Orange unveils ads for mobile portal

by Deborah Bonello, Campaign 11-Aug-06

Orange launches the first ads on its mobile portal Orange World this week.

The portal - an online content platform - is available to Orange users
through their mobile phones. Brands including Jaguar, Peugeot, Xbox and
United International Pictures' new film Miami Vice are among those set

to appear on banner ads within the portal.

Customers accessing Orange World via Nokia, Motorola and Samsung phones
will be able to see the ads, which the operator is using to test what
kind of ad offerings work best on mobile portals.

To date, most mobile advertising has concentrated on SMS or MMS
(multimedia) messages sent directly to people's phones.

All of the UK's operators, including Vodafone, 3 and O2, are
experimenting with advertising via mobile owing to a growing demand for
mobile content.

Mobile TV and video clips are increasingly popular with mobile phone
users and operators are keen to monetise that content.

Currently, users have to pay to download content via mobile. If
advertisers came on board they could shoulder the costs covered by
users, thereby removing one of the factors that can discourage users
from going online via mobile.