Fuji, would a customer want a separate cash account which can only be used at Coke machines? 

(http://www.mobileinfo.com/News_2001/Issue33/DoCoMo_cmode.htm) 

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Cool Phone Gadget for Handspring Users
Parafone, from Arkon Networks, Inc. based in Richmond, Canada, has released a Springboard module that converts the Handspring into a CDMA cell phone. No big news there, since handspring has had this product for about a year. The Parafone, however, has a secondary 900Mhz cordless phone radio built in, which connects the handheld to a headset sans wires. Very cool. This is the role we expect Bluetooth to fill, but Arkon selected the more mature 900 MHz technology, which uses more battery power. 

Meanwhile, AirPrime of Santa Clara has released a CDMA phone module for the Handspring too. What differentiates their offering is that it can be bought bundled with Sprint service. I like the fact that customers with existing Sprint service can use the same phone number for their Visor phone as well as their regular phone. Until now, every device I connected forced me to open a new contract and get a new number. The AirPrime unit is also software-upgradeable for future enhancements like 3G. 

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Odds and Ends
We have all heard of the popularity of SMS messaging among Europe's youth. We have all heard of the shrinking attendance at churches in Western nations, where congregations are getting smaller, and older. In May of this year, the German Youth Branch of the Lutheran church decided on a trial to cross the trends. They offered a church service consisting of six SMS messages over GSM phones. 1,500 people signed up for the service. All I can say is: Hmmm. 

Did you know that X10.com, the purveyor of those annoying pop-under ads, is among the most visited sites on the web? Using a methodology that counts the pop-ups as a page viewed, Jupiter Media Metrix has X10.com ranked as the 4th most visited online property, six places ahead of the Disney Empire. The Nielsen ratings have the site at 116. Why is this a wireless story? People like me have all the lights in their home wirelessly controlled by X10 technology. 

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