The Skweezer Blog

Greenlight Wireless Corporation’s CEO Kevin Perkins will be on hand at this year’s CTIA WIRELESS 2008^® conference being held April 1-3 in Las Vegas. Mr. Perkins will be available for business development meetings during the conference. To schedule a meeting please contact the Business Development center at +1-949-421-1550 ext. 561.

About CTIA WIRELESS 2008^®
As the largest wireless show in the world, CTIA WIRELESS 2008 brings together all industries affected by wireless technology for three days of intense learning and networking. CTIA-The Wireless Association® is the international association for the wireless telecommunications industry, representing carriers, manufacturers and wireless Internet providers. Visit www.ctia.org/ctiawireless.

Posted by Monica Sato

Skweezer technology provides optimized Web access to Orange Madagascar’s 1.4 million customers.

IRVINE, Calif., March 19, 2008—Orange Madagascar S.A. has released its new Orange World portal powered by Greenlight Wireless’ Skweezer technology, which optimizes Web pages and searches for mobile handsets.

Orange World is a mobile Internet portal that provides Orange Madagascar’s 1.4 million customers with access to Web content, such as news and sports scores, from their mobile phones and PDAs. Skweezer Private Label has been integrated into this portal so that Orange customers will be able to browse off-portal and visit any Web site on the Internet, whether it’s mobile-friendly or not.

“Orange Madagascar has chosen to work with Greenlight Wireless to integrate Skweezer into its WAP portal because of Greenlight’s experience, knowledge and expertise in the technology of reformatting pages to adapt them to the screens of mobile phones,” said Orange Madagascar Product Manager Tohiniaina Raherimanantsoa.

Approximately 24% of all Skweezer users are from so-called “emerging markets”. The growth in this sector is an ongoing tend that became apparent in mid-2005, when Skweezer penetration in Latin America, China, and India began to accelerate. Skweezer Private Label is also used by Orange Dominicana’s 850,000-plus customers, with further Private Label implementations due to be deployed in upcoming months.

Orange Madagascar is using Skweezer Private Label, which is a carrier-grade solution that optimizes Web content for PDAs and cell phones. Skweezer compresses and reformats content being downloaded, so that it loads faster, looks better, and is easier to navigate. Skweezer has introduced many mobile browsing innovations and has won several awards in 2007, including a Gold Star in the Mobile Star Awards and Best Web Compression Service in the Smartphone and Pocket PC Magazine Best Software Awards. Skweezer is completely platform-independent and can be accessed from Pocket PC, Palm, MS Smartphone, Blackberry, iPhone, Symbian, PSP2, and WAP 2.0 compliant devices.

About Greenlight Wireless:
Greenlight Wireless is a leading innovator of wireless technologies, providing mobile solutions for enterprise-level businesses, Web portals, and wireless carriers. Greenlight Wireless’ consumer-oriented Skweezer service optimizes Web content for handheld devices, providing a richer browsing experience and adding value to wireless data offerings. Greenlight’s Advertizer product is a cutting-edge advertising program for operators, search engines, and publishers who want to monetize their content in the mobile environment.

On the Net: Greenlight Wireless site: www.greenlightwireless.net

Posted by Monica Sato

Agreements set to expand MIVA’s mobile Pay-Per-Click distribution across the U.S. and U.K.

IRVINE, Calif., March 12, 2008—Greenlight Wireless, a mobile content and advertising pioneer, today announced U.S. and U.K. Pay-Per-Click agreements with MIVA Media, a leading digital advertising network and a division of MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ: MIVA).

The agreements will see MIVA’s Pay-Per-Click ads displayed to consumers accessing Greenlight Wireless’ portfolio of U.S. and U.K. partner sites from their mobile phones. This partner network includes national news, entertainment and network operator sites that generate over 30 million mobile searches per month.

Additionally, MIVA’s Pay-Per-Click ads will be displayed to mobile users who utilize Greenlight Wireless’ Skweezer service. Skweezer is a free service that compresses and reformats web pages to make them easier to view and navigate via mobile phones and PDAs.

With both implementations MIVA’s Pay-Per-Click ads will be targeted using Greenlight Wireless’ proprietary contextual technology and will be displayed alongside site content on users’ handsets.

MIVA has been testing mobile ad delivery with Greenlight Wireless in the U.S. for the past six months however with these new agreements the campaign will now be fully rolled-out across the U.S. and U.K.

“We believe these agreements are a significant vote of confidence in our ability to effectively monetize mobile content. Greenlight Wireless has award-winning technology as well as a prestigious and growing distribution network making this an exciting new distribution channel for MIVA advertisers,” commented S. Brian Mukherjee, SVP & Group Managing Director, MIVA Media.

Adds Kevin Perkins, Chief Executive Officer, Greenlight Wireless:

“Combining the skill sets of Greenlight Wireless and MIVA enable us to get around three of the fundamental issues facing mobile marketing today – diverse technology, advertiser depth, and content availability. The beauty of these agreements is that MIVA’s advertisers can now market to mobile websites without the need to plan or buy campaigns separately.”

About Greenlight Wireless:
Greenlight Wireless is a leading innovator of wireless technologies, providing mobile solutions for enterprise-level businesses, web portals, and wireless carriers. Greenlight Wireless’ consumer-oriented Skweezer service optimizes Web content for handheld devices, providing a richer browsing experience and adding value to wireless data offerings. Greenlight’s Advertizer product is a cutting-edge advertising program for operators, search engines, and publishers who want to monetize their content in the mobile environment.

On the Net: Greenlight Wireless site: www.greenlightwireless.net

About MIVA Media:
MIVA Media is a contextual Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ad network focused on key vertical sectors. Its mission is to deliver valuable digital audiences to advertisers. MIVA Media delivers more than 100 million cost-effective leads to advertisers each month and helps maximize revenue for the thousands of third-party web publishers that display its PPC ads. MIVA Media offers three PPC Networks: the vertically focused MIVA Precision Network; the MIVA Core Network which offers broad, horizontal Ad distribution; and SearchFeed which specifically targets small-to-medium sized advertisers and web publishers. MIVA Media is owned by MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA).

About MIVA®, Inc.:
MIVA, Inc. (NASDAQ:MIVA) is a global digital media company with a mission to deliver valuable digital audiences to advertisers. MIVA has two focuses to its business: owning and operating a growing portfolio of consumer destination sites and category specific toolbars, through its MIVA Direct division; and running a 3rd party contextual Pay-Per-Click ad network focused on key vertical sectors, through its MIVA Media division. MIVA, Inc. operates across North America and Europe.

On the Net: MIVA site: www.miva.com

Posted by Monica Sato

Also seen on…

• Forbes
• HPC.net
• OC Register
• SmartBrief
• socalTECH
• Stockhouse
• Sys-Con Media
• Unstrung
• Yahoo!

I had a good chuckle today when the CEO of one of our transcoding brethren starting launching F’bombs toward NetFlix’s popup ads—apparently he sees them all over the net on his desktop. I believe Russell Beattie’s blog post is entitled “Dear NetFlix: F**k You“.
Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Beth Comstock of NBCi or Jerry Yang of Yahoo! lit up a company the same way?! Wow, kiss that potential advertiser good-bye… along with a shareholder lawsuit, dismissal from the company, etc. The fact that Russ’s website and others make their money from essentially doing what NetFlix does only demonstrates the untargetedness of advertising, in general.

Given what mobile media provides… it’s clearly one of the most intimate content platforms to date. Sheesh, the thing is in your palm! The network operator knows a ton about you (phone number, bill spend, geo, etc). And companies like us have amazing technology to target your experience in a “helping” manner, not an invading one. Nielsen really only knows the half of it.

I won’t launch into F’bombs myself, but I too am passionate about this. Given how much we know about people–especially in mobile–why can’t we make the ads more helpful to people? That sounds like an over-simplified statement, but in all these companies’ quests to “figure it out”… they seem to be leaving that one essential component out of the equation.

More Here:

• Mobile Content or Mobile Ads?

By Kevin Perkins

Today Vodafone launched its Othello Image Service where users can snap photos of physical places and get search results about their surroundings.

Fascinating!

Of course, the general concept isn’t totally new given NeoMedia’s NeoReader and OP3’s ShotCode that drive information about the physical world based on bar codes. And really, Denso has made the QR ubiquitous in Japan since 1994 where you can get info throughout Japan from menus, street signs, billboards, etc. More thoughts here.

But this is interesting because it’s leveraging the growing movement of geo-targeting the world. Yahoo! has been doing this with Flickr (pic) for some time, and Microsoft has a similar initiative called Photosynth (pic), which, is quite amazing. Based on some insider knowledge that I have, Microsoft will eventually plop an ad model around the physical locations that get uploaded as well.

With that in mind, there’s definitely an opportunity for Vodafone to monetize Othello with local ads. As others pontificate about what is the application to make this happen, Vodafone is definitely executing on its innovation. Whether Vodafone provides results via search, or via SMS… it seems a no-brainer to attach targeted advertising. Here’s what the experience might look like:

1. My wife and I go to the Foo Fighters concert in San Diego, CA and figure it’s going to be a long night. We snap a pic of SDSU’s Cox Arena and MMS it to Vodafone (if Vodafone, and this service, existed in the US). We hope to find info about the surrounding area (restaurants, hotels, etc)
2. Vodafone understands this pic (the building even has the name on it, so I hope so!), and sends me back either a text message pointing to a search result list

   OR…Vodafone sends me just a straight text message about the building’s general information:

Seems like it would be a cool service and a very targeted way to advertise relevant content. Although, if you’re at the building already, you probably don’t want directions, a map, the address or the phone number, right?!  So, I think this completely plays up an intuitive local and sponsored results list for services and products near the location, where each link is a monetizable click.

It’ll be interesting to see more and more operators start executing on these innovations and start giving search engines a run for their money.

By Kevin Perkins

I read an interesting JupiterResearch article from Nate Elliott on “Why 2008 Won’t Be The Breakthrough Year for Mobile Advertising“. I completely agree with his notion that mobile industry hype just keeps getting carried over year after year, after year, after year. Just look at the recent GSMA claim that mobile ad platforms will be worth $250 billion (yes, with a “B”) in year 2010.

Essentially, half of the digital ad revenue—in the world!

And at the same time, he makes excellent points about the harden realities of why it won’t get there that fast:

1. Difficulty finding budget for mobile advertising
2. Difficulty finding inventory for mobile advertising
3. The high cost of mobile ad inventory
4. Difficulty deciding on mobile advertising tactics (e.g., inexperience with the platform)
5. Difficulty measuring mobile advertising

The thing that continues to amaze me about mobile advertising companies is the lack of understanding about these issues. Examples:

• Your company has distribution, but no way to target based on context
• Your company has advertisers, but no metrics like their other KPIs
• Your company operates under the assumption that everyone in the world has—or soon will have—robust (aka expensive) smartphones.
• Your company operates under the assumption that everyone in the world has innate and sophisticated knowledge of using their phone for data services
• Your company believes “made-for-mobile” is enough of a differentiator that it can justify the high value of campaigns as the economies of scale increase

Where all these companies fall short is something that gets glossed over: making it easy. Mobile advertising will never take off unless it’s easy for users, advertisers, and publishers… all at the same time. Each segment is complicated by itself, let alone getting all three to work in harmony.

Our company has spent the last 7 years perfecting mobile content optimization to make it easy for users and publishers to access what they need from their phones. And, over the last 4 years, our advertisers have increasingly begun to pour money into this medium with little disruption to their existing (read efficient) pay-per-click systems. Key lesson: having any one of these components without the other… fatal.

We’re about to embark on a new phase of our company that joins all of these segments in a disruptive way: Making Money From Mobile Easy™. While others are still playing with content solutions or arguing about standards, we’ll be making it easy for mobile users, advertisers, and publishers well before 2010.

Posted by Kevin Perkins