Telefónica announces global mobile advertising alliance.

Telefónica announced it is launching a single global platform to deploy advertising on mobile phones — establishing itself as a clear frontrunner in a marketplace analysts believe will be worth $11.35 billion by 2011*1.

Through a world-wide deal with Amobee Media Systems for an Ad Server technical platform, Telefónica will provide a single point of contact for agencies and advertisers wishing to buy, deploy and monitor campaigns across all mobile channels.

Telefónica is now the world’s only company to support all mobile channels with a single ad-server that supports WAP, games, video, messaging and other in-built applications providing the best user experience for its 170 million customers. Mobile users will also benefit from relevant targeted ads while having cheaper access to premium services when opting-in to receive advertisements.

Julio Linares, Chief Operating Officer, Telefónica, said: “The key to successful mobile advertising is doing it in a contextual and non intrusive way, which our global opt-in ad-serving solution enables us to do. The benefits of a common vendor across the Telefónica group are that we are able to truly look at a common architecture that will drive cost savings for design and testing as well as reduce deployment times.”

Linares added: “We believe we are accelerating the uptake of mobile advertising in all Telefónica mobile businesses across Europe and Latin America and will generate revenue from mobile advertising well beyond WAP and Mobile Internet.”

“Winning the global Telefónica business is a huge vote of confidence for Amobee,” Zohar Lekovitz, CEO of Amobee Media Systems, said. “Mobile is the next mass medium, delivering reach and relevancy that blows away traditional media formats. With over 170 million mobile users globally, Telefónica is setting a new standard for how advertisers reach their target audiences.”

The single centralised ad server enables precise contextual and behavioural targeting across all users on all handsets for all non-voice related applications and services including WAP banners, games, video and music players, applications, messaging (SMS & MMS), ring back tones as well as video & music streaming.

Telefónica retains complete control of the solution which means that each operating business will have access to customer data, localisation, behavioral profiles and the opt-in database. The business will then instruct the Ad-Server to deliver a relevant ad to customers with a certain profile and handset type.

The advertising impressions from the Amobee platform occur in a relevant, contextual and non-intrusive manner, thus giving the users control over the engagement. The alliance with Amobee will enable Telefónica to fund its growing number of mobile data services, while ensuring that customers get better value, as well as a richer mobile experience.

Deployment begins in the UK, Spain, Mexico and Colombia this year, and will roll out across the remainder of Telefónica’s regional businesses in 2009.