Blyk – free mobile network funded by advertising

One year after it’s launch Blyk seems to be going strong. Blyk is a free mobile network for young people in the the pay-as-you-go market (16-24) and is funded by advertising. Blyk is the creation of Pekka Ala-Pietilä (the former president of Nokia) and Antti Öhrling (chairman of the Contra advertising group). Which makes sense when you see what it is. Here’s how it works.

After being invited to join the network, you fill out your profile and are sent a SIM card (no handsets though!). There’s no contract, and you get an allowance of texts and airtime in return for receiving up to six advertising communications a day, but no data allowance. If you run over your text limit or minutes, you just pay like a normal pre-pay phone. When you are filling out your profile you choose your interests so that the communications can be targeted to you. Furthermore, should you respond to a communication (which is not deducted in your free allocation of texts) this will help refine the preferences for you, the user.

Blyk is the free mobile network for 16-24s that connects young people with the brands they like – Blyk website

I am of course rather excited by the business model, but what I find really compelling is that Blyk claim a staggering 29% average campaign response rate, across 200,000 users opted-in to the service. That is damn good cut through. Case studies illustrate Brands such as L’Oreal, Boots, the Kooks, JJB and many more have already made use of the Blyk platform.

Having a look at some of the campaigns on their website I have to admit I am a little under whelmed at the creative but the deals seems to be very appealing and best of all, the platform is there. Having said that, one of the key insights that Blyk mention are that “Simple text messages receive a higher response rate – adding pictures, animation and sound results in increased recall and impact.” So maybe I should give the advertisers the benefit of the doubt. Adding value to your brand is more the just providing pretty pictures, no matter how much that hurts me to say that.

I truly believe that mobile internet is going to play a huge role in digital advertising and advertising in general, and Blyk is definitely be a company I will be watching very carefully. Afterall, wouldn’t you like free mobile connection in return for receiving a few targeted ads?

The future of advertising just called – on your iPhone

I remember 8 years ago when I was in London that mobile advertising was being touted as the next big thing – well that and iTV. Haven’t really seen much of mobile advertising since then. But I just read this article in which Google CEO Eric Schmidt states “The next big wave in advertising is the mobile internet”.

Schmidt predicts that, although it may take some time, mobile business will be a larger business than the PC-Web. I can see the logic in this. After all, your phone is mobile and is almost always on you. The iPhone with it’s real web browser is providing new mobile advertising opportunities – with the likes of Nokia, Blackberry and Motorola all soon to follow. Soon advertisers will be able to deliver new and exciting targeted messages right into your… pocket!

“The advertising has to be more entertaining, more interesting, more immersive compared to what we have today” – Eric Schmidt

Soon you will be receiving advanced targeted advertisments straight to your phone (better than this one i hope!)

For anyone who is unsure what mobile web even is, it is where a phone or PDA has WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) capabillities, and this is used facilitate access to the Internet from your mobile. To date it’s been fairly lousy and not really worth bothering with despite what some pundits might say. But it seems it’s all about to change.

I’ll be interested to see what form mobile advertising starts to take. I guess it will be the likes of redeemable mobile coupons, opt-in competitions, a new mobile form of advanced banner advertising, campaigns based on video and so on. The only advertising I have had delivered to my phone so far was from my provider and it was some lame little animated gif. As it matures advertising campaigns will obviously become even more personal and hopefully more effective. In this article on AOL Working With iPhone on Mobile Advertising, Time Warner’s Internet business Platform A already boast being able to “…deliver banners optimized for display on the iPhone.”

Hand in hand with some kick arse content development, I would hope to see some best practices for the mobile Web advertising. I am already constantly moaning about the amount of web browsers – imagine designing ads for the gazillion of different sized handsets that are going out be out there. And as for how to book a mobile campaign, well I haven’t even considered that until just now…