Vodafone and Telefonica have taken undisclosed stakes in Amobee Media, a two-year old firm that offers advertising for mobile search, games and SMS. Both operators have begun trials of Amobee’s technology – Telefonica through its O2 subsidiary in the UK, and Vodafone in Spain, Greece and the Czech Republic – and say their minority stakes will help improve their understanding of a potential future growth source. “Is [mobile advertising] going to be as big as everyone says it will be? We’re not entirely sure, but we felt it was important to be close to this,” Russ Shaw, Director of Innovation at Telefonica, told the Financial Times.
Zohar Levkovitz, Chief Executive of Amobee, said it could offer operators a way to avoid losing control of their services’ revenues to new entrants such as Google or Yahoo. “If the user experience on a Vodafone handset is going to be Google Android or Yahoo To Go, they’re going to be just people with a connection to the Net. We are helping operators take control of their own destiny,” he said. Orange France has also been testing the service of Amobee, whose first trials went live in March 2006. Amobee competes with other startups such as Millenial Media and Gingersoft Media. However, the company believes its advantage over advertising platforms targeted at the mobile Internet is that it can also serve up advertisements in games and text messages.