In a press statement, 24/7 Product Manager of Publisher Solutions Ali C. Mirian said, “24/7 Real Media has been serving mobile ads via its Open AdStream platform since 1999, which gives us a tremendous amount of insight into the evolving needs of mobile marketers. This has enabled us to build features and capabilities into our industry-leading ad management platform that proprietary mobile ad servers cannot match. With Open AdStream Mobile Edition, 24/7 Real Media is giving marketers true multi-channel campaign management, with one reliable, flexible and scalable platform.”

According to 24/7, Open AdStream Mobile is also easy to use with other major mobile ad protocols and allows simple additions of mobile ads to marketing campaigns. 24/7 Real Media plans to update the service in conjunction with industry evolution, including plans to develop the product with targeting parameters and advanced, integrated analytics. With this new service, though, the company claims that advertisers no longer need to go through the step-by-step process of installing, purchasing, and dealing with complications of stand-alone technology.

Oleg Vishnepolsky, 24/7 Chief Technology Officer, added, “Marketers and content providers are rushing to understand this new medium in order to deliver relevant advertising messages. We’ve seen drastic shifts in consumer behavior before; from network TV to Cable, print to online, and now online to mobile. Our job as a technology company is to stay ahead of these changes, allowing marketers to better understand and reach today’s mobile audience across all channels and devices.”

The Enpocket platform will be used within a wide range of marketing services by Carlson. Through this partnership, Carlson’s clientele will receive fully integrated, end-to-end mobile solutions like loyalty marketing, employee recognition and events.

In a press statement, Carlson Marketing Vice President of Interactive Marketing Douglas Rozen said, “As we strive to help our clients create two-way dialogue and build lasting relationships with their customers, channel partners and employees, we are making significant investments around the mobile device. This will become one of the most important channels within the interactive marketing mix. Our unique alliance with Enpocket will enable us to connect our clients with their customers anytime and anywhere.”

Enpocket President and CEO Mike Baker added, “We are pleased to be working with market leaders like Carlson Marketing to define and deliver mobile solutions that are useful to consumers and therefore valuable to brands seeking a more personal relationship with their customers. The products created under this alliance will help some of the largest companies in the world expand their customer touch points to the mobile device.”

Enpocket will also be designing and delivering mobile services within three other areas of Carlson’s markets: Meetings & Events, Sales & Marketing Services and Carlson 1to1.

Visa’s system allows users to get coupons and make purchases with their Visa accounts using only their mobile devices. Visa will be providing a mobile content delivery system (for things like coupons) powered by VeriSign. Meanwhile, VeriSign will let Visa corporate clients and merchants build customized mobile campaigns that incorporate the mobile payment system.

VeriSign predicts that the deal will help marketers get a better ROI on their mobile campaigns by sending offers to customers wherever they are. VeriSign powers billions of information transfers per day across voice, video and data networks.

“Consumers are driving demand for new mobile commerce services and applications. They need to be able to access information and make purchases in a secure environment anywhere and on any device,” said Brian Matthews, VeriSign’s VP of industry marketing in a statement.

“As we progress, we will deploy additional features including next-generation interactivity, location-awareness and click-to-act – maximizing the currency this alliance offers brand advertisers,” said Jack Hallahan, MobiTV’s VP of advertising in a statement.

Yahoo will begin integrating ads with MobiTV’s free and premium programming over the next few months. According to MobiTV, the company has generated more than a million subscribers since it launched in 1999.

With the addition of this latest client, Yahoo will be able to offer multiple media buys through its system that includes text banner and mobile video. The Mobile Publisher system lets mobile publishers display banner, video and in-game ads on their mobile sites and applications. Other partners at launch include web browser developer Opera and location-based mobile content network, go2.

With this new groundbreaking service, access to creating a presence online can be attained by brands and providers of all calibers, with the offering of mobile website building, hosting, traffic generation, monitoring and a global payment service.
“Brands recognize the power and reach of the mobile web but have had trouble navigating the complex landscape of the mobile world. With Bango 2Go brands are up-and-running in just one step,” said Ray Anderson, CEO of Bango, in a statement.

By visiting the Bango website and signing onto the service, businesses can begin to take advantage of the previous benefits. Meanwhile, Bango’s partners are responsible for building and hosting the mobile websites. Through partnerships, traffic is generated; Bango Vision allows the website’s activity to be monitored, and a mobile payment solution is also provided for brands looking to monetize their mobile traffic.

News Corporation, World Wrestling Entertainment, Discovery Mobile and MTV are among the top-tier clients that have used Bango’s services.

An official announcement will be made at the CTIA Wireless industry show this week in Orlando.

Louis Gump, vice president for the Weather Channel’s mobile division, revealed a possible sponsor to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, stating, “Coca-Cola could advertise a hot beverage when it is cold outside and could advertise a new Coke Zero when it’s hot outside.”

Using every U.S. ZIP code, town and city, the technology will organize all information and provide data and advertising specific to what location a user enters. A feature that’s already popular in Asia, location-based marketing is now ready to infiltrate the United States.

Still, advertising on phones has not been fully embraced by advertisers due to the fear of losing customers.

Charles Golvin, principal analyst with Forrester Research states, “You have to tell the Weather Channel where you are; otherwise you can’t get relevant weather information.” Differentiating the Weather Channel from traditional mobile advertising, Golvin said the company was “very good at leveraging that infrastructure for selling advertising.”

1999 was the year that the Weather Channel kicked off its mobile business venture. Today, 4,800 video clips are specifically available to mobile users, with a heavy concentration being business travelers. The service is set to begin within several months, according to Gump.

“If you’re sitting in Chicago in a snowstorm and you’re checking your forecast, maybe you’ll see an ad for Aruba or Jamaica, and even the copy will say something like: ‘It’s 15 below and snowing there, it’s 85 and sunny here,” he said.

There are several ways to leverage email as a marketing tool, but not quite like typical email campaigns of the past, which was a batch and blast theory where the more email you sent to a broad audience the better. The most effective campaigns have been utilized as a part of an overall integrated marketing campaign, where the email stands in support of the rich media advertising, print, direct mail, so the same messaging is seen in all aspects of consumer reach. For an online publisher, it would be the idea that the email supports the branding or messaging on the site, and whether it be from advertising or an editorial perspective, the email message is an extension of that messaging.

Rarely if ever now do you see an effective email campaign that acts as a standalone promotion. It is used as an overall messaging campaign, driving consumer, prospect, or client engagement with an overall marketing campaign. One of the most interesting concepts that is evolving, according to the Mobile Marketing Association, is utilizing email as a supplement to mobile campaigns to drive awareness and engagement from the consumer. The idea of using each medium as a support for the other rather than each channel having a specific message. The creative may not be the same, but the core messaging and the overall theme remain constant. SO if you are reading a newspaper, you can draw the correlation that you saw a Nike ad online as well.

There are several issues that a marketer must contend with when utilizing email marketing in the current marketplace. The key issues, however, really have not changed over the past 5-6 years; in fact, they are just getting more pronounced. The major issues facing marketers is deliverability, the ability to get into the end user’s inbox rather than the junk mail folder. This is a constant problem due to robust spam filtering by the ISP’s and individual email clients. A marketer has to be aware of not just the subject line and content of the message avoiding common spam phrases like Free, or Limited Time, but the From address of the message, the IP of machine sending the messages, and the manner in which the message is sent (is it a mass mailing list or is it the same message repeated mailed to individual recipients, the latter can be flagged as spam from the Senders own ISP!).

Other issues obviously are the viability and deliverability of an email address, Even if you are a bonded sender or on a “white” list from the ISP perspective, end users are becoming incredibly tech-savvy in their ability to navigate the utilization of their own filtering, something that has become more of an issue in the last 18-24 months. So even if the marketer has done everything right the end user could still be flagging them as spam because they are unaware of the fact that they have subscribed to the list, or that they are not receiving messages they should be simply due to the sheer volume of messages flowing in cyber space.

Because of this decreased deliverability, email marketing on the surface has lost its effectiveness because the consumer response has seemingly been declining. However, as you continue to look at the available data of a campaign, you will see that the response rates have really stayed the same if you get your email delivered. It is the fact that a large percentage of email is getting diverted outside of the consumer’s inbox so it appears as if your response rates are dropping. Because you do not get a hard or soft bounce (a technical message stating that the email address is invalid or that the mail has been delayed due to inbox limitations or slow response time) when your mail gets diverted to a spam folder, you have to assume that it was delivered to the desired recipient in the standard fashion and therefore your response seemingly goes down when in fact it has never been delivered. Once the email is opened it is still as effective (as long as the message has a strong compelling component) it is really your OPEN rate–the number of people who actually view the message–that has gone down.

The big challenge facing a marketer today is how to engage the consumer to actually open the message once it does get delivered. It is apparent that the marketers are becoming more aware of what the consumer wants to hear not just what the marketer has to say. The most effective marketing campaigns are the ones that have a clear purpose and are sent because they can add value to the recipient in some way, and the marketers that are only sending messages when that is the case are seeing the best responses. Community-based sites such as Gather and Spire.com have seen similar approaches increase their member engagement and the response rates of the emails they do send are in fact driving greater response.

The traditional marketing calendar of systematic touches to the consumer or mailing list are being set aside for a more relevant messaging strategy. If a marketer has been sending emails communication on a bi-weekly basis and realizes they would be sending the next message simply because it is on the calendar as needing to be sent, but there is no relevant or new information, they are better served by simply skipping that messaging cycle until they do have something of value to offer their recipient.

This strategy allows for the consumer not to feel bombarded with messaging for the sake of messaging. Also, a key component to an effective email marketing campaign now is to establish a level of trust with your membership rather than simply hawking the next best promotion or the next new thing. You establish a level of credibility by offering insight or insider access first and then in subsequent emails, you have the ability to offer services and goods in a way that seems as if you are offering advice rather than selling something.

Of course, you have heard the cries from traditional direct marketers saying the art of email is dying and offline direct mail is resurging. Well, the latter is true but the former is not accurate at all. Email marketing has by no means bottomed out; it is still one of the most cost effective and immediate ways to reach your target market, and the ability to segment and analyze the data is invaluable. The key to maximizing the effectiveness comes in your firm’s ability to message appropriately for your audience and the technology between them.

Publishers, as I said are going back to direct mail, but only as a component of an integrated marketing campaign. They are using various channels, rich media, direct mail, email, key word, print, radio for a consistent overall integrated message–rather than the previous approach, which was to use a more integrated approach across standard channels while using email as a separate marketing campaign.

Amp’d has been using Medio’s ad-powered software for mobile web searches since February, but Medio’s new pay-per-call-based system will track user behavior and click-through history to target ads. “Pay Per Call is aligned with our vision because it surfaces specific content — in this case, the phone number of a relevant merchant, like a taxi or locksmith service — and gives the mobile consumer immediate access to that advertiser with a click of a button, no cell-phone Web surfing required,” said Omar Tawakol, Medio’s chief advertising officer in a statement.

Medio is focused on providing search ads, but the network will also include mobile website banners. Revenue will be shared both with the mobile carrier and with a website’s publisher.

The company has enlisted former MSN national sales director Gary Bembridge to lead the project. Medio says it will announce more details, including advertising partners, in the next three months.

Verizon and T-Mobile also use Medio’s search service, which can be independently re-branded to reflect the carrier. Competition includes Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, who have recently entered the mobile arena.

Fox News has launched a website containing links to Fox News stories specially formatted for mobile devices. The site contains small mobile banner ads near the top. One sponsor whose ads appear on the site is the Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

“There is growing demand from advertisers and their agencies looking to access unique, targeted audiences such as the business mobile subscribers that frequent FOX’s mobile properties,” said MADX sales and services VP Tim Conley in a company statement. “The addition of Fox News to the Third Screen Media customer base provides brands and agencies with another valuable mobile property that reaches key demographic segments, like business and young influencer audiences.”

According to Third Screen Media, its mobile network can reach more than 80% of the top 15 mobile sites like Fox News. Third Screen’s MADX uses metrics from the Telephia mobile measurement group.

The Nokia Ad Service contains both a mobile ad network and a mobile ad management platform, and is designed to handle everything from campaign planning and global deployment to reporting and optimization. Mobile ads are typically found alongside web content, but Nokai also wants its ad channel to serve ads alongside mobile applications and video.

Meanwhile, the Nokia Ad Connector allows existing publishers and advertising networks to plug in their existing ad services to the Nokia Ad Service network, and can extend the reach of standard online text, image, and multimedia ads to mobile devices. The service can intelligently match up third-party advertising content with appropriate types of mobile activities. So the right ads will appear next to different types of mobile applications.

Connector also supports a cost-per-action payment model and includes analytics.

“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’s new Ad Service unit in a statement. “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.”

The European version of the Nokia Ad Service launched this week at the ad:tech interactive marketing conference in Paris. Nokia is will be testing Ad Connector over the next few months, and it is expected to go live in late 2007.