Ringback Tones

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

Ever find yourself snapping your fingers, bouncing your head or even singing along as you listen to a friend's mobile ring a familiar tune? Or perhaps you find your colleague's ringback tone to be especially annoying? (No offense, Hisham!)

What's a ringback tone, you ask?

Telecoms Go Off-Portal

By Delynn Ho, VP Sales

A shift has taken place in the world of telecom companies.

Not long ago, carriers saw themselves as gateways, creating walled gardens making it difficult and more expensive for mobile users to surf beyond the telco portals. Mobile users wouldn't have it, though. And as data charges in most markets have become increasingly affordable, telcos have had to adjust.

Nowhere has this shift been more pronounced than in the carriers' sales and marketing departments. Under the old plans, telcos were content to market to their consumer base, particularly via SMS blasts. Today, though, carriers are moving beyond their own properties. They're taking out mobile ads and running mobile campaigns, just like brands in other industries, to engage surfers and promote unique services like ringback tones.

The new campaigns are paying off.

Agencies tell us that mobile internet usage during the period of the campaigns has increased by more than 40%.

Let's take a look at examples from three countries . . .

Blind Networks: Now You See!

By Michael de Souza, VP Media

Blind ad networks are often misunderstood despite the huge traffic they serve.

With blind networks you can’t specify the individual mobile internet sites on which your ads will appear. Instead, you select a channel, such as ‘Entertainment & Lifestyle’ or ‘Premium Portals’ (there are nine to choose from altogether), and your ads are displayed across the hundreds or thousands of mobile internet sites within that category.

This kind of selection is a necessity, as it is in any long-tail network. Asking brand managers or media planners to work through a list of thousands of individual sites to evaluate their content and context for a good match to the brand that they’re promoting, and then make a selection, would be time-consuming and counterproductive.

Mobile Banking

By Chester Ng, Sales Director (Southeast Asia)

After selling livestock or milk in local markets, Maasai herdsman living in the Serengeti Plains of Kenya, used to return home with cash in their pockets, which might sound nice but also meant they were walking targets for theft. No more. Thanks to a mobile banking service, a herdsman's customers now transfer payment direct to the seller's account.

Kenyans in the city, meanwhile, are using the same service to pay for transport. But as a BBC reporter points out, try to do this in London, New York or Hong Kong or Singapore, for that matter, and you'll likely “find yourself with a very upset cab driver”.

At BuzzCity, we've noticed an increasing number of banks and financial institutions using mobile advertising to share information and promote services. But very few have actually introduced full-service m-banking. This is going to change. And as it does, there are a number of things that banks need to keep in mind . . . .