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An article in Billing and OSS World (B/OSS) this month looks at the opportunity for targeted personalised advertising in the telecommunication market. The story reports how OgilvyOne and TM Forum will explore possible business models for advertisers and telecom service providers. The collaborative project will initially focus on mobile operators, helping to incorporate customer personalisation, location-based advertising, micropayments and enhanced security into customer communications. This market opportunity is estimated to be worth US$250 billion.
The potential of such communication is significant. As mobile networks are already able to track the location of their subscribers from the local base antenna they are using, this could form a framework for personalised, location-based advertising.
When you consider the amount of customer data that network operators can potentially capture on their subscribers, included visited Web sites from their Internet-enabled mobile devices, this could provide a vehicle for highly personalised and relevant advertising. For example, if you send a location-based advertisement using SMS or MMS that tells a mobile user that there's a sale across the street on high-definition televisions, it may not mean anything to them, but if you know that user has recently visited electronics Web sites searching for HDTVs, that information could be very useful and valuable to the user.
Despite the value that this type of targeted communication can bring to the consumer value chain, it appears that the telecom market has a lot of regulatory tape to cut through first. In the US and other countries, telecom privacy legislations require customer identities to be masked, so until laws can be changed to allow consumers to opt-in to receive such communication, the concept will have to remain a marketers dream.
Posted on Monday, 8 December 2008 at 4:48 PM | TrackBack: http://www.veedeepee.com/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/191