Those attending the Mobile World Congress last week were informed that mobile advertising and marketing have finally “come of age.”
The announcement came from mobile marketing and advertising service provider Velti, which launched the latest version of its Mobile Marketing Platform, MMP 4.0. The announcement followed Velti’s revelation that their 2007 revenues increased by more than seventy-five percent on the previous year.
2008 is already shaping up to be another banner year both for Velti and the mobile marketing industry itself. MMP 4.0, which is being billed as a force to “drive the market,” features enhanced advertising and marketing templates enabling Velti’s customers to reach consumers through new interactive mobile mediums including mobile communities, games and applications.
According to Velti’s CEO Alexandros Moukas, MMP 4.0 will allow advertisers and operators to offer a “unique, personalized mobile marketing experience” which utilizes “loyalty schemes, mobile coupons, social networks and other interactive activities.”
Founded in 2000, Velti provides platforms and services which enable mobile marketing, mobile advertising and value-added services for mobile operators, advertising agencies, brands, media groups and large enterprises.
In 2007, Velti gained “significant new customer wins and updates,” including Johnson & Johnson, Microsoft, Pepsico, Colgate, Bacardi, MTV, CBS, Vogue Magazine and Mastercard.
“2007 was the year when the mobile channel started to move into the mainstream advertising and marketing mix,” explained Moukas. “At Velti, our market-leading full service mobile technology platform allows clients to manage more than seventy types of campaign solutions from development through to delivery and measurement. This holistic approach gives our customers the ability to deploy the right campaigns for their audiences to the timescales and across the regions they need.”
As it stands today, the global media industry is poised to utilize mobile marketing as the next big advertising platform. And Velti, along a host of other rival companies, is trying to drive this potential gold-mine of a market by more aggressively bringing social networking, user generated content and digital communities into the mobile marketing mix.
