mobilestance.com

November 17th will mark Wikimobipedia.org’s six month anniversary, so I thought it’d be good to shoot you all an update on some of the progress we’ve made and some recent changes to the site.

95 Participating Companies and Counting!   As of now there are 95 companies and organizations that have taken the time to build out pages on wikimobipedia.org – including developers, ad networks, publishers, industry organizations and agencies (see complete list at the bottom of this post).  Very exciting! 

Let’s keep the momentum going!  Please link / deep link to Wikimobipedia.org pages to help with our discoverability and page rank with the major search engines – and tell a friend!

Site Changes.  While the core site elements have remained relatively unchanged since launch, we have continually refined the UI for maximum usability.  The only major change is that – due to a few tenacious spambots – we’re now requiring users register prior to creating or editing pages.  A small change that has greatly reduced automated spam issues.

Social Media.  As of today there are 227 fans of the Wikimobipedia Facebook Page and 40 followers to our recently built Twitter Feed.  If you haven’t already, please fan up and/or follow us to help spread the word.

Top Twenty Most Popular Wikimobipedia.org Pages:  Cudos to Mojiva for linking to their page from their website – this no doubt has contributed to organic discovery of their page in leading search engines – other participants, take note!

Complete List of Wikimobipedia Pages (note – some pages are more complete than others!):

Open Source Meets Mobile Marketing

I wanted to let you all in on a little side project that I’ve been working on, and was hoping you’d embrace it for the good of our industry.

The site is called wikimobipedia.org, and it’s basically a public wiki where mobile marketing buyers can easily collect the info they need (case studies, contact info, audience comps, etc) to begin their planning process.With our space moving so fast I felt the industry would benefit from a place that “keeps up with mobile (so you don’t have to)”, and so far things have been going pretty well.

So far I’ve got most of the major mobile players involved – over 50 companies – in less than a month (see list below for Beta launch partners).I’ve begun to spread the word, but I need all of your help to give the project some legs – as wiki’s only thrive after achieving scale.  Anything you can do – add a link to your blog roll, write a feature / re-post this on your blog, start deep linking to company pages when referencing companies in the wiki – anything will be of help…I think the mobile industry as a whole would really benefit.

List of Wikimobipedia [dot] org Beta Partners (as of 6.23.09): 2ergo, 4info, 5Th Finger, Access Mobile, AccuWeather, AdMob, Addictive Mobility, Amethon Solutions, Augme, ChaCha, Cielo Mobile, CNN, ComScore, Crisp Wireless, FOX Business Mobile, FOX News Mobile, Greystripe, Hands-On Mobile, Inc., HipCricket, IVdopia, InsightExpress, Ipsh, Jumptap, Millennial Media, MoVoxx, Mobile Marketing Association, Mobile Posse, Mojiva, Movoxx, Myxer, Nokia Interactive Advertising, , Nokia Point & Find, NPR, Phluant Mobile, PointRoll, Quattro Wireless, Ringleader Digital, Scanbuy, ShopText, SinglePoint, The Weather Channel Mobile, Thumbplay, Transpera, Useful Networks, Vibes Media, Washington Post Digital, Waterfall Mobile and WeatherBug.

Amobee, Winstar and Quattro Aim to Boost Position, Profitability.

Boost Mobile, the self-proclaimed “lifestyle-based telecommunications brand” focused on the prepaid (pay-as-you-go) US market, announced that they are partnering with Mobile Ad Serving Firm Amobee to bring their on deck mobile web advertising inventory to market – effective immediately – with Acura and Fox Searchlight Pictures already on board as advertisers.

Initially the Boost Mobile advertising inventory will consist of mobile web banner units, although it is well-known that Amobee’s “carrier grade” mobile ad server is fully-capable of serving far more interesting ad units, such as SMS sponsorship, mobile video ads and other enhanced units. Whether Boost ultimately decides to bring additional mobile ad formats remains to be seen.

In addition to the usual mobile web targeting parameters, such as content category and handset targeting, Amobee will leverage its direct carrier-relationship to provide more sophisticated mobile advertising services, including the highly sought-after “session-independent frequency cap.” No plans have been announced regarding more controversial approaches to mobile ad targeting, such location-based or behavioral targeting.

In a noteworthy move, Amobee has chosen to augment its current mobile ad sales partner Winstar Interactive with US-based Quattro Wireless. Our regular readers will recall that back in December of last year mobilestance predicted that Winstar alone would be unable to sell enough ads to satisfy Amobee’s business objectives, and that additional sales partners would ultimately be needed.

It is unclear how ad accounts will be divided between these Winstar and Quattro, but clearly Amobee will need to actively manage this process to avoid any awkward channel conflicts that might arise with multiple (and independent) sales organizations selling the same product to an overlapping customer base.

Analysis. As Boost Mobile is a wholly owned division of Sprint Wireless, Amobee is well positioned to unseat current US legacy “on deck” mobile ad serving companies – specifically Enpocket (now Nokia), who currently manages all the on deck WAP inventory on Sprint – as well as Third Screen Media / AOL, who manages (and sometimes sells) the Verizon Wireless on deck inventory.

Quattro Wireless, who will be celebrating its first birthday in May of this year, has already impressed many with a series of strong moves – including their launch with P&G and Univision Movil, their long term / tail GetMobile platform, and the securing of key talent. Together with Amobee’s well-distributed technology and Boost’s highly attractive audience, these players just might have what it takes to achieve the ultimate (and so far elusive) goal in the mobile advertising marketplace: serious profitability.