Bono on your Blackberry. Could there be a cooler combination?

If you’re a U2 fanatic, today is an exciting day. Research In Motion is reportedly teaming with superstar recording group U2 for the release of a new mobile album.

For now, all reports are light on details. A blurb on BlackBerry.com, however, gives a quick synopsis of what appears to be a “U2 App” with music, photos, tour info and a few other morsels of insider information. As soon as more details are made available, you will be among the first to know if you sign up for an email notification on the status of the project.

Earlier this year, U2’s band manager Paul McGuiness foreshadowed “new and innovative ways to enhance the mobile music experience on the BlackBerry platform for U2 fans.”

The comments heightened speculation that a mobile album was in the works and we can now confirm the accuracy of those earlier suspicions.

Share This

It seems like a match made in mobile heaven.

Monitise has announced a “global strategic alliance agreement” with Visa International Service Association, a subsidiary of Visa Inc.

The reported five-year agreement combines “Visa’s unmatched reach, payments expertise and trusted brand with the Monitise Mobile Money platform and toolkit.”

Basically, Monitise will be an enormously helpful vehicle for Visa’s already teeming offering of mobile services (including payments, transaction alerts and special offers) by providing support and even greater reach to the millions of Visa customers with mobile phones.

Although not many details have yet emerged, the news of the partnership is considered significant and an incredibly beneficial arrangement for Visa, which in recent months, has found increased competition in the mobile marketing realm from both Mastercard and American Express.

According to the announcement by Monitise, the five year contract value amounts to $13 million dollars.

Share This

The Mobile Marketing Association has released the latest version of its “U.S Consumer Best Practices Guidelines for Cross-Carrier Mobile Content Services.  More simply, its the latest iteration of guidelines in terms of cross-carrier mobile content services such as SMS, MMS, shortcode services, Interactive Voice Response (IVR) and the mobile Web.

Dubbed version 4.0, the new guidelines represent the first time the individual mobile marketing guidelines and codes of conduct, known as “carrier playbooks,” of the four largest U.S. wireless service providers: Verizon Wireless, AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile USA have been consolidated into one integrated “rule book” so to speak.

Read the rest

Share This

Barnes & Noble has unveiled a new B&N Bookstore application for the Apple iPhone.

Providing access to millions of books now at the touch of your finger, Barnes & Noble worked with software partners Evryx Technologies and Spotlight Mobile to design, customize, and launch the new app, which is a red-hot download so far this week.

The app lets users take a photo of a book cover and, seconds later, the user gets all the information his or her heart could possibly desire about the title, author, publisher, etc.

More importantly from a business standpoint, however, consumers can use the app to purchase or reserve a copy of their desired title directly from the application.

The decision to plunge into the mobile realm isn’t new for the book giant. B&N recently bought digital book retailer Fictionwise for close to sixteen million dollars.

Given that Barnes & Noble operates nearly eight hundred bookstores in all 50 states, there is huge potential for this seemingly long-overdue app.

Share This

Microsoft has unveiled a mobile advertising agreement with Hyatt Hotels & Resorts.

In hopes of tapping into Microsoft’s search and display ad partnership with Verizon Wireless, the deal is driven by the heightened prospect of raising Hyatt hotel’s web presence and giving hotel-seekers a mobile advantage through their Gold Passport frequent guest rewards program.

Microsoft announced that Verizon Wireless subscribers will have an easier and more effective means by which to find hotels and points of interest through the mobile web. This includes, of course, finding, booking, rescheduling, and even checking out of rooms at Hyatt hotels. As you can imagine, the partnership also brings to life a number of other bells and whistles well suited for the mobile hospitality industry.

“Microsoft Mobile Advertising provides us with a compelling and scalable solution that can drive awareness, and encourages people to interact with our mobile Web site as another channel to register for our rewards program and reserve a room,” said Amy Curtis-McIntyre, senior VP of Brand Communications for Global Hyatt Corp.

“The powerful combination of Microsoft’s popular destination sites like MSN and Verizon Wireless’ Mobile Web service not only offers exceptional reach to our target audience, but provides us with an efficient solution to work with both a large publisher and service provider through one simple platform.”

Share This

Amazon.com search subsidiary A9 has scooped up SnapTell, a company, as we all know, that allows mobile users to take photos of products or advertisements to get special deals or more product info.

Although no dollar amount was ascribed to the acquisition, the development can prove quite valuable to SnapTell users, particularly those who download the application to their iPhone and then use their phone camera to snap a picture of an advertisement or a product and then send it to SnapTell in return for a variety of information about the product or the company that produces it.

SnapTell also has a database of “millions” of pictures of DVD, CD, book and video game covers. When end-users snap a photo of a cover and send it to SnapTell, they get information back about prices for the product at stores.

Looking to build upon their popularity, SnapTell is now taking their brand one step further.

“One of the most heard requests was how we could integrate better with Amazon’s fabulous shopping experience,” SnapTell said in a public commentary regarding the acquisition. “We should be able to do so pretty well now.”

Amazon created A9 in 2003 to develop search technologies, including Search Inside The Book, which lets users search for a book by character names or even obscure phrases.

SnapTell fits with A9 like a glove.

For more information, check out www.snaptell.com

Share This

I’ve been involved with affiliate, or performance-based marketing for a long time now.  More recently I’ve been interested in advertising models that utilize the benefits of performance-based marketing together with other forms of new-age advertising- primarily mobile marketing.

Taking the obvious benefits from today’s mobile marketing methodologies, and working them into a model that only charges advertisers for results would be a winning combination in my book.  Advertisers use affiliate marketing to drive sales, leads, clicks, etc, but only pay the publisher, networks, etc. when they produce results.  This takes a lot of the wasted ad-spend away, and significantly increases ROI in almost every situation.  This is the reason many small and large brands alike have been using the performance-based model for years and years.  Up until recently, however, it was only carried out online.

While there aren’t many services available that take this model into the realm of mobile, they’re starting to emerge if you dig deep enough.  One in particular is a company called RevTrax.  They’re utilizing mobile marketing, and mobile coupons in particular, together with a performance-based model to drive results to the brands distributing digital coupons or using any form of “customer loyalty” programs.

Read the rest

Share This