Moving Beyond Operator Portals

Brand Republic has a piece about brands offering mobile content through channels other than the operators portal. By effectively forcing their customers to use their portals and signing up exclusive content deals operators went to the top of the mobile content food chain, but with big non-carrier brands getting into mobile most operators know their customers will soon start demanding free access to third-party mobile sites.
“The operator believes that, thanks to its experience, it will be able to not only offer brands the chance to advertise and sell content through its portal, but also help them set up off-portal services…The possibilities, according to Russell, include setting up affiliate networks, running ad campaigns across Vodafone Live! and other sites, and helping media brands to offer more targeted advertising by using its customer data. However, Russell admits that these propositions will require greater consumer commitment to the mobile internet…’The business opportunity for everyone is getting operators to make off-portal work more effectively. There are about 30 major off-portal sites at the moment, and many more adult-oriented sites. We would like to enable third parties to get onto the mobile web. If we don’t drive revenue streams into off-portal, it will not flourish,’ he says.”

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