A collaboration between MyScreen Mobile and WISeKey announced recently aims to define a new standard in the delivery of high-quality, personalized and secure advertisements, as well as offers and transaction capability to mobile phones. In other words, it wants to make mobile advertising as secure as possible to allow for new features in the world of mobile commerce and other highly-sensitive data exchanges.

The two companies want subscribers to utilize the new found privacy enhancing solutions to securely opt-in to receive advertisements, credits, coupons and transaction offers, which otherwise wouldn’t have been possible due to a lack in security.

The WISeKey solution uses digital identities to enhance access security, secure communications, and enable trusted transactions, making them safer, more accessible, and friendly for end users. The digital certified identities reduce identity fraud while offering users the same ease and security in the mobile world as in the physical world.

“This collaboration with MyScreen has the potential to become a de-facto standard for secure mobile advertising and mobile transactions”, said Carlos Moreira, Chairman and CEO of WISeKey.

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A newly formed partnership between iPhone analytics firm Pinch Media and mobile search and advertising company JumpTap aims to connect brand-name advertisers with iPhone application users. It’s a similar effort to AdMob’s foray into integrated iPhone advertising announced recently.

Ad networks for iPhone apps have been springing up at a steady click since the launch of the App Store. Medialets has been busy creating its own ad network for apps, hoping to separate itself by integrating ads more directly into applications. AppLoop, another app ad network, is emphasizing location-aware metrics for advertisers hoping to use the iPhone’s GPS capabilities. PurpleTalk, meanwhile, is attempting to set up an ad network of applications that use splash pages to cross-promote one another, while running smaller ads alongside.

The plan for the Pinch Media/JumpTap collaboration is to fold iPhone app’s users into vertical ad audiences that can be sold to brand advertisers. The iPhone market is still relatively small when it comes to advertising, the biggest applications might have a million users. A million users is not a tremendous amount of reach when it comes to doing an ad buy. By bundling together an app’s user base with other mobile inventory already represented by JumpTap, developers get a chance to place high-end advertising on their apps, and media buyers can target the popular iPhone user base.

This focus on top-tier advertisers puts the company in opposition to AdMob, according to JumpTap’s CEO. “AdMob is a great business, but really focused on the self-service market and the long tail of direct response. We are focused on premium content.”

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A few months have passed since I last discussed the flourishing mobile marketing industry in South Africa. Nonetheless, I still receive email from time to time inquiring about the latest mobile emergences from that part of the world. Although I’ve assured all that I’m far from a South African mobile marketing know-it-all, I have kept my ear to the pipeline with regard to advancements by our friends across the globe.

I use the word “advancement” because it is my long held belief that South Africa could prove an unexpected breeding ground for mobile marketing discoveries and improvements that could shape the global reach of the entire mobile marketing industry. Why? Because mobile advertisers and consumers in South Africa have more rapidly and less apprehensively adopted mobile marketing as a way of life. Read the rest

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It’s always interesting in the realm of mobile marketing to watch trends advance, retreat for retooling, and then advance again.

For a time, mobile coupons in the grocery market were among the biggest - not to mention only - forms of mobile marketing employed by supermarket chains and franchises large and small. Although this practice quickly became old hat (at least to mobile marketing junkies like me who consistently want to see what’s next), mobile marketing is returning in force to the grocery market sector. Read the rest

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Living in Indiana, I am more than familiar with wise cracks about how the Hoosier state is supposedly behind the technological times. Today, however, some critics will be forced to bite their tongues, especially since mobile marketing has found its way to one of the mainstays of midwestern entertainment not to mention an otherwise unlikely candidate for mobile marketing usage - the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra.

In an unexpected move to hopefully gain the attention of younger patrons, my local newspaper reported this morning that the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra is looking to use its e-mail marketing partner ExactTarget’s new SMS marketing service. At present, the two organizations are collaborating on a mobile marketing program, which the ISO plans to introduce next summer. Read the rest

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On Monday, I spouted off about a recent US College Report publication revealing that “Mobile Marketing: Achieving Competitive Advantage Through Wireless Technology” by Alex Michael and Ben Salter (Elsevier) is becoming a must-have textbook in college marketing courses around the United States.

As a result, I was inundated with emails about the status of mobile marketing education - either in the classroom or via professional seminar. In the course of my correspondence with individuals in the know, I was informed of the recent announcement by CTIA WIRELESS I.T. & Entertainment 2008 of their “stellar education session lineup that showcases the pervasive use of mobile technologies for both work and play.” Read the rest

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Every time I think that the walled gardens the carriers provide to their customers are coming down (I can almost hear President Regan in my head saying passionately “Tear down this wall!”) I am proven wrong. And maybe it’s a good thing … for now.

This week Sprint announced their new Sprint Web - a next-generation mobile Web browsing experience available on popular Sprint phones. Sprint Web offers an adaptive home page that delivers content based on the customer’s previous usage, along with direct access to Google for searching.

The beauty of Sprint Web is that it will eventually serve up personalized home page results to users. The first time a user visits the Sprint Web on their phone, they get the basic home page – topic related links that go to mobile content that Sprint has pulled together into their own portal. This portaling process is known as the walled garden because only the content that the carrier chooses to put in there is shown to the user.
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