Word on the high tech highway is that we have a Google Phone to look forward to and some even say its an iPhone killer!! According to Simeon Simeonov ’s blog ‘High Contrast‘ the most interesting part about it is the go-to-market strategy behind it, which someone will have to explain to me because I do not really get that part yet.

“Apparently, Google is planning to build distribution relationships with multiple carriers by allowing them to minimize subscription and marketing costs. In other words, Google will market the phone online and carriers will fulfill. How fast can you say dumb pipe? Then, again, carriers are not good at marketing to consumers so what choice do they have?”
What we are pretty sure of is that the phone will be GSM leaving about 40 million US Verizon mobile users out of the game. One of the real questions is whcih browser the phone named ‘Switch’ (for now) will be using.
There is apparantly some speculation as to who the photo’s were released (leaked) to, according to Simeon Simeonov ’s blog ‘High Contrast‘ they were leaked to Engadget although this story originates from his blog. The pictures are warned to have been photoshopped.

“According to Engagets tipster, it’s a button-less touchscreen device as is the rage these days only this time with GPS built-in for pinpoint navigation around Google Maps. What’s pictured in that all too familiar blur (Photoshopped?) is the phone’s contact program said to be an extended version of Gtalk combining Gmail, text and instant messaging. The device doesn’t have any on-board storage and all applications are served up over the network with new apps “attached” to your account via a web interface”
These are all still rumours so we are going to wait on Google for their confirmation.

Nokia announces platforms to connect advertisers and media publishers with mobile
Tuesday, March 6, 2007 Nokia Ad Service and Nokia Advertising Gateway enable delivery of the right ad to the right mobile consumer.

The Nokia Advertising Gateway not the Ad Service really caught my imagination. This may be the best way to allow advertisers and news media broadcasters to target specific localized audiences. It really spells a second chance for the local media and newspapers to jump into the playing field and make up for lost opportunities.

I will leave you with the full press release from Nokia.

Espoo, Finland; New York, USA — Nokia today announced two mobile advertising services. Nokia Ad Service, is a fully managed service for advertisers to conduct targeted advertising on mobile services and applications. Nokia Ad Service consists of a group of mobile publishers forming a mobile ad network and a platform to deploy, manage and optimize mobile advertising campaigns. Nokia also introduced Nokia Advertising Gateway, a private label service for third party Publishers and Advertising Aggregators that want to extend to relevant mobile advertising. Nokia Advertising Gateway operates as an intelligent switch, selecting between text, visual, audio and video ads - depending on the user’s context – and feeding the ad to the device.

Nokia Ad Service
“As advertisers struggle to reach personalized targeting with traditional media such as print and TV, mobile advertising is becoming an increasingly attractive channel for brands,” said Tom Henriksson, Director of Nokia Ad Service at Nokia Emerging Business Unit. “We have completed a number of pilot campaigns with advertisers and mobile publishers for testing the Nokia ad serving technology and consumer experience. The feedback has been very positive from all parties.”

Nokia Ad Service fulfills different types of advertising needs such as advertisers deploying global mobile campaigns, agencies offering mobile advertising to complement traditional media initiatives, and publishers seeking new business models and a larger consumer audience. Nokia Ad Service serves mobile operators as a solution provider bringing the mobile advertising model to operator services, driving new and sustainable revenue streams. Nokia Ad Service simplifies the mobile advertising process by supporting & managing the full campaign lifecycle for advertisers including planning, deploying, optimizing, and reporting. Typical mediums of experience for mobile advertisements are in the form of interactive content like banner ads in browsing services, ads in applications, and videos.

Nokia Ad Service will begin its operations in Europe with a kick-off at ad:tech, an interactive marketing event in Paris, France on March 6th-7th, 2007 and globally in the second half of 2007.

Nokia Advertising Gateway
“With Nokia Advertising Gateway we are partnering with newspaper publishers, other traditional media companies, aggregators, platform companies, operators and internet companies to help them serve their current advertisers by offering easy access to a mobile audience” says Matthew Snyder, Head of Business Development, Nokia Multimedia, Advertising Business Program. “We have an aggregator interface for plugging partners’ platforms into the gateway – Nokia being in the role of platform service provider. Think of the gateway as a one-stop delivery point with intelligence”.

Nokia Advertising Gateway enables delivery of targeted ads to mobile devices. Ads will be closely tied and optimised to specific multimedia applications, such as reading digital newspaper content, watching TV, listening to music or looking at directions on maps. Nokia offers access to the platform for third parties and enables their ad sales teams to sell for the mobile channel. Nokia Advertising Gateway supports so called CPA (cost per action) model and it provides usage data from mobile devices for enabling targeted ad selection and delivery to users’ devices. A key part of the platform will be the easy-to-use reporting and analytics tools for Publishers to manage their advertisers ROI (Return on investment).

Nokia Advertising Gateway will run several pilots during the coming months and will become commercially available in the second half of 2007, starting with support for converged mobile devices based on the S60 software platform.

Here is a solid post by Tomi outlining five unique elements of the mobile medium (Found via All About Mobile Life).

1. The mobile is personal.
2. The mobile is the first always-on mass media.
3. The mobile is the first always-carried mass media.
4. The mobile is the first mass media with a built-in payment mechanism.
5. Mobile uniquely offers the media audience the input tool, at the point of creative impulse.

Mobile is also quoted as being the most misunderstood of all media.

What’s new…?

I am really quite excited about the claims this virtual call centre company makes (the things I get excited about nowadays is even surpising me).

“Distributed call-center outsourcing service LiveOps has announced the closure of a Series C round of funding for $28 Million. The round was lead by Benchmark Capital, a new investor in the company and a fund that rarely makes later stage investments. Benchmark’s investments in the consumer space, which more readers here may be familiar with, include Pageflakes, Bebo and Yelp among others.”

“Palo Alto based LiveOps offers web based management of more than 10,000 home based telephone workers. Here’s what makes them interesting: their service operates as a performance based auction, routing incoming calls to the best performing worker available. Top workers participate in IM communities to discuss methods of increasing productivity and solving problems. “

To prove how confident this company is, they will go head to head with any other call center, and publish the results - win or lose ! This sounds like a no cure no pay challenge. I am looking forward to taking them up ton the challenge so during the course of the next weeks I will be putting this service to the test. Check back for my results.

Zong, enables you to launch the most popular mobile services, from quiz and voting to news subscription services, but also some truly web 2.0 applications such as Z-Pay that allows you to monetize entire sections of your website or Z-Feeds that enables you to broadcast your RSS feed to mobile while generating additional revenues.

Personally I am a little concerned about services such as these. A few days ago I had the opportunity to sit in and overhear conversations coming into customer support centre of a relatively large mobile provider. I was astounded to hear that so many complaints are from customers who subscribe to these services ‘accidently’ and feel as if they have fallen victim to a scam, the first one the customer blames is their own mobile providers who has little to nothing to do with it. The scamming can range from chat applications to erotic sms’s. If you answer once they have you hooked. You probably will spend up to 4 euros just trying to get rid of the ’service’.

“We’re thrilled to announce the launch of Zong, this is truly the first time in our industry that anyone can create and launch revenue-generating mobile services across Europe in just few clicks for free” explains Echovox Founder and CEO David Marcus

Remember that if sounds to good to be true it usually is. Personally I think it wouldn’t be such a bad idea to have some legislative force patrol these services if you are allowing consumers to fool around with your API.

Then again as your intentions are as above the board as ad executives get this is something you should be aware of because it gives you some independence from mobile platform providers who can charge very high rates for SMS campaigns. It could even be a great new revenue stream for your advertising agency unless your client decides you are giving them a share of the gravy;-)